2. Alonzo Plummer (1893 - 1980)
Transcript
David Dollar: Hi. In case you just joined us, this is David Dollar. We're going to visit this morning with Mr. Alonzo Plummer of [inaudible 00:00:07] on Memories. Mr. Plummer, why don't you start things off, just tell us a little bit about yourself? Alonzo Plummer: Well, to begin with my father, Allen Leroy Plummer, was a Civil War veteran. My mother was Nora Squyres. They married when he was 40 and she 20. There are four of us of the family. This was at Summerville. I was born at Summerville, Louisiana in 1893. In 1896, my family moved to the community of Nebo near Catahoula Lake over in what is now La Salle parish. The home in which we moved was quite a contrast from what we had previously lived in. It had begun with a log house and been repaired and redone until you would hardly recognize what it was, but it turned out to be a rather comfortable place. The big draw back there was mosquitoes. We had to sleep under bars, that is nets that were to keep the mosquitoes out. I had malaria at the time. My father was principally engaged, at that time, in raising cows. He had previously been a teacher in one room schools over the area. The ill health of my mother had caused him to take up an occupation where you could stay closer home, and he left that. At Nebo I went to school in a little one room school. It was a church house, really. Most of the rural schools in the area, I might say in the whole area of the South, rural schools were in church houses. In the South there was very little tax money left to look out for either schools or roads in this state due to the fact that Louisiana was one of the few states that didn't repudiate the Civil War debt, a big part of which was brought on by the carpet bagger regime in Louisiana and for years after the war. It's been in recent years. I remember the campaign of one Jared Y. Sanders for governor of Louisiana in which he had... One of the big issues of his campaign was to pay the debt. Pay the debt and get it over. David Dollar: Get it behind us. Alonzo Plummer: Yeah, get it behind us. David Dollar: Just a matter of curiosity, was he elected? Alonzo Plummer: Yes, he was elected. David Dollar: He was? That was before my time a little bit I'm afraid. Alonzo Plummer: Yeah, he was elected. David Dollar: Well, I'll be. Alonzo Plummer: Something about the school. Our school was unique in one respect, and that was in what we might call now refrigeration. We didn't see it was refrigeration then, but to a degree it was refrigeration. A very beautiful cold water, clear spring creek passed right by the door. Most of the children, in fact, I think all of us took milk to school. We put it in bottles, put a string around the bottle and put it around our necks as a convenience to carry it. When we got to the school house we tied it to a root in a tree next to the creek and it stayed in there and it was nice and fresh. David Dollar: It stayed real cold, huh? Alonzo Plummer: It stayed nice and fresh. So, we had a pretty good lunch. I'll give you a few things with reference to the activities within the school. One of the things, a little incident that illustrates something of what was going on happened to me. We were studying geography, and the geographies at that time were illustrated and then just questions asked. For instance, land forms. They asked what was an island? And what was an isthmus? And so on. We stood up, most of us barefooted, and you can imagine a line of people standing up toeing a crack across the building and standing up there just as erect as we could be. The teacher asked those questions as they were in that book and we were supposed to answer them verbatim according to what was in the book. Well, a question came to me as to what was an island? Well, all those words just flat wouldn't come to me. And I said, "Well, an island is a small body of land with water all around it." Well that wasn't acceptable at all. I passed it on to the next person and she knew it verbatim and she turned me down. We had a turning down process of going to the head and so on and standing the foot. So I got turned down on that, and the next thing that came around to me was, what was a continent? My answer was that it was a large body of land that had water all around it. Or almost all around it, but that wasn't any good. It was large body of land surrounded by, or almost surrounded by water. That was the wording. Well, I was turned down again and that meant that I spent my recess time- David Dollar: Studying geography [crosstalk 00:08:45]. Alonzo Plummer: Studying geography. But the humiliation of it was what really got me because it didn't take me any time. I remembered whoever turned me down, when they gave the right direction- David Dollar: Then you knew the answer [crosstalk 00:09:06]. Alonzo Plummer: I knew the answer already. David Dollar: Just a little bit late. I tell you what, Mr. Plummer, I don't want to turn you down or anything, but what I want do is interrupt right now for a commercial message from the folks that are bringing you Memories this morning, People's Bank & Trust Company. We'll be right back. This is David Dollar, again, on Memories. In case you just joined us, we're visiting this morning with Mr. Alonzo Plummer. Mr. Plummer, you mentioned something. When we were talking earlier, you seemed to be very knowledgeable about the Civil War. Why don't you tell us a little bit about some of your vested interest in the Civil War, and some things that went on when you were living over in Mansfield? Alonzo Plummer: Well, my people on both sides were very much involved in the Civil War. My father fought during the Civil War and the whole period through. He was discharged. I say discharged. They didn't give him a discharge. They gave him a parole at Vicksburg. No, at Mansfield, rather. Pardon me, at Mansfield in 1865. He had formerly been a member of Company A, 17th Louisiana Infantry. That organization was captured at Vicksburg when Vicksburg fell. But he didn't go in. He slipped out, got on a log on the Mississippi River and floated down to where he could get over in Louisiana, and he joined General Taylor's forces on the west side of the Mississippi River. That brought him to the Battle of Mansfield. Then in 1960, I became superintendent of the Mansfield Battle Park and Museum. The battle park was a part of the old battleground, and the museum contained relics of the battle and other Civil War relics. We didn't just stick to the things that were used at Mansfield. David Dollar: But the whole war, yeah. Alonzo Plummer: But the whole war. David Dollar: So they had somebody that was almost as good as firsthand, at least secondhand, having you there at the museum about that, because your own father was right there in that very battle. Alonzo Plummer: That's right. And I'll mention this. Before any marker or anything had ever been put up there, I passed along that road with him, and I didn't know anything about it then. I didn't know anything about even a battle having been fought right there. He looked around there and he said, "Well," he said, "Right here is where Dick Taylor whipped the hell out of Banks." And that was his- David Dollar: That was it. Alonzo Plummer: That was it. David Dollar: And he knew the spot. Well, Mr. Plummer, let me interrupt you one more time. We need to take one more short commercial break. We'll be right back on Memories this morning with Mr. Alonzo Plummer. Mr. Plummer, we like to close our program every week by having what we call a closing memory. If you've got something you'd like to share with us, why don't you go ahead now. Alonzo Plummer: Well, the thing that I would like to share with you is the most important decision of my life. In 19 and 16, I met Miss Ala Lee Joyce. In May of 19 and 17, I had had, my mother had been ill and I'd been in close attendance with her, and I didn't have much chance to go see anybody. But anyway, we worked our courtship along, and in May of 1916, 1917 rather, in May of 1917, we decided to make a life partnership under a shade tree out in front of their home at Campti. David Dollar: Well, I think that's a very fitting closing memory for our program. Thank you for sharing it with us. Mr. Alonzo Plummer was with us this morning on Memories.
Mr. Plummer is a regular guest on Memories. He talks about his time in school, at Normal College (present day Northwestern State). He also discusses his time in elementary school and how it differs from the school schedules today.