Brummitt, Elmer

              Elmer Brummitt


HOW MY MIDDLE NAME WAS CHANGED

Okay, when I went in the service in 1946 joined the air force for three years, and it was an E. So when I was discharged I came out with my E changed to an I. So I was getting out so I didn’t want to give them any problem. I wanted my discharge so I left it as an I. So my brothers, everybody else in there is an E. So I’m and eye ball, I mean an odd ball.


ATTENDING CHURCH AND SCHOOL


We attended New Hope because that was the closest church in our area and my father had no vehicle of his own, never drove one, and we lived in what’s known now as Emery Valley at the corner of Carnegie and Emery which was Lupton Valley and Lupton Crossroads. So the only way we had to get to New Hope was our neighbors down the street from us, well down the road. He had this, he was in the business of logging and saw milling and all, and he had this big flat bed truck and he’d come up the road there and pick us up along with many others and brought us to New Hope which was, like I say, the church in the area there. And I remember in the winter time we had a large wood or coal burning stove that sat up there, and that’s the way we tried to keep warm, and then in the summer time we used a fan or whatever we could to keep cool. But that’s where we went to church all the time till we had to leave here in ’42, 1942, and that’s when we went to Clinton. Of course I went to school at Robertsville and then the Scarboro school. The old one burned and they built a new one. That’s when they separated the high school from the grammar school and moved us over there. So that’s where I finished up in 1942 at the eight grade and moved to Clinton.


SUNDAYS IN NEW HOPE


You know, rain or shine we rode the old flatbed truck, the old logger’s truck, and then the preacher would come, my mom always cooked a big dinner, and he always wanted to come, you know the railroad engineer, filled in as the preacher, Clark I think is his name, would want to come to our place to eat, and I don’t know how he got there unless he rode the truck. But yeah, that was quite an experience.
That was the good old days but I think I prefer the modern days. Well it was dusty and it was rainy and then mosquitoes and spider webs and things you know you’re standing up as you’re going down the road and they’d hit you there. But we’d hang out, we’d sit on the edge with our feet hanging out. Like I say it’s a miracle that no one had, you know, fallen off or killed or anything like that. 
	Okay, we lived in what is known now as Emery Valley at the corner of Carnegie and Emery which is Lupton Crossroads in Lupton Valley, and I imagine it would be five or six miles or more if you backtrack down through there, and we came all the way down through the end of the valley and there was a store down in there, Nash Copeland store and then you go a little further and you turn left and come across the hill by, long about the road that you would go into Wal-Mart on and then you hit the old road and come on around. But that’s the only way we had to get there, it was the only way we went anywhere, so church, you know that was a big thing. And whatever, day and night, winter, summer.


OLD WOODEN SCHOOL BUS

	
	Well they had an old school bus that came through and actually back then it was made out of, it wasn’t metal or anything like this, just a wood made from framed out in planks or whatever they did back in those days, and the seats were not like they are today in the newer ones. It was just a row up the center. You set on either side, and on each side there was a like a bench up through there. So they’d drag you in the front and kick you out the rear. That’s what we had was that old wooden school bus.


WOODEN SCHOOL BUS (RESTATED)

	
	The body of that bus was made out of wood, framed in on a base, you know wheels and engine and everything, and they had just a bench down through the center and a bench on each side. No chairs like you sit in now. And you could sit straddled on the center one or on each side and then on the other side you had to sit in like this. But, you know, that was the—later on then they would have an upgraded type metal building. I don’t know if they had heaters in them or not. I don’t recall that, maybe not.


THE PEANUT PATCH RAID


	Right after we moved there on in football season, with a permit from our parents, we could walk from Scarboro down to Robertsville in that day. Let’s see at the west end of Union Valley which is just out here, there was a farm there, and he had a peanut patch. So just about eight or ten of us guys and we got into that peanut patch, and we helped ourselves to the peanuts. And then Monday morning we were brought into the office there, Mr. Cantrell, and asked us about how we got involved with stealing peanuts and all that from Mr. Walters, and I think his son was with us. But anyway, everybody denied but me, and he beat me harder than he did the rest with one of those wood paddles about that wide, about that thick and I think it had holes in it. And he would just, you know, kind of lift you off the ground, off of the floor in there.
But now if I do it over I’d sue him. I couldn’t do that back then. The principal, Mr. Cantrell ended up being the head of the union people’s bank in Clinton. He has since deceased.


GEORGE ANDERSON


	I would often see George before he died, and he also worked at Union People’s Bank later on.
But we would talk about being here and he said we came out of the same briar patch and of course over here on the Ridge, you know where that’s at, where his place was. And then I knew his family and they had—many years ago when I was working down here, I think it was as a chauffer, he and his wife lived there, just as you’re coming out of Clinton in a little, very small place. And well, I was living in Andersonville actually, and some people that I rode with came through and picked me up in Andersonville and then picked his wife up and brought her to Oak Ridge and she worked over at the administration building at the old place. I don’t recall what George was doing then. But later on as he got more into, I say the money, then he built a nice place on Timothy there in Clinton. And then after he retired from the bank then he would come into Hardees in South Clinton for breakfast and then he, you know, and I think he just recently died a few months ago and I wasn’t aware of that. But of course my family and his family knew each other, and they were just nice people like all of us were back then. George was older, I think older than I, and he went to school with my older brother or sisters and they all went to Robertsville, and my youngest brother and I ended up in Scarboro. The others ended up at Robertsville high school.


STORIES OF PEOPLE FROM THE NEW HOPE COMMUNITY


	Well I knew quite a few people there, the Ellis’, Grace Ellis was my teacher over at Scarboro, and they lived right in this immediate area down there, and her father was the, I think he was the choir director for awhile, and one day in school over there I was flipping little paper wads and I hit this lady in the side of the head, I think it was, and she was kind of crying a little bit. In fact, she’s still living and lives up near Lake City. But Mrs. Ellis found out who it was and guess what she did? Used the same paddle that Mr. Cantrell used on me. So that was a well used paddle. But Mrs. Ellis was the one to land it on me that time. It was just an innocent thing I was doing, just having fun at their expense. Like I say the Piet’s and the Ellis’ and the gentleman we were just talking about, Anderson, and the pastor or the preacher there, maybe part time was a railroad engineer for the L&N in Knoxville, and he’d come out and preach for us. And then they had a little revival meeting. A tent revival over around Grove Center, and of course there was nothing there, just a road went through. They set up the little tent right out there, near where the pool is now and there was a little pond that was fed by that spring that’s there now. So anyway, this lady that you’ll be interviewing, my cousin’s wife, mother and another lady went with me and some other boys, and so we went forward to accept the Lord and then we were baptized in that old pool over there and the mud was that thick. We lay there. They likely never get out of that mud when they baptize us, you know put us down there. She can tell you more about that. But one of the ladies is still living. Her mother died, but hell, that’s part of the New Hope group that went over in that area. One of the preachers down there he was fishing on Sunday. This is true. He was dynamiting, and he blew his hands off. These folks that’s coming in here later can tell you about that. Hightower is his name. And they said, “Well he shouldn’t have been fishing on Sunday.”


TENT REVIVAL (RESTATED)


	Churches back then, and even now I think, they have these tent revivals. They put sawdust down, they walk the sawdust trail, and so they had one over there, and it’s right in the area where the pool is now, swimming pool. So they had it all set up there, and of course they preached to us and gave his invitation and the ladies came back and witnessed to me and two or three other fellas. We went forward and then later on we were baptized there in that fresh water pool that’s fed by that spring, and like I say the spring is still there. And so we were baptized and, like I say, the mud was that thick in there, and when we went down he liked to drown us. They could hardly pull us back up. But that’s Mrs. Wilson was one of the ladies, she’s still living the other has expired. The mother of the lady that you’ll interview later on today, McGill, Mrs. McGill, her brother was a preacher too. 


WRONG DAY TO GO FISHING


	Mr. Hightower was a preacher over there, and he was fishing on Sunday while he was not using the old rod and reel. He was dynamiting which is against the law. Well his charge went off in his hand, and he lost his hands. And so that’s the reason that he was punished I guess for it. He went fishing on Sunday and lost his hands.


WORKING FOR THE U. S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION


	Okay, USAEC in those days and I was a chauffer. We went, after I got out of the service they had all of the entrances to Oak Ridge, you know gates and you had to check in, so I was up at Elsa Gate, a bunch of us guys looking for a job. And so we were in line kind of going into this office and there was three or four other guys and some of us still living, some of us gone now. And so I kind of told them I was in a hurry and I went ahead of all of them. And so they said, well we’re hiring chauffeurs. Well that’s fine, you know. It’s a job, make 65 cents an hour and what they had, during the war when they had no men available. They used ladies to chauffer. So they kind of phased that out. I know they couldn’t do it today, but, you know, but we kind of moved in, and they moved them out. And their office was, the buildings are still there, over near the castle on the hill, what do they call it? Federal Office. Yes, right there. And that’s where I got acquainted with, I guess it’s 25 or 30 of us guys who were really working there and we worked 7 hours a day. The office was open 7 days 24 hours a day because we were transporting people from the plant home and going to the airport and train stations and bus terminals and things like that. And of course that’s where I met Captain Rick Over and the general. And whoever came in, I mean they were governor’s from states who would come in here and visit. So we had; it was quite an experience for us, and we had the old route into the airport, nothing like they have now, the old going over through two lane highways, and it’s a miracle that there was no accidents.
	I was building a house in Clinton, and that’s where my wife and I married, and I was accused of hauling, when I would come back from say the airport somewhere, hauling lumber in that car with it sticking out the glass, you know on the side, two by fours and things like that to build my house with.
But before we were married, maybe I shouldn’t tell all this, she lived in Mill Creek in Hendersonville which is like 15 miles or more from here where we were up there up to Mill Creek where she lived.
So I’d get a call to the airport and I’d have time and I’d drive all the way to Andersonville and she was always ready, didn’t know I was coming, no phones or anything like that, pick her up and I had a pass for her so she could get into the area here. And so I’d get to the airport, and I’d say now, you go in the airport, and you come out just like you’re one of the passengers and just sit here and don’t say a word.
And so one time we were going into the airport, and I thought they was security following us, and so I took off right on by the airport just flying out through there and cut my lights out so they couldn’t follow me, and I didn’t hit anything, but there was a one way bridge, just a narrow bridge and I just, whew! Through there like that. I said what in the world was that, and then I turned the lights on when I got back and there was nobody following me, I don’t know. But anyway she would go in the airport, come back out, get in the car and never say a word, and we’d run through the gate and then after that I had the car and I took her home.
	But a lot of things happened, like I say, you talk to Mr. Hamby and he’s got all the answers.
But like I told you about the captain, when we picked him up and picked up another fella, and this guy was smoking, captain Rick said that cigarette’s got to go. He said, “No way.” He was a big wheel too.
So Rick over said, “take me by the office chauffeur, I’m going to get someone else.” And he did.
And that dispatcher today knows who the guy that he assigned to take him in to the airport. So just, you know a lot of serious things like that happened. 


DRIVING GENERAL GROVE


	Well like I say we would like pick him up at the airport and we’d take him to the plants which was usually here and then we’d actually if they needed to go to the other plants we’d pick them up and transfer and then pick them up and take them back to the airport. Usually like him would go to the airport. Some of the others would, you know go to the bus terminals, ride busses, or trains at that time, Southern and L&M over there. But yeah, if I’m not mistaken I may have some pictures somewhere showing him sitting at a desk we got here. 


GOVENERS’ VISITS


	But like I say, we would have, they would have governor’s meeting either at Oak Ridge or we would pick them up at the airport and take them to Gatlinburg or somewhere over in there for their meetings. Like I say, governor’s of all states would come in and that was their job to take care of those people and see that they got to a hotel or back to their, you know where they would be shipping out.


CAREER AFTER CHAUFFEUR


	I watched people who had worked here at the plant and they had layoffs and things, and they went to Northern Indiana for work. So we went up there one time to visit them, and I had taken a course at a high school in Knoxville as a welder. That’s before I went in the service. But they said while we were there visiting, why don’t you go to the plant over there at Inland Steel, cast armor division of American Foundries, they were building castings for the M48 tanks for World War II. So I went over there to get a job as a welder, and the Inland was on strike across the street and they weren’t hiring welders then.
So I heard they were hiring electricians. So I became an electrician. But I did have a little; when I was in the air force I trained as an airplane engine mechanic. I knew a little bit about airplanes. But anyway, I went in and talked to them about hiring me as an electrician. They said, “Okay, what we’ll do is hire you as a, like a fourth year apprentice and you work six months and then if you do okay we’ll set you up for—.” I accepted. Came back to Oak Ridge, drug up. Just walked down there at the office on a Saturday, and then my wife and I took off back to Indiana. Well, it wasn’t too long after that until the war was over, and they shut the plant down. They didn’t need any electricians. So I came back to Oak Ridge and talked to the local down here. I wasn’t in construction and they said, “Okay.” And they sent me to Hagerman Electric which are—shop is still there. And then I worked there awhile, and then they sent me with an outfit from Chattanooga building these substations here on the turnpike and down west turnpike. I worked there for awhile, and then I ended up back at Hagerman Electric. I worked there for ten years and then I got in the unions and everything. But then I left them and traveled around, worked at Bull Run, got fired over there.
Another one of those innocent things, you know.


FIRED FROM TVA


	The TVA is different, you know they want you to do your little things, but they don’t care about how hard you work or how much you produce, that’s the way it was then. Well, I lived ten minutes from the job and they wanted me there at least 15, pick up the brass and go to the work area and they have the— gang box open. You dress out, but the guy that I went to school with, he was a foreman, and he didn’t open the gang box until eight o’clock, and I didn’t dress out because I was a welder. I didn’t need to buckle a lot of tools on me. But picking that brass up see, they found out that I wasn’t coming in ahead of time like I should. So I got a letter. And it said on there if this happens again within a certain amount of time, six weeks or whatever, you’re automatically fired. Well, you know I was young, I didn’t care, and so I continued. And I know the guy that was the steward. He and I worked together for Hagerman, and he was the steward, he was out at 760. So he came up to me after that and he had a letter. Big smile on his face, he said, “Brummitt, you’re fired.” Said, “Let’s go and see the superintendent.” So I went in and talked to the guy, and he said, “Well, you know you didn’t comply with the rules.” He said, “You’re fired.” And he kind of raised his voice. I said, “Hold it a minute Mr. Wilshire. Don’t you raise your voice to me. So I’m fired, I don’t care.” And then that was on a Friday before Christmas, and then I called my wife or something, I forget what it was, and so we went someplace maybe up north to work just like that if there wasn’t anything at Oak Ridge, but later on I was told that Mr. Wilshire, I thought he had commit thought he had committed suicide, but he tried and didn’t succeed. Shot himself or something. I said, “See, he was worrying about firing me.” Of course, later on he did die, but just last night at this funeral service, I saw the steward that handed me the papers with the big smile on his face. Of course, he didn’t have a paddle so I didn’t worry about that.  But anyway, I had 40 years in the trade, working. Now I’ve been in the IBEW for over 50 years.


CONSTRUCTION WORK AT Y-12


	Well we worked in 9212 and some of the other buildings when they had monitoring systems that would monitor a fire hydrant for instance. If there was a fire hydrant turned on, there was a controls on there that went back into a control room to show that that was on, and sometimes if they were turned on when they weren’t supposed to, somebody just playing tricks on them I guess. They would make you go out and shut it down. And then there was just buildings that we had to run underground conduit to all the way down through here and completely redid some of the plants, you know, certain areas for I think Russ Engineering, and in fact on my jacket I think it says Russ on there. 


MOVING THE FAMILIES


	Okay, we were notified. See what happened for quite some time before we were notified, surveyors came in there, and they were surveying all this land and getting the names of the owners and all of the buildings and taking pictures of all the buildings. Like I said, I have a picture of the house, front and rear, the barn, front and rear. It was a spring house, hog pen, and the outhouse, and all that’s available to anybody. So we were wondering, people were wondering what’s gong on, and then all of a sudden they gave you a notice you had to be out of there within a certain amount of time. Of course a lot of people they didn’t like that, and they had to be forced out. Some down southwest of here. So they went in and moved them out. But my dad said okay, and he found a place in Clinton, just across the river over there on the left.
Well, out of a mere 50 acres, 40 plus, he only got about $4000 and some of the people who are still living have never forgiven the government yet for what they did. But of course back then, you know the land wasn’t worth that much. So my dad, we had some neighbors with trucks that would haul us and we was out of there into the area that we went to, and that was in about early ’42 when we ended up going out there, but he only paid like $1000 for the house and about three lots in that area where we went to. It had an old like a garage building on it, but no running water, and well, no inside plumbing, which we later put in and my dad worked at the knitting mill over there. 


DISCOVERING THE REASON FOR THE MOVE


	We finally, see it was a big secret for while. Later on we did find out, and then that’s when my dad said he knew Mr. Hendricks and he said, “Well this is prophesied.” And he supposedly died in 1903, but they thought the guy was crazy. Over here on Hendricks Creek Road is where he’s buried, and the front porch off a building that resembled his house is at the museum of natural history I think here in Oak Ridge.


PROPHESY FULFILLED


	After they realized what’s happening here, and we’re having to move and the surveyors and everything came in, and my dad, he recalled the experience he had with this Hendricks, and he was telling people about that, and he lived, you know, over in Hendricks Road over in Lafayette, that’s where he’s buried. And Mr. Hendricks, they thought he was crazy. He would go out like in the woods and just lie there, and it was like for 40 days and all he was in there like the old prophets. And of course he told about, and he goes into detail, you know that sheet that I have, what would happen here. And then after it did happen and we knew the railroads were coming in, the plants were being built, and the purpose of it, for the material for the bomb, and he specified in there that the plants would produce a material that would bring to the end World War II, and so I thought that was an amazing experience you know for my dad to be able to know this guy. And like I say, he died according to the report we have in1903 and then all this stuff developed. 


MORE ON THE MOVE


	Well especially when he was living to see it come. Well, you know, how can you explain something or believe something you haven’t seen or experienced. But then when it happened then he knew the guy knew what he was talking about. It was a revelation to him from the Almighty I guess. But then back to my dad when they found out what was happening, they had to move, of course they ended up, and the price was given to them. They didn’t have any say so of how much they were going to get for their property and all. So he and some of the other farmers got together and hired attorneys, or an attorney, but they got more money, but guess who got the other money? The attorney did. So they ended up with the original offer, and I know a fella that had lived in our area and down Emery Valley Road now off of Caldwell I believe, there’s an old cemetery and that’s where he was buried. But until the day he died he never forgave the government for taking their property like that and he said, look, look at all the money they spent and they gave us nothing. Also, in that same cemetery there’s a marker from a civil war casualty that was buried there during the civil war. Somewhere I’ve got the pictures of that, but it’s down there now.


SHORT AIR FORCE CAREER AND PILOT TRAINING.


	Before I went in the service I worked out here as a chauffer for a while during the construction days, and I was a chauffer for what they called Mr. Wabash. He was the ironworker superintendent out in Chicago. The ladies didn’t want to drive for him because he talked so mean, spit all over the side, the outside of the car, and he walked like this and he said he had three or four brothers and he was the only one that wasn’t pigeon toed. But he was pigeon toed. Then I went from there into the service and then that’s when I came out. I joined the air force for three years when I was 17, but that was after the war and so after I got all my training done in various states then we were ready to go overseas. So the war was over like I say, and I had my mother down as a dependent so she could draw the money and then she saved that money for me see. So down at Kessler Field Mississippi we were brought into our meeting place and to the colonel or general, whoever’s in charge and he said, “Okay, you fellas are ready to ship out, but the ones that has dependents, you can’t take them with you because we have no place for them to live now. One of two things, you can sign a waiver to stay in and go without them, or you get a discharge.”
I hadn’t been in there a year, I couldn’t believe it. Guess what? I took the discharge. Now the fella that went in with me, a little older than I, he was being drafted so he had to go and he talked me into it. He went to school with me. He stayed 20 years and traveled all over the world. So I went on home and then told them you know well, “It’s time for me to go back, see and I didn’t tell my parents that I’d been discharged.” And they said, “Elmer, aren’t you supposed to go back?” And I said, “I’m going AWOL I’m not going back.” And my lady friend told me, she said, “Elmer you’re crazy to tell your parents that.”
Well they knew it eventually that I showed them my discharge and all, but I was recommended for future service, says right on there. So I’m still waiting for them to call me. 
	But I was an airplane instrument mechanic so what I wanted to do, rather than get into computers and stuff like that on the GI bill I took flying because I thought, hey, this computer stuff is never going to get off the ground, back then. But if I take flying lessons I can get off the ground. So I started at Magee Tyson, and I started for Cook’s Iron Service over there, and I finished up over here on Edgemoor Road with Guy Jones, you may have heard of him, I don’t know. He was an instructor for the air force and pilots and things during World War II, had a little airport. So my wife and I flew all over the place at the government’s expense while I’m taking the training, and I flew out of Oliver Springs International Airport. You know about it, don’t you. Well, you can fly from there anywhere in the world. I haven’t flown in quite a few years. My wife didn’t want me to fly because she said I’d never grown up. I could get it off the ground.


PEOPLE WHO MOVED BACK


	My brother, he worked as a guard down at K25. My younger brother worked at the plants down there for many, many years and retired down there. My dad never, he didn’t work there. He worked at the TVA and then he worked someplace else. But there’s quite a few people in our area. You know, it was a job farm. They hadn’t made any money hardly and so they hit these jobs down here and some of them I guess retired.
But I do know that my brother’s, two brothers and sisters, they would work in the area down here for many years right out at the plants.


SUMMARY OF CAREER 


	Chauffer, electrical in the service, and then worked at the plants as an electrician and then retired as such in ’93 as an electrical worker with 40 years in the trade and with the IBEW over 53 years now.