AN ORAL HISTORY: MEMORIES OF A NORTHFIELD

YOUTH

Allan B. Plumley

From a tape recorded in the mid 1980s, transcribed and submitted by his good friend, C. Arthur Goodrich. Allan R. Plumley's recollections of a youngster growing up in Northfield in the early 1900s and printed in the Dog River Crier, # 65 1995, Eleanor Fisher, Editor.

Allan Plumley, N.U. '23, was the grandson of the Hon. Frank Plumley and the son of Charles A. Plumley. Both men were attorneys in the law firm of Plumley and Plumley. Charles Plumley graduated from Northfield High School and Norwich University, Class of 1896. That fall he became principal of Northfield High School where he remained for four years. He went from there to state politics, where he served as Northfield's representative to the Vermont legislature. In 1920 he became President of Norwich University, a position he left in 1934 to become Vermont's Representative to Congress. He died in 1964, two years after NU dedicated the Plumley Armory in his honor. Allan and his 2 siblings, Evelyn and Fletcher, grew up in the yellow turreted home on Prospect Street, a house built for Frank Plumley.

"The graded schools did not have modern conveniences at the time I went there, at least up until I had passed through the sixth grade. Instead they had old-fashioned edifices which were divided into two parts; one part of the building was for the girls and another part separated from the first was for the boys. These were toilets that just simply had a hole in a plank.

"When I got to about the sixth grade the school had installed a modern toilet facility just about like you have today. We had a recess every day from, we'll say, about 10:00 to 10:15, when the children could go outside and play in good weather. Well, we noticed that nobody used the outside toilets anymore and one of the boys got the idea that we ought to get rid those old-fashioned toilets out back of the school. So we all got around there one day at recess, looked them over and a half dozen of us put our shoulders to the front of the building and pushed it loose. Two or three more boys got hold of the other side and we all got to pushing in unison, saying 'Push', then 'Hold it,' and then 'Push,' and we got it rocking and before long the building went right over the bank, head over heels, so to speak, right into the Dog River. It then started floating down the river toward a woolen mill where they made stockings, and the like out of wool, There was a dam down there to hold the water back, with a sort of a sluice that let the water out, and this toilet building floated on down until it hit the sluice and plugged it up. We boys were all worried to death because we didn't know what was going to happen. Actually, it caused the mill to stop. They had to get the building out of the river to get the water running down through the sluice gates so that it gave them power to run the mill.

"All of us boys were real worried after that. We said nothing about it except to whisper to each other, but nothing happened. The tension was really bad. I know my mother and father thought I had developed a twitch of some kind, I was so nervous. They took me to a doctor over in Barre, Vermont, and he went all over me and said he thought I was all right but I acted as though something was bothering me. If they could get that out of me, I'd be all right. So they worked on me for awhile and I guess after a few days I told my father and mother what had happened. They hadn't heard anything about it so I guess the whole episode came to an end without anybody getting hurt.

"When I was, oh, maybe 12, 13, or maybe 14, my father gave

me an air rifle, one that you had to pump a little bit to get some pressure in it to expel a BB shot in pretty good shape. Well, I used to go out with a friend of mine who had an air rifle too, and we'd shoot at various things. One day we were over in the parsonage barn. Across the street and down one house (from where the Plumley's lived on Prospect Street) was the parsonage where the Methodist minister lived, and his barn was one that my grandfather rented every now and then to keep his oxen or his horses over the winter. There were stalls in there for the horses and above the horses on the next floor was a hay mow. You could push the hay down into the stall where the horse was.

"Well, above this hay mow, clear up top was a cupola, a tiny building on the very top of the barn with slats all around it. You could see up there but you couldn't see in. We thought it would be fun to get up into that cupola and see what we could find, and we did. We got up there and we could see down very plainly all around the barn, including a hen yard in the next street way from the parsonage. We thought it would be fun to see if we could scare a hen or two. We hit them, and when they'd cackle and make a big racket and run down the bank toward the house, out would come a red-bearded man and look all around, but he couldn't see anything. We could see him but he couldn't see up into the cupola. After awhile he's go back into the house and we'd wait a little bit. Then if a hen got up near the fence close to the garage, we'd plunk it again with the BB shot. The hen would scream or screech or whatever the name is for a noise a hen makes, and go racing and flapping its wings toward the barn below. Out he'd come and hunt around, but he never caught us. We were lucky on that one.