Family History
The Big Gain of Small Towns
The important takeaways from rural Louisiana upbringing and oil
When most people hear the word “Louisiana,” they think New Orleans, Bourbon Street, the swamps, the French Quarter, jazz music, or maybe even the Gulf of Mexico. On the contrary whenever I hear the word “Louisiana,” I think of the Northern farm and oil country. Rather than all the pretty cities and harbors most people think of, I imagine my grandfather growing up with his siblings playing outside, fishing, and mostly working in the Louisiana sun. I imagine him tying a chain around an old tree stump on the oil field. Hooking up the chain to a come-a-long, and cranking on it till it is ripped free from the red clay. Back-breaking work all in the name of family.
My grandfather, Charles Emmett Cummings (Pop), was born in 1933 in rural Arcadia, Louisiana. Arcadia only had a population of 2,500 people; it was a small town to say the least. Ninety years later the population is only 2,795.
Pop was born during the poorest time in America’s history; The Great Depression. His father, Otto Cummings was lucky enough to have a job during this time to provide for his family. My grandfather had holes in his clothes and shoes, but he did not care because so did everyone else in Arcadia. Instead of using their food rationing stamps to buy new shoes, he would just have his shoes resewed since they were leather, which was much cheaper. He was blessed to have food every day because a full, three-meal day was seldom for a lot of people during the Great Depression.
Otto, his father, supplied oil and gasoline to the US government during World War 2. When the war ended there wasn’t much business for Otto. So Pop, my grandpa’s nickname, got his first job at the age of 15 in a drug store to support his father, as his oil business was not doing as well since the Germans had surrendered in Europe. Pop made 25 cents an hour making banana splits and coco-colas for customers. The drug store was the only air-conditioned building in all of Arcadia, naturally making it popular in the extremely hot and humid Louisiana climate. From an early age the sense of hard work was instilled into Pop’s head.
When Pop was 17, he started working in the oil fields for his dad. Dangerous work in the boiling hot Louisiana weather for just 75 cents an hour. There wasn’t much else work in Northern Louisiana besides the oil fields. So, until he graduated high school in 1950, Pop worked 8 hours a day in the summer using yo-yo cutters and sling blades to cut grass in the oil fields.
One summer day when pop was working a come-a-long in the oil field, he cranked the metal chain too tight and it snapped. The chain shot back and wrapped around the back of his head, essentially cut the whole side and back of his face. His coworker drove him to the hospital but along the way, at a red light, his coworker looked at pop and saw the blood running down his whole face. His coworker passed out. Pop got out of the car, pushed the man driving to the other side, and then continued to drive himself to the hospital while bleeding out. Pop retells this story with a smile and a laugh, ignoring the seriousness of the story. He chooses to look back on lessons and meaning behind his stories and how they helped him later in life, rather than look back with regret or sadness.
After graduating high school, he went to Louisiana State on a full academic scholarship and then on to medical school, still on full scholarship. In 1955, Pop married the love of his life, Jeanne Labouisse, his last year of med school and they had their first child in 1958; a girl named Laura. From 1958–1963 Pop was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a doctor to soldiers there on naval ships. He was discharged then moved to Asheville, North Carolina where he had another daughter and two sons, including my father, Charles James Cummings.
30 years later the ‘good old country boy’, as he calls himself, was still working hard. Northern Louisiana instilled a mindset and lifestyle to those who came from it: hard work. No matter where Pop traveled whether it was Florida, Cuba, North Carolina, or anywhere, he worked hard for his life and his family. It all was rooted from his family origins in Louisiana.
Although being born in Asheville, my father, Jim, was born with the same Arcadian mindset. Much like his dad, my father is thick skinned, hardworking, and family loving. He too is a doctor who rises at 5 in the morning and comes home at sundown. For generations the Cummings family has been working hard.
During this project, my goal is to discover the origins of my hardworking family, whether in the oil fields, naval ships, or simply in a doctor’s office. I also hope to find the roots of the Cummings family from Europe and beyond. To figure out who was the first Cummings to come to America, why they did, and how they found themselves in the small working town of Arcadia.
“A Good Friend”
A Resurrection of stories with Charles E. Cummings
I conducted my Oral History over father son weekend after going to shoot skeet with my dad and some friends. We shot skeet for a few hours using shotguns of various gauges and it was fun. But using the shotguns comes with the responsibility of cleaning them after use so that they stay in good condition. Being the youngest one there it was my turn, as it always is, to clean and oil the shotguns. All the supplies for cleaning them is at my grandfather’s house, who lives just down the road from us. So I decided it would be a good time to conduct my oral history interview with Pop, since I was heading his way to clean the guns anyways.
I arrived at Pop’s house and he welcomed me with a Coke and a spot at the table where he was watching the Saints play football. He muted the TV and we chatted for awhile before I started to clean the shotguns and he helped, oiling the barrels and slides. He said he had some stories from Jim’s childhood when they used to go shooting together, so I sat down, turned the recorder on, and we began our interview.
Lennox: What’s your full name? Where and when were you born?
Pop: My name is Charles Emmett Cummings, I was born in 1932 in the middle of the Great Depression but my family was fortunate to have food and enough money.
Lennox: What are some of your favorite memories from your childhood?
Pop: I broke my leg playing football and that was certainly a memory. I loved to play basketball, we played for the championship but didn’t make it. During World War II I didn’t have a bicycle, you couldn’t buy one there was no spare rubber. So my aunt gave me hers which was a girl’s bike that didn’t have the bar going the middle so you could wear a dress while riding it. So I got teased for riding it. I got in altercations with kids growing up for calling me a sissy. Most of my childhood was centered around school, there wasn’t much else to do except go to school or go to work. Sometimes when I wasn’t at school or work I would go fishing, which is something I did throughout my whole life starting in Arcadia. I loved to fish and go camping and sleep out in the woods. We would bring potatoes, water, salt and pepper. Then we would go shoot and squirrel and that would be our meal. The little things like that are my favorite memories from growing up.
Lennox: Do you think back on Arcadia fondly?
Pop: Oh, of course! It’s the best place in the world!
Lennox: If you could change anything about your childhood, what would it be? Why?
Pop: Not breaking my leg. I didn’t have anything very sad things except breaking my leg which took a big cast that was uncomfortable. It started at my chest and went down to my toes. They couldn’t get me out of the bedroom so they hired a man to stay around the house while my dad was at work because my legs had to be turned to the side in order to get out of the doorway in case of a fire. I wouldn’t change anything except not to have a war (WWII). The war was bad I didn’t like all the fighting going on and the chance of me or my father going to war.
Lennox: Were there any family traditions growing up?
Pop: We had a few traditions. We would go to Pawpaw’s (Otto’s dad, Pop’s grandfather) and have Sunday brunch after church. We would talk and sit around and the boys would go play baseball or run around in the woods looking for things. We used to have a sweet gum tree in which you get the gum off the tree with a knife (the bark part). To make it chewable easier, we would also get a berry called stretch berry which made the bark softer if you chewed them together. Otherwise it would pull the fillings out of your teeth. Things like that, and every Easter the Cummings family met at Pawpaws and I don’t remember how many there were but they were all cousins and uncles and aunts and it was always fun.
Lennox: What was the hardest job you had growing up?
Pop: My job was to keep the grass cut and anything else my mother and father wanted me to do. One time, they made me clean out the septic tank, and I didn’t like that. Mentally the hardest job was that one, nobody wants to do that (clean the septic tank). I took a bucket and dipped it all out and took it off in the woods. I didn’t have any terrible jobs other than that but most of them were hard work. When I was 15, I was working in the drug store as a soda jerk, which was the first air conditioned placed in town (1947). After that I worked at a filling station, 25 cents an hour which was the legal minimum wage back then. The owner paid me in silver dollars, just as a joke I guess. Then I drove a truck for uncle delivering groceries to the neighborhood since there were no real grocery stores. Then when I turned 17 or 18 I went to work in the oil fields which my father was apart of, and he would get me jobs. All we did all day was cut grass with those big old sling blades and paint those giant tankers. In between time I went to school and then afterwards when I graduated high school I went off to the University.
Lennox: Did you work with any of your friends?
Pop: No, all the jobs I had were single except for the oil field job that I had, and I didn’t know any of those people, their daddy’s got them the job too.
Lennox: Did you and Kenneth get along growing up or spend time together?
Pop: Yeah, he and I were the only kids in the house until Mona (younger sister) was born after Kenneth and I were already off at University. Kenneth played in the band and I played football.
Lennox: What was your favorite part of high school?
Pop: I think playing basketball, rather than football.
Lennox: What did you like about working in the oil fields for your dad, or did you not like it?
Pop: Well, I got paid 75 cents an hour and we worked overtime every week, so that was time and a half. I lived away from home in a boarding house, and had an old car. I just went to work and came home every night, no TV, no radio, but I was a big reader. I read a lot.
Lennox: What was your dream job growing up?
Pop: I was gonna be a chemical engineer, but I got to school (LSU) and the first class I had was mechanical drawing and the teacher gave us a test, Dr. Kilbough I’ll never forget his name. I didn’t have what they called a plate book, I didn’t have one because we couldn’t buy one. He asked how long it would be before I could buy my book and I said 2 weeks and he said “Mr. Cummings you better drop this course because you’re not gonna pass it.” So I walked over to the Arts and Sciences building and signed up for Pre-med.
Lennox: What are some of the most important lessons you learned growing up in Arcadia and Northern Louisiana?
Pop: Friendship. You made a lot of friends, friends that I still have to this day. Hard work was also impressed upon me. And loving parents, my parents were the best and I tried to take that with me through life.
Lennox: What colleges did you apply to or was it just LSU? (Louisiana State University)?
Pop: Everybody in Louisiana at that time could go to LSU. Of course everyone that went there wasn’t capable of it. So they would put them in a special group and unless the got credits for hours they would never graduate. It cost $15 dollars a semester, and I had a scholarship for that.
Lennox: What was your proudest moment as a young adult?
Pop: Well I graduated from high school (Arcadia High) as Valedictorian. I went to college, and I had never met a Catholic or a Jew until I went to university. And all that was an experience for me to watch and learn. And made a bunch of friends to this day. Made my grades in three years (got enough credit to graduate in just three years). Went to med school and the korean war was going on and I joined the navy after med school, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t wanna go in the army.
Lennox: Why did you decide to move to Asheville?
Pop: It’s silly, but I hate hot weather. This town had really 3 and half seasons almost 4, and when I was assigned to Gitmo (Cuba) while I was in the navy, they made me go to the Brooklyn navy yard. So we drove through Asheville on our way the Brooklyn Navy Yard before I left for Cuba. I was just enamored with this part of the country. The only reason I didn’t want to come here is because I heard they emptied the raw sewage into the French Broad. That was terrible. Then we moved here in 1963.
Lennox: What were your favorite things to do in Asheville?
Pop: My favorite thing to do was that I took up trout fishing. And devoted more time to bird hunting. And once again made lots of wonderful friends. Friends are everything.
Lennox: What was it like raising four kids in Asheville?
Pop: Actually I had a wonderful wife who did not work, except at home. You better not say she didn’t work, she worked her butt off around the house. She was a great volunteer and we had a wonderful African American woman that worked with us in Louisiana after I finished my residencies in Louisiana. Her name was Margie and she said she wanted to come with us and so she did and she stayed in the guest apartment behind our house, for 20 years. She helped raise the kids while I was at work or while Obie, my wife, was off at some meeting. Our children never gave us trouble and they studied, I never remember once having to tell one of them to go do their homework, never. Also I never saw them drink a glass of water, all they drank was Gatorade, kool aid and coke. I swear it’s true.
Lennox: What would have been different raising them in Arcadia
Pop: Definitely, the opportunities in Arcadia were not like here. One of the reasons for moving here (Asheville) was that there was a local college (University of North Carolina Asheville). That made it have better social things to do, better baseball team, private schools that had rivalries, something that we never had in Arcadia especially only with 2500 people.
Lennox: What are some of your favorite memories from Jim’s (my father, his first son) childhood?
Pop: Well, your dad never gave me any trouble. He worked every summer, he cut some grass around here but not much, he’d rather have a paying job, as he called it. He worked at the construction on the Biltmore Estate one summer. He worked at various summer camps around here and he was a good student. One night I went into his room and told all of them goodnight, and his bed looked funny so I pulled back the cover and he wasn’t in it. To this day he wont tell me where he was or what he was doing. But that was the only time he snuck out.
Never gave me any trouble, he went off to boarding school, St. Marks, in Massachusetts and he wanted to go and his mother encouraged him to go to but I didn’t like that. That gave me 3 years where I didn’t see Jim for 9 months, I didn’t like that. He made friends for life. He said it prepared him for college and he was much better prepared for it than other kids. Jim played soccer and I went so him one time.
Another time I was taking him back to school and we flew into Boston and rented a car, take him to St. Marks and we got lost. We were driving around those big huge clover leafs and we stopped to talk to this man who was cutting grass and he obviously knew I talked funny (being from the South) he scratched his head a minute, took his hat off and said, “I don’t think you can get there from here” Jim and I laughed about that.
Jim was the only kid from the South, they called him Grits, so one time I sent him a package of grits as a joke, Obie didn’t think it was funny. I’m not sure it’s true, but I told him to tell them Yankees that it was the war of Northern Aggression (talking about the civil war). Jim said he told the teacher that during class and they made him sit out in the hallway for the rest of class.
Lennox: Do you think you had enough time with your kids growing up or do you wish you worked less?
Pop: Well I was a dermatologist, I came home everyday between 5 and 6. I saw lots of people everyday and a lot of them time I had to take a nap when I got home from work before I could eat to settle down. But no, Jim and all the kids and I went to ball games, soccer games, basketball games, football games. We had season tickets to go watch the Braves play growing up. The main thing is my kids never gave me any trouble growing up, and you can’t beat that. I give them credit, they’re still all good kids.
Lennox: Were you happy being a dermatologist or was there another occupation you would have liked better?
Pop: Well, when I graduated from medical school I received the award for best OB student. So the war was going on, I had to go to war by the time I got back in 1960 I went out to a famous hospital called, Oschners. They didn’t have an opening for me in OB so they put me in surgery. I would get credit for it. We would stand up for 7–8 hours a day practicing and knees would swell and you couldn’t fix it in those days. Wasn’t any such thing. I went to Dr. Oschner and told him I couldn’t handle it, so he got me a residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which was big. It had over 4,000 beds. I wanted a sit down job, and dermatology was one of them. The other was psychiatry which I didn’t want to do. Another would have been anesthesiology, we called them gas passers so I didn’t want to be that. Dermatology was a people job too where you communicated a lot with the patient and I’ve always been a people person so I liked that. So I stayed there for 3 years, I was the head of my department when I left, what they call a chief residence. Your daddy was too when he was in richmond, it’s just an honor. But also instead of paying me $75 a month they paid me $125.
Lennox: Wow, that’s a lot more money.
Pop: Wow my ass, that’s nothing.
Lennox: What was Obie’s role? Did she just take care of the house and the kids or did she ever work?
Pop: She was a good mother. Never had a job that I know of but she was the volunteer woman of this area, she was the president of every damn thing I ever heard she got into. Obie still does it at 84 years old too.
Lennox: What’s the secret to being married so long?
Pop: Just saying “Yes, Dear.” But seriously you know we have discussions but we don’t hit one another or spit on each other. The worst thing that ever happened was your grandmother poured a glass of iced tea on my head. Right there on those steps. She doesn’t remember why and I don’t remember why either! All she will say is “you weren’t listening.” Then I laughed which made it even worse. You’ll figure it out one day, just say “I didn’t do it.”
Lennox: Do you and Obie still visit Louisiana often?
Pop: Well, I used to go home to my Arcadia are about every other year seeing friends and all, and family members. We’d go back to New Orleans to see if friends were still alive, you know. And after that we would go back to reunions or for business reasons we’d go to New Orleans. And we still do about once a year. We have a reunion of 6 classmates I had in med school. They were also in college with me. We had 7, one died, but all the rest of us are still alive.
Lennox: Do you think growing up in Arcadia shaped you into the person you are today?
Pop: Yes I do.
Lennox: As people remember you and your life, what parts do you wish for them to think of? What characteristics? Simply put, how do you want to be remembered?
Pop: As a good friend. You won’t get anything if you’re not nice except for sugar and honey. You know it doesn’t amount to anything, if somebody hits you it might for a little while or you might have to defend yourself. An old Indian chief says “I walk away.” Turn around and walk away. But I got in a lot of fist fights. Little first grader would come up and I was a pretty big kid (6’4, 220 lbs), and somebody would be eating their lunch or picking on them, and I would have to teach the kid picking on them a lesson. You can’t do that now they’ll put you in jail.
Being a friend though, is how I wanted to be remembered. I enjoyed being a doctor, when I came here my office charge was $7 for a first visit and $5 for a second. And there were lots of poor people here, and $7 was a lot of money back then. One of the greatest joys I have, is to give somebody something, and I see a poor person who didn’t have any money coming to see me, and I give them their medicine and wouldn’t charge them for it. It gives you a good feeling, and that’s how I want to be remembered.
Reflection
The stories and character of Pop run deep in the Cummings family community as we all look up to him. He has demonstrated how to live life to all of us. At least once a month since 75% of our family lives in Asheville, we all meet Pop’s house to have dinner and relive the stories we all love so much. Laughter is apart of every meal.This project inspired me to dig deeper into to my families history and how we found ourselves all living in the same town. It was hard to find sources about Arcadia since it is such a small town. The stories that I heard from my grandfather inspired me to think on some stories that I would tell my grandchildren. Like the time I broke my arm riding my bike or the time I dunked all over the tallest kid during recess basketball. Stories are one of the biggest parts of life. Everything we learn is through stories or through communication with other people and their past experiences.
Bibliography
- Marking, Tonja Koob., and Jennifer Snape. Louisiana’s Oil Heritage. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
- Leeper, Clare D’Artois. Louisiana Place Names: Popular, Unusual, and Forgotten Stories of Towns, Cities, Plantations, Bayous, and Even Some Cemeteries. Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
- Duff, Lillian Laird., and Linda Duff. Niemeir. Sharecropping in North Louisiana: a Family’s Struggle through the Great Depression. Tate Pub & Enterprises, 2008.
- Sanson, Jerry Purvis. Louisiana During World War II: Politics and Society, 1939–1945. Louisiana State University Press, 1999.
- Zebrowski, Ernest, and Mariah Zebrowski Leach. Hydrocarbon Hucksters: Lessons from Louisiana on Oil, Politics, and Environmental Justice. University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
