Smack dab in the middle of the 70s and Appalachia, Ted rented a 30 acre farm and inherited a menagerie of animals. Strange given the fact that he grew up in suburban Oklahoma City in the days of "Father Knows Best" never visited his Uncle's farm without having his allergies kick up, and didn't know jack about doing anything demanded of farm life. Another thing, the farm was surrounded by "Varmits" These ne'er-do-wells lived in the hills and hollers of Meigs County, Ohio and became infamous in their own minds for softball playing, cock fighting, dope growing, Grateful Dead listening, free loving, and beer drinking. Ted became "Scoop" to the Varmits through his skills as a first baseman, all the while pursuing a Ph.D. in interpersonal communication at Ohio University back in Athens. This introspective book is Ted's lively account of the adventures of his dual life, attending a cock fight high on mushrooms and giving a graduation address to thousands, skinny-dipping at Varmit State Park and completing doctoral comprehensives, running with outlaws while preparing to become successful in his chosen profession, growing a garden and trying to grow up himself. It was a wild ride, and what he learned about himself being a Varmit has lasted a lifetime.
The Varmits: Living with Appalachian Outlaws
A MemoirBy Ted CoonfieldAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Ted Coonfield
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4567-3354-4 Chapter One
Moving to the Country
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home (Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, "Eyes of the World")
Living in the country possessed me. An oddity, given the fact I grew up in suburban Oklahoma City, just six blocks off the highway of the Heartland, Route 66. The neighborhood was filled with similar houses of different color brick, all ranch-style three-bedroom homes with two-car garages, chain-link fenced back yards, barbeque grills on cement patios, and home milk delivery. We played baseball in the daytime and kick-the-can in the evenings. My friends and I toilet-papered the houses of cute girls, and became sticky and hairy pugilists in rotten tomato and cattail fights at the local "lake": a gravel pit abandoned by a concrete company and filled with water and snakes, copperheads to be exact. It was an urban existence with just a little bit of the country, and now I wanted more than a taste. I was ready to immerse myself in all things rural. So I was excited to be heading out of Athens, Ohio, on Highway 50, past Albany and down County Road C-10 through a ghost town called Carpenter, with one old abandoned and deteriorating general store, a Baptist church, and a handful of houses hugging the hills, and with the Leading Creek and railroad tracks both dissecting the ghost town. Climbing the curved hill "out of town" I noticed the biggest tree I think I'd ever seen. Months later I learned the tree's species, a Catawba, with giant leaves, and a wingspan covering what seemed like a city block, or whatever they call "a shitload of land" in the country. It would become my friend over the next two years, and talking to the tree as I drove by didn't seem so strange in a county where I was soon to discover that strangeness was the accepted norm, and where "characters" dwelt on every hill, and in every holler, and down every lane.
I answered an ad in the Ohio University newspaper about a 30-acre farm for rent, and being possessed to live in the country, I thought it destiny. It was spring of 1974, and with the first year of my doctoral studies in communication almost behind me, I desperately wanted to leave my single dorm room on the South Green behind. I could touch both walls of that room when putting on a shirt, and I had come to realize that a single bed in a small room not only limited dressing and sleeping, it imposed severe romantic restraint.
"Hello, is this the country place advertised for rent?" I asked on the phone.
"Well, no, this is Mickey," the voice wisecracked, "but I got a place here I'm renting."
"Is it still available?"
"Yea, but we have had a lot of calls and I've already done a few interviews, so it's now or never."
"How long does it take to get there from Athens?"
"Oh, only about 20-25 minutes," Mickey estimated.
"I'll be there in 30; please don't rent it before then," I pleaded.
"OK, we can probably wait that long," Mickey chuckled.
I left the pavement behind just outside Carpenter following the gravel road up the hill past a large sheep farm and cresting at the Dyesville road intersection. I steered my old maroon Impala down a long winding hill to the valley floor, dotted with a couple of trailers and a very old log cabin on the right. The entryway to the property was just as Mickey described: "Follow the gravel drive with the grassy knoll in the middle to the partially graveled parking lot by the creek, cross the bridge, walk up the road, past the chicken coop and goose pen, and we'll be in the house. They call this Copperhead Hollow, you know. You drink coffee?"
"No thanks, but I love hot tea," I replied.
"We'll put a kettle on for you."
Copperhead Hollow, I thought. How did those snakes migrate all the way back east from Oklahoma?
The "we" turned out to be Mickey and his wife, Anise. Transplanted Easterners, I guessed. Their accents and trappings of ethnicity gave them away. It was mutual interest at first sight, interesting for an Okie, who had only months before discovered that bagels were not just hard, inedible donuts; interesting for Mickey and Anise, who had visions of Native Americans living in teepees way out there on the prairie.
Offered tea, I sat in the small, slate-floored and old lath-paneled living room with its big stone fire place taking up most of one wall. Mickey said, "I didn't get your last name on the phone."
"It's Coonfield, spelled C-O-O-N-F-I-E-L-D, just like it sounds. I got the name from my parents."
They both just cracked up with laughter, not at my attempt at humor, but because of a coincidence they found irresistibly funny. Anise yelled out, "Cranfield, come! Cranfield, come on in here boy!" I heard the door bang shut and in bounded a large German shepherd, who immediately trotted over to sniff me a good one. I patted him on the head, not a small gesture for one who has been terrified of and allergic to dogs most of his entire life. Well, you can fool some of the dogs some of the time. Cranfield looked past my shortcomings and curled up around my feet with obvious satisfaction. Mickey and Anise looked on like satisfied Yentas having just consummated a successful union.
"Maybe Cranfield and I will be the couple you wanted," I offered, trying to make light of the fact that I obviously was not a couple as the ad had specified. I feared that they might be hesitant to rent to a single guy in his twenties, a demographic hardly trustworthy with your home, not to mention your daughter, and other things.
"You said you were a student at OU, What are you studying?" Mickey asked. (Even after a year in Ohio, this Okie had trouble not thinking "boomer, sooner" whenever he heard "OU")
"I'm doing a Ph.D. in the School of Interpersonal Communication. You know, the old speech department, with debate, group dynamics, public-speaking, interpersonal, intercultural, and organizational communication, and rhetorical studies."
Mickey sat still with a puzzled look, obviously processing all those words very carefully. After a deliberate moment, Mickey deadpanned, "Jeez, I didn't realize that university gave degrees in hodgepodge." I may have laughed, but more likely I just changed the subject.
"How long will you be gone on the trip you mentioned on the phone?" I inquired. Anise responded that they wanted to take at least a year, driving through Central America and visiting every South American country. "Ambitious," I thought. I was even more surprised when Mickey proudly stated they were going to do it in the old Volvo sports car parked out front. As if hearing my silent concern, Mickey explained, "I got a box in the back with enough parts to totally rebuild the engine if we need to."
Having no inkling about the mechanics of cars, I was duly impressed.
We chatted for a good while about taking care of the place and the animals. I waxed eloquently about my father growing up a farmer and coming from hardy Okie stock. I declared I wanted to plant a garden, eat a lot of peaches, can some tomatoes, let others find Jesus, and enjoy the solitude of the country to study and write. Of course, my actual days in the country to that point in life were numbered on one hand, and they were always punctuated by allergic attacks. But what the hell, living in the country possessed me, and I was meant...
