The Varmits: Living with Appalachian Outlaws

The Varmits: Living with Appalachian Outlaws Prologue Varmint, n. 1. Chiefly Southern, and South Midland U.S. a. vermin b. an objectionable or undesirable animal, usually predatory, as a coyote or bobcat. 2. A despicable, obnoxious, or annoying person. Also var’ment (1530-40, var. of vermin.) Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition. Random House, New York, 1998. Varmit, n. 1. Chiefly Southeast Ohio U.S. Name of non-conforming self-chosen outcasts living in Meigs County, Ohio who grew marijuana, raised fighting cocks, screwed women, listened to the Grateful Dead, drank beer, and played softball (1970’s). 2. See number 2 above. Smack dab in the middle of Appalachia and the seventies, I lived on a thirty acre farm about 16 miles from Athens, Ohio, complete with a dog, two cats, some geese, turkeys, chickens, a pond, and a root cellar. This plot of land would be my teacher, my home and my love, and it was surrounded by “Varmits.” Whether the misspelling was deliberate or inadvertent is not clear, but it didn’t matter, that’s for sure. These young men and their ladies had left the outside world behind, one they did not really trust. To the extent that the outside world knew them at all, they were perceived as misguided and misbegotten miscreants, and perhaps they were. But I soon found out they were so much more. The Varmits’ informal community evolved over a few years in the early seventies, living in the hills and hollers of the rolling terrain of Meigs County, for free or low rent in neglected farm houses, decrepit barns, ancient log cabins, and rickety trailers. Although clichéd, this is a story about drugs, sex, and rock-‘n’-roll. It is a story about a softball team, a cock fight, pornography, a barn full of marijuana, skinny-dipping, and friendship. But it is also a story about scholarship, research, famous people, taking Ph.D. comprehensives, creating organizations, leading one, and preparing for life in the corporate world. It is a story about learning the law of the country, taking care of animals, growing a garden, killing chickens, roasting a pig, remodeling a house, skimming cream, making butter, fixing a water pump, canning fresh produce, growing magic mushrooms, and talking to a giant tree who became my friend. This is a story about contrasting worlds: one in a quaint university town, one in the country; one in academia, one in Appalachia; one with scholars, one with derelicts; one with traditional Christian friends, one with porn-watching school pals; one involved advising a University President, one constituted advising the Varmits how to run a softball tournament; one required giving a speech to thousands, one meant sitting alone peacefully in the country watching fire flies flicker in the night. Ultimately, this is a story about a young man in his twenties shedding much of the yoke of his heritage and transitioning from a middle-class southern gentleman upbringing, albeit sexist, in the 1950s and 1960s, into a man who could relate to women more equally as powerful and varied human beings. The Varmits took care of their own. They shared food and money, bailed their comrades out of jail, built barns together, fixed each others’ trucks, harvested fields cooperatively, and generally created a wild and loose, but loving community amidst the hills of Southeast Ohio. They even ex-communicated one of their own who lied and cheated in a drug deal. He was banished from association with the group and barred from ever calling himself a Varmit again. But after years of either forgiveness or forgetfulness, they reinstated him for the Reunion in 2004. As Bob the Varmit told me one time when I asked him about some of the group’s more nefarious activities, “Scoop, we weren’t crooks, just outlaws.” This is my story of how I became a Varmit – or at least a good bit of one – and how I became damn proud of it.