Dr. Jekyll had Mr. Hyde, Clark Kent had Superman and Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce.
And Ted Coonfield, an Ohio University doctoral graduate, had Scoop.
By day, Coonfield was a typical doctoral student studying interpersonal communications at OU, but by night, he was a beer-drinking, softball-playing “Varmit” out in Meigs County.
During the mid ’70s, the Varmits were a free-spirited group of people who lived off of the earth and enjoyed it, said Michael Small, a friend of Coonfield’s and a Varmit himself.
“We were a softball team and a community,” he said. “We fixed our own cars, did what we had to survive, worked in free trades, and when we all began to have families, we just moved on. Like Ted quotes, we were outlaws, not criminals.”
Coonfield traveled back into his memory to pull out stories that he gathered into a self-published memoir titled The Varmits: Living With Appalachian Outlaws.
The memoir shows the contrast between life with the Varmits, who held sort of “anti-intellectual views,” and the intellectual doctoral students at OU, Coonfield said.
“I go into what was happening in 1975 and some things about the anti-war demonstrations that I was involved in all while hanging out with my friends at OU,” said Coonfield. “I also talk about playing softball, drinking beer and doing drugs with the Varmits, which is why I had to wait until my parents passed to publish it.”
Coonfield’s flexibility in life is what helped him live as an intelligent graduate student by day and a hippie by night, said Ben Gray, a friend of Coonfield’s and fellow doctoral graduate of interpersonal communications.
“He has the unique ability to talk about great ideas and to be in a counterculture at the same time,” Gray said. “It takes a unique personality to be able to combine both sides.”
The memoir is raw and honest, just like Coonfield, Gray said. But it was also somewhat surprising, he added.
“There are no holds barred,” Gray said. “It captured my attention from the first page to last page.”
Coonfield will be signing copies of the book at The Oak Room, 14 Station St., on Saturday afternoon.
ao007510@ohiou.edu
