Bob Henninge:
CLASS OF 1965
Roosevelt High SchoolClass of 1965
Kent, OH
Bob's Story
What a long, strange trip it's been. In high school I had very little hint of the person I would become: primarily, a person who works with his hands, but with some credit to teachers like Mrs. Shutler I have at times put some effort into writing, and some of that writing has been memoir. A document I call Toad Farm Tales concerns the decade (ages 23 to 33) when my adult life took shape. This is another chapter from part 1. (I've had to edit a bit to get this site to publish.)
Make Love Not War
In March of 1972 a plan was hatched for Mary and me to go with Rabbit and Ferd down to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. None of us had ever been to the Deep South, and the odor of it was heady, sweet, and reeking with drama. Also, in those years of freedom rides and Viet Nam, more than a hint of danger, but pumped up with evangelistic zeal we were determined to take our own gospel there—in the form of a tiddlywinks barnstorming tour.
Plans, of course, were notoriously famous for falling through, but when the time came and Jawbone was still running, Jawbone being the name of Rabbit’s VW squareback, there was nothing to stop us. At my parents’ house, just north of Columbus, Ohio, we studied the road atlas for routes south into terra incognita. A tiny dot at the bottom of West Virginia caught our eyes—a town called War. Tiddlywinks would go to War! And though another longhair named Samson reputedly used a jawbone to beat down the Philistines, I assure you our intentions were entirely peaceful.
Wedged in a deep valley, the town of War straggled along a creek and a railroad like a shoelace in the bottom of a pocket—weathered, one-story houses and a couple rickety stores, all powdered by coal dust. The spring sun was late for work. As we crossed the tracks a sign identified a whitewashed house with a pointy dingus on the roof as the Church of God of War. Struck by the poetry of that concept, we stopped for a touristy photograph and to eat some leftovers from our cooler. Hummus and alfalfa sprouts on cold baked potatoes.
Rejuvenated then, soaking up some carbon-filtered sunshine, we pondered how to evangelize such a sourball place. But where to spread out our mat?—the whole town was built on a slant. The only flat, dry public spot turned out to be the concr...Expand for more
ete stoop in front of the state liquor store. Unfazed, we set up shop and started shooting for the center. Well, maybe we were a little fazed. The breeze was a factor, and our winks were wobbly. A few folks walking along the sidewalk checked us out as they passed. Admittedly, we didn't look like locals, Ferd with his Jewish Afro and both of us full beards. Possibly we looked like we were having, or soon might have, a criminal amount of fun. In any case, just ten minutes into the game the town centurion rolled up and stepped out of his chariot.
In a gravelly voice he told Mary and Rabbit to get in the VW and me and Ferd to step away from it. After staring us down for a minute or so he declared he knew exactly what we were up to. War was a clean-living little town, and he wasn’t about to see it defiled by the likes of us, dealing our drugs and pimping these women. If we didn't want big-time trouble, his advice was to hit the road, pronto.
Now, as a matter of fact, we barely had enough pot to scrape by on ourselves without sharing it with the good citizens of War, and Mary and Rabbit took his other comment as an unintended compliment, but we weren't going to give the guy any lip. That's when we discovered Jawbone's starter was dead.
Fortunately, though, VWs aren't very heavy, and with Rabbit at the controls we found a guy with a flag tattoo on his bicep who seemed positively tickled to help the other three of us push start it. In fact, we could hardly escape the impression that, if the bumper had been wide enough, the whole town might have helped. Climbing up the five-mile grade out of that town we held our breath, hoping nothing else went wrong with the car, nothing that would make the engine quit, anyway. At the top of the ridge we crossed the state line, and since it was literally all down hill from there, we pulled over at a scenic overlook where a brand new sign proclaimed Virginia is for Lovers. There, in the gravel, we found some flattened carnations and a few empty condom wrappers. Admiring the Virginians for practicing what they preached, somebody got the idea of taping a Just Married sign in the car's back window. The rest of the way through the South, despite our hippy looks, everyone who passed us honked their horns and waved.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Register for Free to view all yearbooks!
Reunions
Register for Free to view all events!
Photos