Scott Ruescher, AB ’75, reached out to Ohio Today more than a year ago to share “Athens County Breakdown,” a poem he penned about his life as a student and homesteader in Athens County during the 1970s. When this issue’s theme emerged as “landscapes,” his poem was destined to be published here.
VIDEO: Listen to Ruescher read excerpts of the piece and witness how the places he names appear today.
AUDIO: Hear Ruescher's full reading of his poem, "Athens County Breakdown."
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Athens County Breakdown
Just outside of the tiny village of Amesville, which
The children of pioneers who’d crossed the Ohio River
From Virginia had settled in spite of its poor drainage
More than a century before, sat that big square house
That Will Dewees rented out to classmates of ours
While he was on leave from his job at the university —
Jerry and Deb in a room upstairs, Linda and her daughter
In another, Jim downstairs, and Donny in the cabin out back.
With its detached summer kitchen, its limestone foundation,
Its faded grandeur, and its setting on the creek,
Connected to the road by a bridge of tied logs,
It reminded me a lot of a Yoknapatawpha County setting
In a short story or novel by the inimitable William Faulkner—
Major de Spain’s place in “Barn Burning,” say, featuring
The notorious Abner Snopes, the antebellum house built
By Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom!, or the doomed abode
Of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury.
At least it did later—after I’d actually read that stuff.
Our shelter, though, the makeshift one that Phil and I shared,
Just a shack, really, a cheap box of aluminum sheets
From the lithographic print shop of the Columbus Dispatch
That Will and friends had learned to nail to two-by-fours
On a volunteer project they’d done in East Africa
To make perfectly serviceable, if temporary, lodgings,
On the slope of a ridge overlooking the fallow field
That filled a narrow flood plain between a parallel ridge
And ours, was set back another one hundred yards or so
From the gravel road and the creek that ran along it.
The silver rectangular sheets of aluminum on the wall
Still bore headlines from past editions of the paper
That we could read again, hanging out at our only table
With a view of the field through the Plexiglass window—
Not news we might have read back in the 1860s
About the rippled region across that great river
Seceding from the Secessionists and becoming West Virginia
On the grounds that they had poor agriculture, no
Aristocracy to speak of, and nothing to gain from slavery,
But news from the turbulent late 1960s
And the early 1970s that now were fresh history.
Johnson’s decision, in light of the opposition
To his program in Vietnam, not to run for President again;
Nixon and Kissinger’s infamous Christmas Day surprise
Bombing of Cambodia; the Manson Family massacre
Of Hollywood celebrities. Traffic accidents. Box scores.
And endless reports on the Watergate hearings.
Not that we ever did that, really—except for momentary
Amusement as we swilled our Rolling Rock beer
Or sipped from ceramic mugs our weak Folgers coffee.
*
Not having met him more than once or twice, I don’t know
How it was for Will, growing up in the 40s and 50s
In the suburbs of Chicago, according to his obituary,
And returning from service in international development,
To go back to the land like that, and to start himself both
An intentional community and a daffodil business—
Nor, for that matter, how it was for Jerry and Deb,
He from Dayton and she from a suburb of Boston,
Lusty young lovers who had each other for breakfast;
For countercultural blue-collar mountain mama Linda
And her barefoot daughter running around in her underwear;
For tall and slender Jim, the keeper of egg-laying geese
Who was particularly fond of Jesse Colin Young’s song
“Hippie from Olema,” a send-up of the Merle Haggard tune
That begins, “I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee”;
And for Donny in the cabin at the head of the holler,
Determined, like Jim, to go to law school to defend us
Against the wily capitalists who’ve since taken over.
But for a flatlander like me from a white bread suburb
On the outskirts of Columbus, grandson to natives
Of Old McDonald farms and German Village bakeries, son
Of sheet-metal fabricator and pink-collar worker,
It was a rare thrill to live out there, on the rustic backroads
Of rural Amesville, especially in that improvised shack
On the side of even the most utterly insignificant hill
With loyal friend Phil—the curious and capable son
Of an architect and a doctor from a suburb of Cleveland.
I loved that it was built on four stilts of two-by-fours,
And that a brook trickled beneath it on its way downhill,
In ironic homage to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water.
With no telephone or plumbing, with natural gas siphoned
From an oil claim on the property, and with electricity run,
Illegally, by buried wire from the main house on the road,
Where we had access to the toilet and the shower,
That place put me closer than ever to the weather.
*
Sometimes, climbing to the ridge top, following the creek
Beyond Donny’s cabin, which he, Phil, and classmates
In a Foxfire program had moved to the holler,
Or throwing sticks for my dog between the barn and the house,
I wondered whether, like certain iconic figures
Of eastern religious legend, I could dissolve myself in nature
And immerse my consciousness so selflessly in the imagery
That, for all intents and purposes, my identity would disappear,
Or at least the reprehensible aspects of my character.
At other times, living in the boonies of Athens County
Was enough to drive me to write the kind of poetry
That those same ethereal luminaries might have written
As concession and consolation when the revelation failed
And they needed to do something quick to get it back.
Not the poems lamenting an unrequited infatuation,
Comparing greater Columbus to a gigantic ant colony,
And worrying about the environmental implications
Of my black VW bug, but those I recorded in my journal
When a male cardinal, flying across the stubble
Of that fallow field in fall, showed off its scarlet crest,
When an ice-white blizzard huffed and puffed and tried
To blow the flimsy shack down, when mayflower and dogwood
Bloomed in the woods, and when the creek rose so high
With cold spring rain that it flooded the shallow valley,
Washing out our bridge, scattering its skinned logs,
Stranding cars, tractors, and trucks, and clogging for a week
The village’s one commercial block with brush and dead dogs.
VIDEO: Produced by Kelee Garrison Riesbeck, BSJ, CERT '91. Video production by Clinton Amand, BSC '12, MA '18, and Max Catalano, BSVC '20.
FEATURE PHOTO: A bird’s eye view of the Amesville landscape. The village received its first settler in 1797, was laid out in 1837, and was home to an estimated 157 Athens Countians in 2017. Photo by Ben Wirtz Siegel, BSVC ’02.
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Randy Light says
Thank you for this beautiful remembrance of the Helpless Far (as I recall) it was named. It was wonderful to see this poetry style going forward with the scenes and nuances of Athens County and the community that I knew there. Glad that this was published.
Randy Light
Scott Ruescher says
That’s what I knew it as too, Randy – Helpless Far! I almost titled the poem that –but glad I didn’t since the name seems to have changed. Thank you for reading. It’s been very nice to hear from several others who’ve lived there, thanks partly to Don Wirtshafter’s posting on Facebook –including from one young woman who was actually born in the shack!
Yours truly,
Scott Ruescher, AB ’75
Edith van Dijk says
Nice to read about this. I have some good memories of “the far”. [I] lived there with my little boy for about 2 years (1976-1978).[I] found the wild daffodils somewhere with Will and we took the bulbs home. I think this period will never be erased from my memories. Always nice people, lots of kids, music laughter happy times.
Edith van Dijk
Scott Ruescher says
Glad to hear the poem brought back some sweet memories, Edith –although it sounds like those memories are never far away. And good to know the source of the daffodils story! It’s been very nice to hear from several others who’ve lived there, thanks partly to Don Wirtshafter’s posting on Facebook –including from one young woman who was actually born in the shack in 1980. Did you know Don and others mentioned in the poem?
Yours truly,
Scott Ruescher, AB ’75
David Robertson says
“Athens County Breakdown” brought back wonderful memories of rural Athens from my time there in the early 1970s. I always lived in town, but I explored the backroads and valleys on my bicycle. My fondest memories were stumbling on the remnants of Art Park east of the city (which became one of my favorite bicycling destinations) and field trips with my ecology class into the woods west of town. Thank you, Scott! (The video does not do the poem justice; I expected better.)
David Robertson, BS ’74
Scott Ruescher says
David – As I said to another friendly reader, we live parallel existences! I remember Art Park–and I, too, explored the woods with a botany class. (Let’s hear it for Prof. Cavender–if I’ve got his spelling right. Was he your teacher?) I explored the countryside the first two years–then took the plunge and lived out there the final two, in spite of the massive inconveniences. Running around Amesville on the way back from a visit to Indy, Columbus, and Dayton recently, I fell back in love with the place –not that I had ever fallen out of love with it. Thanks for reading!
Scott Ruescher, AB ’75
David Robertson says
Scott – I took an ecology class with Henri Seibert, who led us on field trips into rural Athens County. I ended up doing an Honors College project with him during my senior year. I have not been back to Ohio University or Athens since I graduated in ’74. As my wife says, “You can’t go home again.” I have to admit, though, I’d like to see Athens and Athens County because I have wonderful, fond memories of the place. I’ve now relocated to Colorado, so I doubt that I’ll ever get back.
David Robertson, BS ’74
Scott Ruescher says
David, maybe you can go home again after all–to Colorado, that is, after visiting Athens County…I think the place puts the strongest hold on people who explored the rural culture while there. Take a close friend of mine from fresh/soph years at OU. She now lives in Northern California. Sees volcanic Mt. Shasta outside the kitchen window of the Georgia O’Keefe-ish house she designed. Manages a garden nursery. Paints pics of the flowers in her garden. Has a great life. But her partner tells me she still gets all weepy when she thinks of the decade or so she spent in Athens…
Scott Ruescher, AB ’75
David Ettinger says
I enjoyed your poem.
I met a fellow down in Athens, when I attended OU, who grew up in the Bronx of New York City. I was an undergraduate, he was in his graduate program. We were both in the Fine Arts programs. I earned my BFA, and he, his master’s.
I hailed from suburban Cleveland. Athens and the surrounding small towns were places I explored. It was during the “back to Mother Earth movement” years. My New York friend bought land in a holler. An un-farmable tract of land, nestled in the wilderness between Guysville and Stewart, Ohio. We both knew folks who attempted to start “communes.” Most were short-lived experiments. My New York friend wanted to explore pioneer life and proceeded to. He built cabins on his land, used horses to drag the logs out of the forest he felled by hand, found old-timers with fading memories of how to construct them, including cutting stones for foundations and applying mud and horsehair in-between the logs. The cabins were built without modern hardware, assembled by interlocking notches and with wooden pegs. Hand operated auger drills, cut the holes. Using salvaged materials, like old tin, for the roofs, windows from old 1950s cars, and old factory windows. He was a welder, and it was how he assembled his large metal sculptures he submitted for his graduate school thesis in Fine Art. He was extremely creative and resourceful, and he built potbelly stoves from recycled junk to heat his cabins. He was also a printmaker, while in school and afterward. He collected used printing equipment and set up a print shop in his “holler.” He printed some replica newspapers, that would have been exactly like what was being printed during the Civil War. He exhaustively researched them…the kinds of type, letterforms, and even the kinds of paper. He sold his papers at various “Civil War” re-enactment events throughout Ohio and Indiana. Won accolades for his high level of authenticity.
I visited him often during my undergraduate years and after. It is kind of a blur to me now…I think I graduated OU, in either 1975 or 76. I half think I graduated in 1975 and stayed around until 1976. I loved Athens and the surrounding areas because it was so unlike the boring suburban town I grew up in. I have lived in Columbus, Ohio since 1977, after attending OSU, and earning my MFA. I became a professional Artist…and exhibited my sculptures far and wide. I had a sculpture studio for 14 years, near the downtown, before the present building boom. Stories and memories of Athens and the surrounding areas are regularly on my mind. I am presently writing a memoir of those past times.
My friend’s name is Marty Resnick, and he passed away in 2013. My name is David Ettinger.
David Ettinger, BFA ’76
Editor’s note: Martin Henry Resnick, born July 6, 1950, attended OHIO from 1973 to 1976.
Scott Ruescher says
Thanks for the note, David! Sounds like we’re living parallel existences…I did my MFA in English/Creative Writing at the U of Iowa writing workshop the same time you were doing an MFA at OSU. I’m from Columbus (as it says in the poem) and have always admired the countercultural scene in Clintonville and other parts. (Why oh why oh why oh, did I ever leave Ohio?) I think your ingenious friend Marty must have intersected with the Amesville people here and there–and his story also reminds me of a native New Yorker I knew at Scott Quad…when it was a dorm. What a place –and what a time. I stayed in Athens County on the way home from a visit to Indianapolis and Columbus (and Dayton–two days after the shooting)–and fell back in love with it all. Saludos and ensaladas!
Scott Ruescher, AB ’75