William Jennings was a hermit. He lived off of the main road to
Cowden with his dogs, in a an old gray wood weathered house they say was
held together by the new roof he had done 15 years ago. He would ride
his bicycle into town in the fall to get supplies to tide him through
the winter.
My friend, Bobby Beck was friends with William Jennings, but I never
met him. Bobby talked about William Jennings with respect. Bobby
honored William Jennings, and at the time, I didn’t know why.
When I was graduated from college with a teaching degree, I had no
money and a ‘55 Chevy that I figured had about 200 miles left in it. So
I drew a 100 mile radius around Carbondale, Illinois and applied for
teaching jobs within the circle.
When I pulled into Herrick, Illinois for the interview, there were
more horses pulling wagons than cars parked in the street.
Uncontrollably laughing to myself, I knew I had to live here.
I applied for the job, was hired on the spot, and when I got back to
Carbondale and put the Chevy into park, the gearshift rotated loose
around the steering column. I traded it in for $50 and started making
$55.54/month payments on on a 1966 VW square-back sedan with a soon to
be announced bad muffler.
In my first night in Herrick I met Bobby Beck. He lived with his two
bloodhounds in a log cabin he moved, log by log, fireplace stone by
stone from from Kentucky and rebuilt it in Illinois. In his cabin he
ran the Herrick Sportsman Club, an excuse for selling and drinking
liquor in a dry town.
Bobby and I became friends as he taught me how to canoe the
Kaskaskia, shoot .38 and .45 pistols at cans and other debris in the
creek, and the beer value of a string of catfish to a riverside
restaurant after a long day of fishing.
Bobby had a eighth-grade education and a scholarly love for Henry
David Thoreau. He would tell me, a college educated English teacher,
far more about Thoreau’s life and philosophy than I ever thought was
possible to know. He told me about the beans Therew, as he pronounced
it, would hybrid near Waldon pond, the well-worn path he made into town,
and how his hypocrisy regarding simplicity seemed to discredit his
writings.
I would discuss Thoreau with Bobby as his friend Ralph Sauer would
try to change the subject to Hemingway, something Ralph knew about.
It’s hard to express how the elite intellectualism I acquired in
college fell away like William Jennings’s siding as this country
bootlegger analyzed the works of Thoreau in a manner only a person who
lived the life Thoreau had espoused could.
Recently on the way down to Memphis, we stopped in Herrick to find
Bobby. A neighbor told us he was in bad shape and in a nursing home in
Sullivan so on the way back we detoured to visit him. He didn’t
recognize me, but I did get to see, once again, this symbol of
self-taught America, who changed my direction and kept me from becoming
the Godless, arrogant, self-absorbed, over-educated snob who thought he
knew what was in everybody else’s best interest.
Bobby, you helped make me the man I have become and I would like to think you would approve. I’m sorry we couldn’t visit.
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