Arock!: An Earthy Tale of War and Peace

Johnnie Perkins lived in Oregon at a point in history when the combustion engine was rapidly replacing the horse as mankind's number one servant. The horse culture his father grew up in was fading. Johnnie was eleven in 1946, and he idolized the movie cowboys, but he was finding the changes in the world to be confusing. Even his beloved Uncle Rufus drove a vintage automobile and shunned horses. Still, "Unc" apparently provided a lot of Johnnie's education, making up for the limitations of the one-room school in Arock, Oregon.We have only Johnnie's word for most of his remembrances. Most of the old-timers have passed on. Of the school Johnnie attended, nothing now remains except a roadside memorial containing the brass school bell with an inscription by the Fretwell brothers, civic-minded pioneers who had saved the old bell from salvage.