J. Roy and the Human Condition

The reflections in this book portray much about life with an alcoholic, eccentric father with a penchant for self-pity, creative thinking, and consistent, unorthodox behavior. The events in the essays took place primarily in Plainview, Texas during the 1940's to 1960's at a time in which West Texas towns and cities were shedding their frontier affinities and struggling into the modern, industrial era. J. Roy marched to drum beats unheard by others. He took up farming to avoid the draft while manifesting a patriotic fervor. He broke and evaded the law while extolling its applicability to others; he created chaos at his adult baptism; he maintained a long relationship with Jack Daniel's; and he informed me that one could attain sex education by watching farm animals. He asserted that ministers differed from him only by hiding their liquor. Philosophy, he avowed, should not be in the hands of philosophers. He locked away the social graces, and he created his own unique vocabulary. He adamantly proclaimed that no damned son of his would cuss. He also wondered why I got a PH.D. when I could have emulated him as a motor grader operator. J. Roy Thompson uniquely charted his own course through life. He both wittingly and unwittingly gave new meaning to eccentricity. When captured by interludes of sobriety he was capable of far-ranging insights and speculations. When wallowing in drunken self-pity, he inflicted pain and anguish while also indulging in hair-raising and attention-grabbing behavior. In both states, he commanded attention if not always respect. Each essay in this book focuses on J. Roy as I explore by means of selectivity, emphasis, omission, candor, irony, and humor aspects of our intertwined lives. I cannot fully account for J. Roy, or even for myself, but in my own quest which impelled these essays, I hope to have gained more insight into and appreciation for the human condition about which J. Roy so frequently spoke.