#roy allison

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When I was a young boy, my parents and I drove a few miles outside of our tiny town to pay a visit to my great-great-uncle Roy. Uncle Roy was very much that "self-made" man, one who marched to not only a very different drum, but to what seemed to be an out-of-step marching band that had forgone the marching altogether. He was his own drum major and consistent with the marginal, rural community in which he lived all of his life, Roy was a true non-conformist. Having exchanged his proverbial drum for a paint bucket and brush, he had long ago extricated himself from the "ought to's" and "should do's" that kept the rest of us in line. A peculiar and rather eccentric man, he was easily identifiable by the white, paint-stained overalls he always wore (without a shirt!). This made Roy rather iconic, I suppose, solidifying his image of the "outsider" and making it easy, even necessary, to speak of him in diminutive terms. He was the subject of many a joke. The Gardners, by way of the Allisons, had not too long ago left the rural, "country" community of Sidonia. Roy and his mother remained in the Allison home where Roy's mother, my great-great grandmother, once dragged a blood-stained mattress to the lawn and lit it on fire. Such was the response to the suicide of a family member. Rather than waist precious time pontificating on and dissecting the causes of such a violent loss, life moved forward. It had to.