The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Other than his wife, son, and the Jones family, nobody knew about Old Jim’s breakdown in 1932, or his trips for treatments. When the tales about drinking started flying, no Jones relative came forward to refute them. In that time and place, mental illness was considered even more disgraceful than alcoholism. It was better for Old Jim to be thought of as a drunk than a lunatic. In fact, he was neither. Old Jim, with his body failing and his scarred lungs convulsing, often had trouble just getting out of bed.

  But the rumors proved persistent. For Jimmy truth was never an impediment to his own ambitions. He liked being seen as someone who overcame obstacles, a person especially deserving of sympathy and support.

  Jimmy started dressing differently. High school boys in Lynn wore denim jeans and work shirts. On Sundays, white shirts and nice slacks were appropriate attire for church. Jimmy wore Sunday clothes almost every day. He was already striking, with thick, nearly black hair and dark eyes that seemed to stare right through you. Lynetta still sometimes claimed to be part Indian and now Jimmy did, too. His looks and wardrobe made him stick out.

  So did the way he acted in school. In hallways between classes, Jimmy developed the odd habit of never replying when someone spoke to him first. He participated in between-class conversations only when he initiated them. Otherwise, he’d lean against a wall near the classroom door until the bell rang, then hustle inside to take his seat, always at the back of the room. It was very dramatic. Sometimes he challenged teachers about some fact or other. In a typical Indiana country school, that might have been cause for immediate expulsion, but Lynn teachers liked evidence that their students were thinking. They’d engage Jimmy in debate. He seemed to enjoy the give-and-take but never admitted being incorrect. Jimmy’s grades were good, some As and lots of Bs, but he was not considered an exceptional student.

  In school Jimmy was never a leader, but on weekends and during summers he tried to be. He never liked being part of teams, staying out of pickup basketball games and bike races. The other boys thought it was because he couldn’t stand losing. Besides, Jimmy wasn’t a good player and often was the last boy picked. Sometimes he’d organize his own team and challenge another one to a game. Jimmy never played in these; he coached whatever squad he’d put together. Most often, Jimmy’s players were younger kids who felt proud that somebody older paid attention to them.

  Some Lynn old-timers vividly recall the summer of 1945, when fourteen-year-old Jimmy Jones not only formed a town baseball team, but organized and ran an entire league with teams from nearby towns. It would have been a massive undertaking for adults. Jimmy did it all by himself. He got merchants to put up money for bats and balls, then went around finding all the boys who wanted to play and getting them to commit to a formal schedule of games. Nobody was used to that. Jimmy managed the Lynn team. All the boys there and in surrounding towns rooted for the Cincinnati Reds, but only the Lynn team got to call itself the Reds because Jimmy said so.

  Even though he was too young to have a license, Jimmy drove his team to games in his family’s ancient Model A Ford. It had a rumble seat and most of the guys could squeeze in. The Lynn kids did pretty well, and Jimmy thrilled them by keeping detailed statistics, not just game scores but also individual stats. He did these in long, neat columns, and the other kids loved to pore over them. They’d never imagined anything so elaborate—it was Jimmy’s way of demonstrating that they got something special for letting him be the leader.

  But things turned sour by the end of the summer. Jimmy’s loft was the team gathering place. They’d sit and listen while he lectured about previous games and what their strategies would be in the next ones. There were always lots of pets around. Jimmy took in strays all the time. He seemed to love animals, but one day some of the kids saw him lure a puppy over the open loft trapdoor and deliberately let it fall down to the hard floor below. After that, they didn’t want to play on his baseball team anymore. The league fell apart.

  The loft incident was a rare instance of animal cruelty on Jimmy’s part. He may have abused the puppy because he was upset by something happening at home, a situation that was genuinely traumatic, especially for a teenage boy.

  * * *

  Lynetta Jones grew unhappier with each passing year. It became increasingly apparent that the rest of the world would never recognize how exceptional she was. She’d changed jobs a few times, ending up working in a Richmond plant that manufactured automotive rings. In this shop as in all the others where she’d worked, Lynetta was positive she was smarter than her bosses, entitled to be giving orders instead of taking them. But she remained an ordinary employee, taking the bus to and from work every day while also expected to tolerate a husband who constantly aggravated her with his wheezing, debilitated condition. Her relationship with Old Jim’s family remained strained, at least from Lynetta’s perspective. She suspected them of encouraging other town residents to criticize how she raised her son. Jimmy—“Jimba” was her nickname for him—was an alternating source of pride and additional frustration to his mother. On the one hand, she still fervently believed that he was selected by the spirits to be special. If Lynetta herself couldn’t be famous, at least someday she might shine in her child’s reflected glory. But on many days, Jimba was just one more draining responsibility. Lynetta’s mothering was sporadic. Sometimes she hovered constantly, espousing her spiritual beliefs, reminding Jimba of his distinguished heritage on her side of the family. More often, she ignored him and was happy to let others assume responsibility for his care. If she talked to him at all, it was to yell about real or perceived disobedience.

  Lynetta shouted at Old Jim, too. He was weak and she disdained him. In particular, Old Jim was entirely unable to perform when his long-suffering wife wanted a little pleasure in her marital bed. Sex was important to Lynetta, and about the time Jimba started high school, she took another Lynn man as her lover. The affair lasted several years. The participants were reasonably discreet, but some people in Lynn still found out about it, Old Jim’s relations in particular. They were divided on the subject. The Jones men thought Lynetta was acting immorally, but some of the women sympathized. She had a hard life, after all, and her husband was so sick. Though no one directly confronted Lynetta, she understood that they knew. For almost twenty years, Lynetta had always believed that many of her in-laws despised her. Now it was true.

  Jimmy also knew that his mother had a boyfriend. He was the kind of teenager who picked up on everything. By this point, it was ingrained in him that, if a side must be chosen, he would sympathize with his mother and not his father. Whatever she did, the old man deserved it.

  As Lynetta embarked on her fling, Jimmy also pursued romance. Typically, he went about it differently from the other teenagers in town, and in a manner that he would repeat as an adult. In Lynn, high school dating was serious business. Most teenagers paired off early, married soon after high school or college graduation, raised families and grew old together. Today, many of Jimmy Jones’s surviving peers are close to celebrating sixty-fifth or even seventieth wedding anniversaries.

  In Jimmy’s high school days, the acknowledged belle among the girls was Sara Lou Harlan, the daughter of the town dentist. Sara Lou was sweet as well as pretty. Most of the boys had crushes on her but respected her status as the girlfriend of fellow Bulldog Dick Grubbs. The high school community was as close-knit as Lynn itself. It was simply unacceptable to try winning away somebody else’s girl.

  One day Jimmy attached himself to Sara Lou. He stayed close to her everywhere at school, and when classes were over he followed her home. It was unwanted attention. Sarah Lou thought Jimmy was a jerk and asked Dick to do something about it. Dick took Jimmy aside and explained that he needed to leave Sara Lou alone, “but he wasn’t interested, it had no effect. He felt like if he wanted her, he ought to have her. It was his right, and nobody else’s opinion, including Sara Lou’s, mattered.” When Jimmy persisted, Dick would have been considered well within his rights to take him behind
the school and beat him up. But Dick didn’t; it was obvious to him that nothing he did would change Jimmy’s mind. Maybe Sara Lou’s parents could talk to him.

  They did, and one day after school Sara Lou was astonished to find Jimmy Jones right there in her house, chatting with her mother and father like an old friend. The Harlans praised Jimmy’s good manners to Sara Lou—wasn’t he a nice boy? They invited him to come to church with the family on Sunday, and he did, staying for the whole service. The fact he’d somehow fooled her parents didn’t do Jimmy any good with Sara Lou. She still wouldn’t jilt Dick for him. Dick remembers that “it was a long while before he gave up, and then one day he just starts acting like it never happened at all.”

  When Jimmy finally realized he’d never get Sara, he moved on to Phyllis Willmore. Where Sara Lou was the school pinup, Phyllis was the town’s smart girl. Jimmy had more luck with her. The other kids thought Phyllis and Jimmy had a strange relationship because they sat around on her family’s porch reading books together. Once in a while, they held hands. Phyllis recalls that it was less a romance than two kids making their first awkward attempts at dating. They went to church togther—Jimmy took her to the Nazarene service, and went with her to the Church of Christ—and once to the movies in Richmond. Phyllis’s mother drove them there. The kids sat in the backseat of the car. Mrs. Willmore stayed to see the show. In the theater, Jimmy made a big deal out of getting her settled in a good seat before he joined Phyllis several rows away.

  Jimmy and Phyllis never got beyond a mostly platonic relationship. They quickly fizzled as a couple, though they remained on friendly terms. But afterward, Phyllis found very few chances to talk to Jimmy. He had another demand on his time.

  * * *

  A few years earlier, a new faith came to Lynn, a radically different one from the others that had been long established in town. A Mr. McFarland took over an old storefront on Highway 36, just across from a grocery store, and announced the opening of an Apostolic church. He stuck up flyers all over town promising that if people came to the services, there’d be speaking in tongues. The pastors of Lynn’s other churches didn’t like it. These Apostolics, whom some called Pentecostals, were actively trying to recruit. Briefly, it worked. People in Lynn had never seen anything like it, folks actually dropping down on the floor, rolling around, babbling gibberish. It was wonderful entertainment. Townspeople went once or twice, gawked, and returned to their more traditional churches. The congregation that the newly arrived Apostolics was able to retain was drawn almost exclusively from outside town, usually southerners who’d moved up to Indiana and were used to such services. There was no denying that the Apostolics put on a show, not just on Sundays but also occasional weeknights and Saturdays. On Saturdays, farmers would come in to town to trade at the Highway 36 grocery, then stand outside the storefront across the street and shake their heads in amused wonder at the holy rollers inside making all their crazy noise during Saturday night service.

  Often, Jimmy Jones was inside among the Apostolics, watching carefully, soaking everything in. Their pastor had a lot more freedom than the ministers in Lynn’s other churches. He didn’t stick to some rigid format. Instead, he’d jump and yell or even howl if the spirit moved him. The reactions of the congregation were wonderful, too. They yelled themselves, and sang and danced and turned their gatherings into exuberant celebrations.

  Jimmy still spent most Sundays popping in and out of all the Lynn churches. But the holy rollers held a special place with him. He took to attending their weekend revivals out in the country. At some point Lynetta noticed and didn’t like it. Even to her, those people were strange. She later described a dramatic scene when she confronted the holy roller leader, a woman, and ordered her to leave her son alone because Jimba was having terrible nightmares caused by dreadful things he heard during her services. The awful woman actually had Jimba preach, because when he did awed listeners contributed more than usual to the collection plate. Like most of Lynetta’s remembrances, it’s not true. Mr. Stump, a pipefitter during the week, conducted the local Apostolic services. Nobody remembers Jimmy delivering sermons in any of them. But he began sermonizing somewhere else, and on the most controversial topic possible.

  Randolph County was unique in rural Indiana for another reason besides its exceptional public schools. It was possible for white country people to go years without seeing, let alone interacting with, a single person of color. But there were three black enclaves in Randolph County, clusters of ramshackle homes that were too tiny to achieve official town status. Still, there were collectively several hundred African Americans in the county, mostly farmhands who came in to Winchester and Lynn on weekends to trade and shop. They were not treated as equals. Black children didn’t attend the fine Lynn school. White mothers would never dream of inviting “colored” kids over to play with their children. But white people in Lynn saw black people, stood in line with them in town shops, even chatted with them informally outside the grocery store or veterinarian’s office.

  Like all the other white kids in Lynn, Jimmy Jones grew accustomed to being around black people. Unlike his peers, he demonstrated genuine interest in their lives beyond his hometown’s unwritten social boundaries. On trips to Richmond, the nearest “big city” with its population of about thirty thousand, Jimmy noticed and was bothered by African Americans being treated badly by whites—they were called insulting names and ordered around like stray dogs. Quite a few poor blacks lived in Richmond, since it had factory jobs available, and others drifted through on a regular basis. Wayne County, where Richmond was located, had the derogatory statewide nickname of “Little Africa.” And so, while he was still in high school, Jimmy would sometimes get up on Saturday mornings, put on his best clothes, and take the bus seventeen miles to Richmond. Then he’d walk from the bus station to the poor part of town by the railroad tracks. Black indigents congregated there. Jimmy would find someplace to stand and then start preaching, always about everyone being equal in God’s eyes, how it was wrong to look down on anybody, especially for the color of their skin. The white kid promised black down-and-outers that if they stayed strong, better times were coming. His exact words are lost, but old-timers in Richmond remember hearing about it.

  Back home in Lynn, Jimmy went out of his way to emphasize his faith. He took to ostentatiously carrying a Bible everywhere, an affectation that amused rather than impressed the town’s other teenagers. They took it for granted that strange Jimmy Jones was destined to be a preacher. That earned him a significant high school accolade. The Bulldogs were about to take on a rival school in some sporting event of particular significance, and Jimmy was asked to conduct a mock funeral service for the other team at a pregame Bulldog pep rally. He enthusiastically complied, astonishing some with how fervently he consigned the opposing team to its mass grave. One classmate recalled, “He had a flair for the dramatic.”

  That pep rally funeral was teenage Jimmy’s last memorable moment in Lynn. In 1948, during the summer between his junior and senior years, he and his mother moved to Richmond.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RICHMOND

  For twenty-two years, Lynetta endured rather than in any sense enjoyed marriage to Old Jim Jones. All she had for solace was her lover, and when he moved away Lynetta couldn’t stand life in Lynn anymore. She worked in Richmond, which had a few cafés and movie houses and a nice big park. Why not at least escape her useless husband and his nasty, carping family and live there instead?

  Jimmy was about to become a high school senior, but he was ready to leave, too. He had no close friends in Lynn, and though he could have remained with his father, he disdained Old Jim as much or more than Lynetta did. Recently, he’d started hinting that his dad periodically became violent and beat his wife and son. That didn’t gain much traction in Lynn—everybody was willing to believe Old Jim was a drunk, but a man who could barely stagger down the street was unlikely to summon the energy for domestic violence. And if Jimmy’s dad beat him, w
here were the bruises? Childhood pal Max Knight recalls how Jimmy cried when describing Old Jim’s alleged brutality.

  Old Jim didn’t return his wife’s and son’s contempt. He expressed his sorrow at their abrupt departure with actions rather than words. After Lynetta and Jimmy were gone, Old Jim couldn’t bear living alone in the Grant Street house. Lynn had a hotel, and he took a room there. His family provided whatever money he needed beyond his army disability pension. His physical deterioration worsened, and James Thurman Jones died of respiratory disease in May 1951. He was sixty-three and looked ninety. His enduring love for Lynetta is reflected in his burial marker, a double tombstone in Mount Zion Cemetery with Old Jim’s name and dates of birth and death carved on one half and her name and date of birth on the other. Underneath their names is a short inscription: “Everyone in the World is my Friend.” No one recalls seeing Lynetta and Jimmy at the funeral. Afterward, though, Lynetta filed a widow’s claim for Old Jim’s army pension.

  * * *

  In the fall of 1948, Jimmy enrolled in a Richmond high school. For a change, his clothes didn’t set him apart. Teens in this big town dressed nicer than Randolph County kids, no patched work shirts and pants or clodhopper boots. He retained his old habit of not talking unless he wanted to start a conversation. Surviving Richmond classmates have vague recollections of him at best, generally memories of his thick dark hair and striking eyes. Jimmy’s courting technique remained unsophisticated. One girl was greatly offended when Jimmy, a total stranger, came up to her in a hallway and grabbed her hand. Richmond boys were supposed to be polite. She yanked her hand away and complained about it to some other girls.