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When I was a child, I would crawl onto my father's lap in the evenings while he sat in the Morris chair in the living room next to the huge fireplace. He would read fairy tales to me, and when the opportunity presented itself, he would say, "Son, there are some things you should know about women (or love, or fatherhood, or booze)," and I would listen carefully to my father's wisdom with faith and awe.

Does this surprise you? It should, because it didn't happen that way. I learned a lot from my father, topics ranging from guns and dynamite to crooked presidents and the importance of loyalty, but not by sitting on his lap. He wasn't that kind of a father. Instead, I learned by observing him, listening to him, and reading his writing. It turns out that these are the lessons that really matter. Words can be nothing more than words. Actions have meaning. Actions matter.

My father believed in love. So it was inevitable and right that he would suffer over and over again, willingly, for love, with many, many different women. He was a passionate man and a naive romantic to the end. He believed in love, passion, and the erotic, and pursued these things with great determination his entire life, leaving a trail of passionate destruction through the lives of countless women. Seeing this, I chose another path, that of a family and the long haul with a good woman. Or perhaps I didn't choose. I don't think he could have lived any other way, nor could I have taken his road.

He believed in freedom. He believed in the individual's right to live as he chooses, free from government interference. That meant the freedom to be weird, or to take the drugs of his choice, or to shoot, naked, a .44 magnum pistol from the front porch at 3 a.m., or to tell the truth about Nixon when he was a sitting president by calling him a liar, a hustler, and a tyrant in the national media. He also believed in the power, right, and responsibility of the governed to determine their fate. From his run for sheriff in 1970 to his campaign to free Lisl Auman, he knew that he could challenge and usually defeat those in power when the cause was just. I got from him a sharp sense of justice and a healthy skepticism of authority in any form.

He said two things matter when you break the law: the skill of your attorney and your control of the media. He said that if you're going to break the law, you'd better understand the consequences and be ready to fight like hell. He said that as a self-declared outlaw, he had a responsibility to understand the laws he was breaking, because the law is a sword that cuts both ways, and it can either protect you or cut you down, depending on your mastery of it. In every confrontation with the law, Hunter fought like his life was at stake, and he used every tool at his disposal, from his considerable intellect and knowledge of law and politics, to his powerful and brilliant lawyer friends, to his mastery of the power of the media to influence opinion. He almost always won. I choose a simpler strategy: I avoid confrontations with the law. Or again, perhaps I didn't choose. He was a warrior. I am a negotiator.

I understood him when I became a father. Only then could I understand how completely and totally a father loves his child, from the day he is born, and how that love just increases. A couple of months after my son was born, I called my father and told him that I finally really understood that he loved me and always had. He didn't say much, something like, "Well…uh…good. Did you see the Raiders game on Sunday?" It was okay. He didn't have to say anything more. I understood.

Watching him, I learned the power of alcohol. The most dangerous drug in my family--where we have a history of serious addiction that goes back generations--is not cocaine, LSD, or pot, but good old booze. I learned that whatever its effect might be on your soul, alcohol will, in steady and substantial amounts over many years, gradually destroy your body, as it was gradually destroying my father's.

He taught me to love the power of big guns, the shock of the explosion up the arms, the satisfaction of hitting a clay pigeon on the fly, and the elegance and beauty of a well-designed gun. This was one of the few areas where he gave me formal instruction. We spent many afternoons shooting in the field beside the house, where he taught me how to aim, how to breathe for maximum accuracy, and of course, how to build and detonate a propane-and-gasoline bomb using a 12-gauge shotgun and 00 buckshot. Just as important, we spent many nights disassembling and cleaning the guns, and he would explain how to take apart each gun, which tool to use, and how to make damn sure that the guns were empty before we started cleaning them.

Juan Thompson, 44, the only son of gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson, is a computer guy who lives in Colorado with his wife and son. He is currently working on a book about his relationship with his father.