Bob Williams of Wyoming

I'm remembering Bob, for he is worth remembering.

When I moved into the cabin in Wyoming Bob walked up the road from his house down below and presented me with his old martini shaker. This was December, 2003.

The next year Bob and Mary, his wife, hosted a New Year's Eve dinner for all eight of us who lived within a hundred acres of one another.

Bob filled everyone's glass with red wine and then made the first toast to the New Year--'God Bless the NRA!'

We disagreed about almost everything but were both comfortable in our disagreements. When someone would interrupt me, as they often did because they disagreed with me, Bob would always say, 'let him finish ' even though he disagreed with what I was saying.

Every year he got an elk tag from the great state of Wyoming, no simple task. He liked to tell about bagging his elk from his upstairs bedroom, naked. He'd shoot it and Mary would track it down and they'd have their meat for the year.

I think only part of the story is true, the part about Bob shooting the elk and Mary chasing it down, but it's a good story.

I never really knew how old Bob was. I knew he was much older than me. He was kind of ageless, if by ageless I mean he didn't seem lose his ability to chop wood and hitch up the trailer for the trips he and Mary liked to take to places like Ten Sleep and Thermopolis and Sheridan, and that's what I mean.

The last time I saw Bob was October, 2013. He'd been in and out of the hospital, and decided he'd like to stay out of that place forever. He made me a martini, and an Old Fashioned for himself--it took him about a half hour, his hands were so shaky and his energy shot.

We sat in his living room all by ourselves, looking out of the plate-glass window toward the great mountains, toward Yellowstone, and talked. I can't remember what we talked about, not much for sure as he was on oxygen and not in the mood for conversation at that point, but I'll never forget sitting there with him now that he's gone.