He chuckled real big and his ears flapped slightly. Cowboys ears, though I wouldn't have thought that if he hadn't told me he use to ride the rodeo circuit. He told me about meeting Dolly Parton, hoping to surprise me by telling of her pious heart and witty self deprecations. "It costs a lot to look this cheap." He described his planed road trip this summer from AZ to CO to MT to WA, thousands of miles of good open road. He's just itchin' to hit those old cowboy shows and traditional churchs. He gloats over church's recent aquisition of the city's best organist from the Lutherans down the road who decided to go "contemporary." He surprises me with his love of everything from Beastie Boys to Blue Grass (he also use to do promo work for record labels), and he has too much fun regailing me with the times he has pretended to be the nasty city inspector when he is only the surveyor for the county commissioner's office.

He's about 65 with an oozing little red spot where the docs recently drilled a hole into his mostly bald head. It makes him look a lot more fragile than his spirit will allow.

He's my new priest.