Slim Randles is a small-town newspaperman and a syndicated columnist.

Four years ago now. Yep, four years ago we lost Max Evans. I sure did, anyway. That old cowboy, artist, writer, bar brawler and two-fisted philosopher meant a lot to a lot of people and not just his wife, Pat, and their twin daughters.

I met Max one day about 40 years ago. I was working for the Albuquerque Journal as a columnist at the time, and another columnist there, Jim Belshaw, came up to me in the newsroom one morning and said, “We’re having lunch with Max Evans today at noon. Don’t plan anything else for the rest of the day.”

I thought he was kidding. Lunch lasted through closing time in several establishments, and by closing time, I mean …. well, you know.

On my way home that night, I sat remembering some of those stories of his and one thing occurred to me: the hardest thing to do in the world would be to write a boring biography of Max Evans.

So many years later, after countless lunch interviews and little expeditions here and there with Max, I finished his biography, “Ol’ Max Evans, the First Thousand Years.” It isn’t boring.

Max had grown up in a small town in Texas called Ropes. I visited the town once and saw where his grandfather’s store had been and saw the house he grew up in and was told his little brother is still buried in the backyard in an unmarked grave.

Nothing evil, just another issue people in those days of covered wagons, cattle drives and wind had to face. They were tough people and it was a tough life.

Max fit right in.

He went from cowboying to painting pictures to writing some of the best literature about life in the West that’s ever been seen. He was tough. Hitler tried to kill him on D Day plus one when Max was “blown up” by one of Adolf’s railroad guns. Max survived. It killed everyone else in the outfit.

But survive? Oh yes. He had an inner-ear balance problem because of it for the rest of his life. Right up until two days before his 96th birthday. That was right in the middle of the pandemic, so we couldn’t even gather for a farewell lunch or sacred words, or to have one of us bring a bottle of something.

To sum up what this old cowboy curmudgeon with an honorary doctorate in literature meant to me … he was another member of my family. After three years working on his bio, I was wrapping it up and finally about to write the darn thing..

“So Max,” said I, “do you have any advice for beginning writers?”

He looked across the table at me without any sign of a smile.

“Slim,” he said, “never hit a critic.”