Rick Lasseter should be teeing it up this morning with his buddies at Brown Acres or Moccasin Bend. After all, it's Friday, which was the day they always set aside for golf.
Instead, "the old hippie" - as the bearded Lasseter often called himself - is looking down today on the city's finest public layouts, having lost a brief but gritty bout to the Big C on Tuesday.
To say we were close pals would be a stretch. We were neighbors separated by eight years (Rick the older at 62) who shared a deep love for the Boston Celtics, for all things college basketball, for cold beer, spicy-hot food, politics, art and gardens - both those with creaky parquet floors and those that grew the biggest, best tomatoes on Lookout Mountain (his, not mine).
He also was an endless source for child-rearing advice, he and Karen having raised four remarkable and independent kids during their 39 years together - Sunshine, Treasure, Faerlie and Mac - as well as spoiling four pixie-perfect grandchildren (Meadow, Harry, Camper and Scout).
Or as Treasure said Thursday, "He was the best 'Grandy' you could ever dream of - incredible storyteller, always the conversationalist. And no sleepover for the grandkids was complete until they'd had Grandy's pancakes."
His love for cooking started at least a few of those conversations, since Karen's distaste for the smell and mess of frying bacon inside often led him to his outdoor grill, much to the delight of the rest of the neighborhood.
But he could talk about anything from sports - he earned a basketball scholarship to Middle Tennessee State - to gardening to religion with equal parts wit, intelligence and passion, always a tricky trio.
Again, Treasure: "He was always full of political speak - rarely took sides of one party or another but enjoyed great debate and was forever the devil's advocate."
But what her dad arguably did best was make jewelry, everything from wedding bands to sterling silver charms to Christian jewelry to the St. Michael charm he made Karen right after 9/11, the one that read: "Please protect my baby."
Treasure and Sunshine and their respective spouses Ryan and Dan all wear wedding bands he made for them.
Befitting a perfectionist, he often was working on these pieces until the day they were to be delivered, his trademark stogie hanging from the corner of his mouth as the deadline approached.
"Rick was a nice, laid-back guy always running a day late," Dayle May Jewelers co-owner Jerry Tessmann said with a gentle laugh. "Sometimes, if I needed something on the 23rd of the month, I'd tell him the 15th. But he did wonderful work."
Said Moccasin Bend pro Devere Keller: "Rick was just a super-nice guy. Always had a smile on his face, always happy to be on a golf course. In this business you tend to remember people for the wrong reasons - those folks who are always unhappy about something. But that was never Rick. He always made people feel good."
Always. An old hippie determined to keep the rest of us forever young.