As I wrote briefly on a recent Facebook posting, this office had a visit with Steve Still last week that left us laughing and with memories we will long cherish.

For readers who don’t know Steve Still, it’s hard to know where to start. He was the youngest of three boys and one girl in the Still family. His mother was a Hudson. He’s probably got as many cousins in Panola County as anybody. He grew up in Batesville, running with the crowd on East Street in a day when parents let their children roam about town at will or on bicycles with only the stipulation that they return home at mealtimes and at dark.

Steve was a Boy Scout who made one or more one week-long, early 1960s  summer camp sessions at Kia Kima in Arkansas memorable to everybody there when he announced on his arrival that he had been accompanied by Harvey, a six-foot, 3 1/2-inch tall rabbit. Of course Harvey, borrowed from the 1950 film starring James Stewart, was visible only to Steve and spoke only to him. 

By the end of the week, every boy in camp knew Steve and Harvey and would accommodate Harvey with a seat in the mess hall or canoe or wherever Steve said Harvey needed to be accommodated.

Several years after Kim died from cancer, Steve married Sandra, the sister of his son Jonah’s wife. It’s legal, and it’s not complicated unless you are Jonah, whose sister-in-law became also his stepmother, and Jonah’s wife, whose sister became also her step mother-in-law. But it seemed to make everybody happy, especially Steve.

 Sandra is French Canadian and Steve followed her home way up north to Quebec City. He wrote me that he was going try again to learn French. That’s when I busted him.

In about 1963 when we were enrolled in Mrs. Weems’ French I class Steve struck and end-of-year bargain with her. If she would just give him a D for his final grade, he promised to never again to enroll in another French class. She did, but 50 years later he reneged.

But during last week’s visit, he told us that his efforts to become bilingual have not been as successful as he would have liked.

“I’m semi-lingual,” he said, defaulting to his self-depreciating sense of humor that keeps friends and strangers laughing and loving him.

“I don’t really speak my native language very well. It’s bad when your French-speaking wife corrects your grammar,” Steve continued.

“My whole family gets after me about the way I talk,” Steve said. 

“There is no T in A’lan’a,” he said, parroting his reply to his wife’s and a son’s efforts to coach him to properly pronounce the name of the Georgia metropolis.

“After all these years, I finally figured out that I just have a lazy tongue,” he told us, announcing it as though he had made an insightful breakthrough into a chronic, lifelong condition.

Steve allowed that he has learned only enough French to get him into trouble. He can go to the market and shop, he said, but if something out of the ordinary pops up and people start asking him questions, the conversation threatens to run off and leave him. 

I rather expect Steve communicates just fine with or without words spoken.

And so it went. He found an English-speaking church in Quebec City where he worships. Until Steve came, the role of Sunday morning greeter rotated weekly among members. Once Steve’s turn came, they just made him permanent greeter.

“Those people up there are kind of stand-offish when they first meet you,” said Steve, who never meets a stranger.

And Steve talked frankly about a dark undercurrent that has haunted much of his life. He is an alcoholic who first found treatment when the joined Alcoholic Anonymous while he was a police officer in Greenville.

“I thought that when I went I’d be in the company of street people I’d seen or people I had arrested,” he said. Instead, he was surprised to find that the AA assembly included his doctor, his lawyer and other professional people.

AA can successfully treat willing alcoholics, but there is no cure, he said. When Steve and Kim moved back to Batesville, Steve said he did not affiliate with a local AA group. He had long been sober and stayed that way after their move. 

Until Kim’s death.

“It took about two days before I started drinking again.”

As Steve struggled alone with depression and alcohol, three friends intervened, coming to his home, emptying liquor bottles and then staying with him to keep him from going out to buy more.

Asa Tucker, Asa’s wife Loree and Russell Paulk took turns spending hours with him, Steve said. 

“They were there for me. It might have been the difference between life and death, knowing that somebody loves you,” Steve said.  “Every night I say a little prayer of gratitude.”

After recovering from those depths, Steve met and married Sandra. When he got to Quebec, Steve found an English-speaking AA chapter and re-affilated.

“It made me turn back to God; it’s made me find myself. AA taught me to do this,” he said.

And I thought to myself as we sat enjoying Steve’s visit, his tales about Quebec and his stories on himself: What a great return we have received from the investment of time and love these three friends made when this man had sunk down into dark crisis; how many have since benefitted from his big heart and his joie d’vivre now that he’s back up.

Steve has since returned to Quebec. I’m sure he is spending much time on his couch with his dog, making up for his absence.

Steve has not seen Harvey since he was in his early teens, he told us. But lately another pooka has sought his company. His name is Marshall, Steve said, and Marshall is given to making sarcastic observations about Sandra.

“She said it was funny the first 50 times,” Steve said.