I first met Guy Anderson in the La Conner post office, back when you could rent a box for peanuts. There, in the seventies, you had an equal chance of running into a local luminary, your neighbor (might be one in the same) or the person who shouted at you the night before in the bar when you spilled your drink down their back.

I can’t imagine Guy spilling a drink on anyone. Or shouting. He was ever so soft-spoken. And there he was, in the post office, asking me, a complete stranger, “How are you?,” and pausing for an answer. I have no memory of my reply, but I remember his when I rec...