Dante, who knocked out a grown man in front of me when he was eight years old, once knocked out every redneck in a country bar, routinely beat down employees who back-sassed and stole from him, survived three motorcycle accidents, beat up two larger men with a pin in his neck and a rod in his knee, and was still doing hundreds of handstand pushups in jail last year, is slowing down.
It's tough to see guys you trained when they were kids grind down and wear out. But Dante just got out of Shock Trauma after surviving a 25-foot fall from a tree while topping it off with a chainsaw.
This is what happens with the most naturally gifted born aggressors among us. They generally cannot avoid rough and risky work and play. He's walking and working, still strong and tough, but at forty rough years of age he's getting gray and beginning the grind that wears us all down in the end.
He put up a good front this last week, not willing to relinquish a lifetime of remarkable strength. I'll be sympathetic, the next time we get together, and, for the first time, when he calls me Old Man, he'll hear the echo.
I hope there is still another knockout in Dante's future.
