He winds his silver Mercedes SL500 — convertible hardtop, dark red leather trim — into a restaurant parking lot and checks his gold, 72-diamond-encrusted Rolex.

Right on time.

It trumps his other watch, sentiment aside. Hank Williams Jr. gave it to him when lil' Hank was just a kid, a small likeness of the country singer's face pictured above the 6.

"Arthur Crisp," reads the watch's inscription. "Thanks A Million."

A man of means from simple roots, Arthur, just Arthur, steps from his car well-dressed — hound's-tooth jacket, starched white shirt and tie — always coat and tie. First impressions still count, he figures.

What's left of his reddish-brown hair balances his soft green eyes, hidden behind glasses, though his sight seems unaffected. He can be an 85-year-old flirt, kissing the hands of hostesses, offering compliments and hugs. Can't say he's missed many hugs.

"You're too sweet," he tells one. "We've got a beauty queen to serve us."

Then aside: "They didn't make 'em like that when I was growing up."

Arthur leans on a metal cane, the instrument of his age. He took a spill a few months back, hurting his shoulder. He shrugs. It is what it is. Careful, his daughters remind him, careful. If his wife, Lib, and son Artie Jr. were still around — God bless 'em — no doubt they'd say the same.

In the corner, Arthur shuffles over to the table he wants, a quiet one where the only bother comes from cute waitresses and memories.

He arrived alone in Charleston in 1940, cardboard suitcase in hand, $20 in his pocket, no room reservation, no one to call, just a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps.

He got off the bus on Society Street, hopped the belt line to Reynolds Avenue and started walking: First Street, Second Street, until he came to Fifth and found a room. He was scared, but so was Tammy Wynette when Arthur picked her up at the Greyhound station years later.

Much like him, Arthur remembers, "She didn't have a quarter, not even two nickels to rub together.

"And that turned out all right, now didn't it?"

Once the CCC disbands — Arthur's days of putting up fence posts, pruning forests, marking trees and driving trucks finished — he works as a welder at the Naval Shipyard, just blue-collar, wartime labor, a far turn for a man who one day would own three companies, including a promotions and production business.

His pay never amounts to much, but Arthur holds fast, stowing his uncashed checks beneath his bed like hidden treasure, supposing even that might be snatched from him.

His daddy lost just about all he had, the farm and a small mercantile store in Hassell, a speck of a town in eastern North Carolina. The Depression hit, and Arthur's father ended up with the ledger and the debts.

Not long afterward, he put his son on that bus out of town, told him to help the family as he could. So Arthur left little Hassell, his mama, four brothers, sisters and his daddy — God bless him, too — who would die from a heart attack only a year later.

There must be a better way, Arthur suspects, even with the CCC. Then before he knows it, the bombs drop in '45, the war ends, leaving him without his welding job and without means, forcing him to figure it out, and quickly.

For a time, he lives off his wife and her beauty shop. Perms and those creme cold waves at least offer stability. Where would he be without Lib, he wonders.

Arthur had met her at a bowling alley, sweeping her away from another man. Goodness, she's feisty and stubborn. But so wonderful and beautiful. Boy, is she. "My bride," Arthur calls her.

Maybe, he thinks, they'll go back home. He'll work at a relative's car dealership. He'll sell fertilizer like his dad. But then a sanitary products business on King Street folds, and Arthur sees a void, his chance. He starts Southern Chemical Products, a janitorial supply company.

"This business had better take off," Lib tells him, "or you've got to start driving a truck."

Only it does, slowly blossoming. Arthur spends the first two days of the week peddling products, another two delivering and a fifth day billing customers. If it takes 12 hours a day, he works 12 hours a day. The clock means nothing.

And of course, he still has those checks tucked aside. He keeps them until the shipyard calls a year after his job ends, begging that he cash them so they might balance the books.

Though by then, he knows his way. And once his chemical company lands a lucrative contract with Orangeburg's A&M College, he arrives, meeting fine people — people of promise — such as his lawyer, Robert Wallace, son of state Sen. O.T. Wallace, who appoints Arthur to the County Hall commission.

There, Arthur and the other commissioners direct the use of the downtown venue, setting concert dates, meetings and functions. One occasion, he takes a phone call from Nashville. A man on the line wants to send Hank Williams Sr. to Charleston. He needs someone to build up the show, someone with industry experience and knowledge — a promoter.

"You got him!" Arthur shouts, fibbing.

Best break of his life? It's the best bluff of his life.

"If a man thinks in his heart, so he is," Arthur says now, paraphrasing a verse from the Book of Proverbs. "I always believed you were your own person."

He wears out the hardwood, the carpet, his soles and all else underfoot. Everyone teases him: Arthur, why don't you try a marathon? They guess he paces 20 miles a show, his nerves afire.

Arthur worries, sure. Each city they hit, he prays for sunlight. A good rain washes away outdoor concerts and paychecks. A good buzz does in performers.

Hank Williams Sr. gets drunk before he reaches the auditorium, not that his initial County Hall crowd notices or minds.

"One of the nicest fellows," Arthur says. "That liquor would just get him."

Johnny Cash pops pills. "I was with Cash when he was so strung out, he didn't know where he was at," Arthur says.

Up and down the Carolinas and Georgia, Arthur travels, promoting and setting up shows. The perils he finds — artists' addictions, calamity — seldom breach the possibilities: those jaw-dropping, hair-raising, paint-peeling moments, night to night, one town to the next.

When he was a kid, his daddy cut a pole for an antennae, ran a wire through it and stuck it in the ground, just so the family might gather around the great room come Saturday nights and listen to the Grand Ole Opry: Roy Acuff and The Smoky Mountain Boys, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys and all the rest.

And here he is, living it, with Hank in County Hall, with Jerry Lee Lewis in Columbia, watching Jerry Lee — "nobody ever took an audience like Jerry Lee" — shove a baby grand piano off the stage and into the orchestra pit.

Killer.

He's with Elvis before he becomes Elvis, down at County Hall again, mid-March 1956. The kid, just 21, shaggy-haired and anxious, turns to Arthur and asks, "Do you think they'll like me?"

"Yeah," Arthur replies, grinning, "I think they'll like you."

Then again in June, Arthur brings him to College Park. Four thousand fans turn out, teenagers lining a half-block both ways from the park entrance, Elvis' reputation in bloom. He closes with "Hound Dog," escaping in a Cadillac pulled close to the stage. Hundreds of giddy, squealing girls and women give chase, some even scooping the dirt left by the car's tire tracks as souvenirs.

Next year, Arthur joins Patsy Cline as the young performer's song "Walkin' After Midnight" burns up the country and pop charts, and she quickly becomes "the hottest thing" in the nation. Then Don Gibson, on the road with Arthur, pens "I Can't Stop Loving You," his ballad of loneliness and regret, which eventually is recorded by more than 700 artists, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner among them.

He cruises with Hank Jr. and the Statler Brothers aboard the Cheating Heart Special, a painted Greyhound bus named for one of Senior's songs; hosts Faron Young at his King Street home, the honky-tonk star slurping milk and eating M&M's; hangs with Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings ("What a talent"); and dines with Tommy Cash, brother of Johnny, after Arthur's wife, Lib, colors Tommy's hair silver just for kicks, the whole family at the restaurant cutting up.

Name a country-and-western star: Charley Pride, Marty Robbins, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, Eddy Arnold, Dottie West, Kitty Wells, Chet Atkins, Buck Owens. The list stretches; Arthur works with all. Willie's fee comes to $1,100 a performance, Waylon's $1,000.

"I get so excited when I talk about it," he says.

Plus, the job grants mobility. Arthur saves his money and moves his family to a modest home on James Island. When he turns the key to unlock the house, it's already paid for.

So he stays on the road, cleaving to a few rules. No drinking. No drugs. It messes with business. Too bad, he may be the only one to follow his directions.

"I saw it destroy some of the greatest men of our time," Arthur says.

For one, Hank Williams Sr.

"His own people, the people that he worked with, would go buy him whiskey when they knew he couldn't handle it," Arthur says. "He would drink until he couldn't move."

New Year's Eve, Knoxville, Tenn., 1952: Williams takes two shots of vitamin B-12 and morphine, then leaves in a chauffeur-driven Caddy for another show, bottle of whiskey in his hand. He likely dies sometime during the trip, gone at 29.

The call comes through, reaching Arthur during a New Year's Eve Jamboree at County Hall featuring Faron Young, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

"Hank's dead."

He hears it again.

Elvis in '77, and others. In general, there seems so much loss.

Jim Reeves dies in a plane crash, as does Patsy Cline at 30, along with Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. Through the years, the index grows. Even Faron Young, whose hit, "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young," goes to No. 1 in '55, dies in 1996 at age 64.

He has cancer. "They had all of these gadgets — he called them gadgets — sticking out of him," Arthur says. "He said he wasn't going to live that way, so he went and got him a .45."

Young shoots himself, his emphysema-related pains unbearable.

"Oh, to see how the talent is born, and how it dies," Arthur says. His voice gives.

He recounts stories of sadness and dying young, tales he knows by heart, then shares other stories, the ones of his heart.

He leaves the road in 1970, 20 years after he begins. A Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton show in Columbia serves as his swan song.

Porter begs him to stay. "You can't do that," Porter tells him.

Arthur stands his ground. During his career, he's carried the burden, visiting cities, coordinating advertisements, returning for shows, collecting and counting sales, staying for shows, caring for artists. He scarcely got to see the areas where he traveled. So he's worn out.

He had begun another company by then, Professional Carpet Sales and Interiors. To him, less work means more time with Lib, sweet Lib, who took care of their children while Arthur made his rounds.

They vacation, see the grandbabies and look after each other. They've been through it together, haven't they?

From their marriage at Hampton Park Baptist Church when they were just kids, Arthur 22, and Lib, 20, no money, just four friends in the congregation, to now — established, a nice home, a condo at Folly Beach, great children, and their middle son, Artie, helping out with the business.

They make perfect foils: Arthur, the temperate diplomat, and Lib, opinionated and candid.

They visit the Vatican, Lib sitting next to their oldest daughter, Donna. She punches her.

"Let's go," Lib says. "I don't want to hear the pope."

"I'd ask her sometimes," Donna says, " 'Why did you say that, Mama?' She'd say, 'It's the truth.' "

Arthur might laugh, shake his head. That's Lib. That's Mama.

But she's a sweetheart, too, especially near the end, when the hugs and kisses and I love you's come more often than ever.

The second bout with breast cancer kills her. It metastasizes and Lib gets worse. Doctors remove her larynx, giving her a voicebox she hates to use. She survives on morphine and needs round-the-clock care. They feed her through a tube for 12 months, the family settling in for a long, brutal goodbye.

The strain almost shatters Arthur. He undergoes triple-bypass surgery in January 2001, the month before Lib dies. Then the family gathers around the breakfast table, says their peace, thanks God for her life.

"My bride," Arthur still calls her.

He retires at 79, relying more on his three kids, particularly Artie, who takes over the companies. Artie jumps at the chance. The kid's good. A friend tells Arthur's youngest daughter, Debbie, "Everybody's worried about Artie, but Artie ain't worried about anything."

Maybe he lacks his father's discipline. Maybe he shows more bluster. But like his dad, he never meets a stranger. He lights up every room, his skills as a salesman unmatched.

"Artie can do more with five minutes on a telephone than two weeks traveling," Arthur would say.

They enjoy an incredible father-son relationship. They both idolize each other. Dad calls his son superstar.

And suddenly, Artie slips away.

He takes a nap one Friday afternoon, suffers a seizure and falls from his bed to the floor, a victim of sleep apnea. The paramedics arrive, revive him and rush him to the hospital, where he spends another three weeks on a ventilator. Arthur visits Artie in the emergency room, but not again after doctors move him. Each day, Arthur lingers in the waiting area; he cannot bear to see his son.

He hopes for a miracle. "He always thought there was going to be a miracle with Mom," Donna explains.

Instead, Artie dies in March 2005 at 51. During the wake, Arthur sits in a chair just beyond the casket, weak as a kitten. Still he rises and hugs the hundreds of friends who stop by.

He puts his head on Donna's shoulder during the service and keeps it there, holding on, so sad, so tired. Later at home, he picks up the Bible, opens it to the 55th Psalm, 23rd verse, and lays the book on his dining room table.

"Cast your care upon the Lord, who will give you support," it reads in part.

"People loved Artie so much," Arthur says.

As a boy, Arthur would pray, asking God to call him into the ministry.

No answer came. Then he turned to his Bible, thumbed through, and found that many might be called, but few chosen. Sometimes now, Arthur struggles to make sense of it all: his days, his blessings, his loss.

"See, all the years that I've lived. ... I don't know what God wants from me. I don't know why," he says. "I've often wondered why. There might be a reason for me hanging around."

He finds it odd; occasionally he gets phone calls, requests, from old men, old women.

A fellow he meets in the doctor's office cannot pull himself away. He shakes Arthur's hand three times before leaving. A room in his home is dedicated to Elvis. He's never met anyone who actually knew the singer.

At home, a man calls. His wife has cancer. She's dying. She loves Elvis, he says. Please, tell her whatever you can, whatever you remember.

So Arthur shares. It's no stretch.

He built each of his kids a house and set up trust funds for the grandchildren. The family loves their lodge on Botany Island.

St. Jude, the Children's Miracle Network — Arthur counts them among his charities. A member of the Shriners and Masons, every Sunday morning he finds a seat at Fort Johnson Baptist Church.

He points to his head, though, wants it clear. No halo, remember. Arthur covets the simple treasures.

It reminds him, once, years ago; he sees Charley Pride, just runs into him at a casino in Connecticut.

"Charley Pride!" he yells from the escalator top.

"Arthur Crisp!" Pride shouts back, looking up.

They play the slots for an hour, side by side. Pride leans over to talk. He's tired of the bright lights, the mansion on the hill, the crystal chandelier. He's going home.

"I understood him," Arthur says. "Charley had nothing, either. We came from the cotton field. You get two people who've got nothing, it makes for good conversation."

Arthur's girls, Donna and Debbie, still drop by his house, the home they grew up in. Donna comes in the mornings to help with the books and bills, and to make sure Arthur keeps his doctor appointments.

His shoulder aches. He may need surgery. Otherwise Arthur feels great, just a baby aspirin and an occasional antacid required. Who knows, he might have 10, 15 years yet.

It's just that every now and then, it strikes — loneliness. All his siblings are gone. His last sister, Elsie, died in July.

"I used to be a phone call away," Arthur says. "I'm not anymore."

Barely 70 people live in his hometown of Hassell now, his old home shuttered, in disrepair; the schoolhouse, the same. He hasn't been back in years.

In the afternoons when he putters about, the echoes call, only to return in the evenings before bed. He turns down the light; silence follows.

Though just not today, not at the concert of imagination.

It makes quite the gathering: Arthur Elton Crisp at the front, Elvis and Artie Jr. and Hank Sr. and Lib seated close. The stories, my God, the stories, the times, it's a sure thing, an easy bet, what a performance, capacity crowd, the audience anxious, on their toes, the band in place, easy now, the curtain parts, everyone set.

Shhh, the music's about to start.

Rob Young, a former features writer at The Daily Reflector, is now a features writer at the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C. He can be contacted at ryoung@postandcourier.com.