When ELV was 4, he loved him his lusty, gusty entertainment. Still does.

I met Fess Parker twice — once in 1996 when he came to Las Vegas to promote his wines, then a couple of years later at his Santa Barbara winery. Both times this mountain of a man couldn’t have been more gracious.

I remember asking him if he ever got tired of guys like me in our forties and fifties gushing all over him with remembrances of times glued in front of 20″ black and white televisions, coonskin caps firmly on our heads, rubber knives or tinny little fake rifles clutched in our tiny fingers, fueling our fantasy-filled thoughts of daring-do. His answer, delivered with just a hint of his Texas twang has stayed with me all these years. “John,” (he was preternaturally polite and tried to use everyone’s first name) “If it wasn’t for all of you loving what I did way back when, none of this (his fortune, real estate holdings, winery, etc…) would have been possible. It never gets old and I love to hear it.”

I never doubted the sincerity of what he said for a second.

He was at least 6′6″ and his hand was so big I felt like a five year old again shaking it. We talked about his wine for a while and how proud he was of the syrahs and pinot noirs his son Eli was making. “I’m just the front man,” he would tell everyone, “Eli is the one doing all the work.”

It was a shame that his winery was disguised for the scene in Sideways when Paul Giamatti drinks directly from the spit bucket — who knows what negotiations proceeded that decision — but it always heartened me to see his wines garner excellent scores from wine publications (some of his single vineyard chardonnays are worth seeking out as well).

I worshiped someone I didn’t know when I was a small child, and met him over a passion of mine (and his) as a fully formed adult. There seemed to be some beautiful internal poetry in that for me. I cherish a 9×11 color photograph of him hugging me about the shoulders as he towers over and dwarfs me. Both of us have big smiles on our faces.

Fess Parker (1924-2010) R.I.P.