Several months ago I got a call from Steve Scott that included an invitation to lunch. He said he was on a mission to have lunch with people he either did not know or didn’t know well. I didn’t know much about him. I know he is married to Adelyn. I know he sat across from me at the first drum circle here in Columbus, Ga. and that his drum was a big plastic garbage can.

That “drum” should have been enough to let me know that I was about to meet a drummer who might just march to his own beat. We met at Uptown Vietnam Cuisine and he brought gifts.

He is a poet, a musician, a band nerd, a wonderful writer and a parade organizer — at least. I sense that Steve is a man of many layers, and that I have only seen a glimpse of some of the outer ones.

That day at lunch we talked about our lives. About my cancer, our children, his grandchildren and things that make us happy. We also talked about Steve becoming a featured blogger on our Columbus and the Valley magazine website.

We were in the early phases of redesigning our company website, so we couldn’t really talk much about how his blog might fit in. At that point, I wasn’t even sure how my own blog might be delivered.

So our paths crossed every now and again and we updated each other on how our lives were going and how the website design was coming along.

Even after the new blog platform was built and ready, we still got together every once in a while and talked about his future blog. What would he name it? What would he write about? I really think he thought I was going to make some decisions about how his blog would go, but I let him know that he would be completely in control of all those things, and that I would help him as much as he needed me to.

In January of this year, a tragedy struck Steve, his family and all the people in the world who knew his son, Kyle, who died in a car accident near Robertsdale, Ala. I would love to have known Kyle. From all I have seen and read about him, he inherited the zaniest parts of his father, Steve.

I watched Steve get through those tough days, weeks and months, surrounded by a legion of friends and loved ones. Steve has a huge collection of friends. Musicians, artists, Auburn band alumni and people who know and love him from reading the pages of children’s books he has authored.

In a recent Facebook post from Steve, he declared that his tombstone should say, “He squoze out the last drop.”

In the short time that I’ve known him, he embraces life more heartily than almost anyone I know. He is passionate about so many things and I just don’t know how he finds the time to give so much of himself to so many causes.

I hope you’ll subscribe to Steve’s Chattin’ the Hooch blog. It will be a great treat to see our world through his eyes.