They gathered in their best suits on a warm, sunny fall Saturday, old men with young men's nicknames -- Eddie and Kelly and Irish and Char-lie.
Some years had passed since they'd all been together. Now they stood, hair gone gray or white or simply vanished completely, to bid farewell to a friend.
As they paid their last respects and talked about days gone by -- as men with many years behind them to remember are inclined to do -- they decided this moment marked the passing of an era.
William "Tex" Hall is the man they bowed their heads to on Oct. 10. To them he ranked among the late great singers of country music -- Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hank Wil-liams Sr.
Hall never made it big, never took his guitar much further than the taverns south of town and a country radio station across the riv-er in Iowa. He died of liver cancer at 77, having given up the dreams of glory decades before.
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But for a few bright, shining years, he played his guitar and sang sweet tenor over the airwaves of Lincoln.
Hall played the fiddle, too, along with mandolin and banjo. He never had a lesson, never lived in Texas. They introduced him as "Nebraska-born Tex" when he began singing on local radio stations in 1940.
By the 1950s he had his own televi-sion gig on KFOR, the city's first television station -- playing country tunes in short sets during breaks in afternoon westerns. Later he would play on "Bar 10 Ranch," a children's show, and others, their names long since forgotten.
He had a following then, and the fan mail came -- scrawled words of praise delivered with 3-cent postage stamps.
And he made a mark on the lives of men.
Ed "Eddie" Alles helped carry Hall's coffin. He counted 23 cars in the parking lot and 60 heads in the chapel. When he talked with his old buddies -- the men who gathered in Hall's living room years ago and who took part in the heydays of Lincoln's live radio entertainment -- they agreed Tex deserved something more.
Late this week, Alles played a scratchy Scotch recording of a morning radio show he and Hall hosted on KLMS. "The Log Cabin Boys," they called it.
The slight 73-year-old turns on the Duk Ane, a suitcase-sized tape player, a dinosaur in a microchip world.
The tape unwinds, scratchy and faded. Even so, suddenly, it is a snowy morning in November 1953. A gentle country tune, "My Old Cabin Home in the Mountains," fades in and out, and a 32-year-old Hall breaks in with a "Well, howdy ... " and a warning for folks to be careful on the city's slick streets.
For the next 15 minutes, "Tex and Eddie" play requests. "Flower Blooming in the Wild Wood" and "Mansion on the Hill."
Then Hall dedicates a Hank Williams tune to his daughter.
"I want to send this out to my little girl this morning," the young man's voice says as his white-haired singing partner listens 45 years later. "I expect she's missing me."
Alles shakes his head and fast forwards the old reel-to-reel.
"Boy, Tex was one of the best country music guitarists ever born," he says. "He was just gifted.
"He was a good 'ol boy and he had a lot of friends."
Enoch "Kelly" Kellogg among them. More than 50 years ago -- could it be so long? --he would rush home from Everett Junior High School, eat his lunch while listening to Halls' "Blue Ridge Kids" program on KFAB.
"He played on the radio," said Kellogg, now 67 and retired. "He was a celebrity."
The school boy played the guitar too. Eventually, he met the man he admired.
He and his friends and their guitars gathered in the older man's living room, picking tunes -- Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff and old time gospel -- while Hall's seven children tried to sleep in the bedrooms down the hall.
Charles "Charlie" Patterson, 68, remembers those days. "Tex was always so helpful," Patterson said. "The type of guy who was interested in young people, steering you right -- that kind of thing."
Most of the men at Hall's funeral were younger by a decade. In those early years the accomplished musician had been a mentor.
"He'd been around more than the rest of us," said Elwin "Irish" Donahoo. "He gave me a lot of encouragement to play."
Donahoo and Hall played on radio and television -- for the grand opening of Demma's Market at 48th and O streets and at Gold's Department Store's fashion shows downtown.
That ended when television and recordings stole away the live music business these men loved.
His friends kept their day jobs and Hall, who played guitar for free while his wife paid the bills, drifted into house painting to make ends meet.
As the years passed they saw each other less and less.
In 1993, Alles' daughter threw him a surprise birthday party. All the guys came and brought their guitars.
"We had a real jam session then," said Alles. "That's the last time we played together."
The old men with the young men's nicknames ... and Tex.