Not to mention suicide. She says that’s the tack he planned to take, even deciding upon the gun to use, then decided against it in deference to the feelings of others.

Macbeth was head honcho for a local group of cowboy vintage gun-shooting enthusiasts, but was more interested in the guns’ history and lore than the firearms themselves.

“He had a lot of different interests,” says fellow Old West aficionado Ross Arneson, who received a phone call from Macbeth two weeks ago.

“He wanted to talk about his funeral,” Arneson says. “It’s kind of uncomfortable talking to a guy about that sort of thing, but that’s Rex. That’s what he wanted to do.”

Friend Ron Geppert says Macbeth reminded him of cowboy philosopher Will Rogers.

“He always had a good wit that made sense about mankind. He’d say something and you’d think, ‘Yeah. That makes sense. That’s the way it is,’” Geppert says.

“And that voice. I don’t think anyone in Mankato doesn’t recognize that voice.”

In the 1980s, Macbeth tire shop ads were ubiquitous on local radio and TV. They always featured him dishing out a riff — sometimes in rhyme, sometimes not — that typically had nothing to do with tires, but everything to do with turning him into a Mankato icon.

One ad:

“Most bosses figure that without them, employees would be on welfare. Most employees figure that without them, their bosses would be on Jim Beam.”

If he had a signature ad, it might have been the one that showed him introducing each employee in his family-affair tire store (“... and this is my young’un Jessica. She’s real good at ciphering’ and arithmetic.”)

The ad ended with Macbeth looking out the door.

“I gotta leave ya now cuz I see a customer headed this way ...”

Pause. Stare into camera.

“... or maybe it’s just another relative lookin’ for work.”