Author Louis L'Amour worked seven days a week writing books, and so he had only a couple of close friends, his widow, Kathy L'Amour, said Wednesday from her Colorado ranch.

One of them was a Jamestown pharmacist.

The friend, Reese Hawkins, 87, gives free talks about his friendship with L'Amour, who died after a bout with cancer in 1988. Hawkins' next talk is scheduled Monday at the Bismarck Elks Lodge.

Kathy L'Amour said her husband left the world 122 volumes - short story collections, novels and poetry. All are still in print and, to date, 270 million books have been sold.

L'Amour said, in an interview from her Durango ranch, that one of the things she and her husband learned from having a friendship with Reese and Reese's wife, Margaret, was that "the best thing in life is to have great friendships … how meaningful they are, how rich."

In turn, Hawkins said knowing L'Amour changed his life.

"I'd never known anyone (who had) accomplished anything like he had in any field," Hawkins said.

His association with L'Amour began in the early 1970s after L'Amour - born in 1908 and raised in Jamestown, the son of a veterinarian - was in North Dakota after being picked to be a recipient of a North Dakota Roughrider award. It's the highest honor the state gives to its highly successful natives, Hawkins said. Portraits of the recipients hang in the state Capitol.

Margaret Hawkins was the one who pushed for his nomination after she found out at a Jamestown book club meeting that L'Amour was a North Dakota native. Reese Hawkins had never read a L'Amour novel, which they sold at the Hawkins Drugstore in Jamestown. Margaret suggested he read one and he was hooked, not able to sleep that night until he'd finished the entire book.

When Hawkins later traveled to California on family business and had lunch with L'Amour, who lived in Los Angeles, the friendship took off. The two families would meet in California or for L'Amour's research trips or for a fun time at the Durango ranch.

Getting to know down-to-earth L'Amour and the people around him in California - movie directors working on film adaptations of his work, actors and others - helped him realize that these high-profile people were just like anyone else.

"They were good, fine people. I've never met a friend of theirs who wasn't an outstanding, fine person."

"It gives you a different outlook," he said. "As a result, I feel more confident when I meet someone," he said.

He said L'Amour was an average man, but a great man, too.

"His characters in the book reflect his character - high moral standards, a wonderful family man."

Kathy L'Amour said she was a working actress in California, "I was just a kid," who had had parts in television shows such as "Gunsmoke" and "Death Valley Days," when she met L'Amour through a friend.

She said her passion was acting until she met L'Amour, who, at that point, had published some short stories and was then just on the edge of doing well.

She said being around him was fascinating. "I was just a kid … I learned everything from him," said Kathy L'Amour, who calls herself an average person and calls her husband "special."

This was a man who as a child spent hours at Jamestown's library and in the family library reading, on his own initative, great works by Socrates and others. By age 15, school wasn't enough for him, and he left to travel the world for 20 years, doing everything from skinning cattle to working on ships to boxing professionally.

Hawkins said the day L'Amour's high school class in Jamestown was graduating L'Amour was making his own way on the other side of the world in Shanghai.

As an adult, L'Amour had a habit of reading seven newspapers a day, subscribed to 30 magazines, read more than 100 nonfiction books a year and could converse about anything from ancient politics and warfare to music, science, medicine and fashion, Kathy L'Amour said.

"He was the most incredible person… and his values were fantastic," she said.

If he said he was going to do something or be somewhere at a certain time, he'd be there, he'd do it - and their two grown children are the same way.

She left acting for a life with him.

"I felt I couldn't be married and have a career. Something suffers … I don't care what anyone says," she said.

She said they never fought, "It was magical relationship. He was easy to live with."

"It was the great adventure."

He didn't have a temper, she said. He had no problem when his children, Beau and Angelique, would interrupt his writing sessions in his home studio. Research trips and promotional tours were done with the family. Her husband wanted the children to be exposed to everything.

The main getaway from Los Angeles for 38 years remains the Colorado ranch where Kathy L'Amour, on the board of Mesa Verde Foundation, is this week. She's on the path of trying to raise about $25 million for a visitors center near the ancient cliff dwellings - and a suitable place for the 3 million artifacts that are now being stored and are deteriorating in a tin shed. Meanwhile, Hawkins has projects of his own. He said he hopes his collection of L'Amour letters, signed books and other memorabilia - thought to be the largest outside of L'Amour's family collection - will have a home someday at a new L'Amour center or museum.

"We'd like a new building that would reflect his accomplishments," he said.

Hawkins will speak at 7 p.m. Monday at the Elks Lodge, 900 S. Washington St., to members of the Westerners and anyone else who wants to attend. Dinner, ordered off the Elks menu, starts earlier at 5:30 p.m.

The Westerners meet every first Monday at the Elks unless there is a field trip elsewhere. The group invites a variety of speakers, usually focusing on Western history topics.

For more information about joining the group, call Vern Davis at 663-9291.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com)