I'm not really sure how this came up today ... but my dad and I got on the subject of stories that seem to just disappear once certain people die.
Here's the story he was thinking of:
Backdrop: The sidewalk on the corner across the street from my house as a kid was an odd color and didn't match the slabs surrounding it. One day, my dad struck up a conversation with the old man that lived there (as he typically did over random things) about the discoloration.
It seems that right at the edge of this guy's property used to be where the city maintenance ended and, originally, there was no sidewalk. Things were getting bigger and the city eventually decided to put in sidewalk.
The very same day they were pouring the corner, old Sheriff Sam from up the street was on a drinking binge and wandered down to join the party - paper bag covered wine bottle and all. In his drunken state and jovial spirit, he took the red wine he was drinking and poured it into the batch of cement they were mixing.
They poured the sidewalk anyway and it was a funny color from day one.
Talk about small town character...