"I'm tired of drinking, " Yarbrough told a Reporter-News photographer two weeks before his death. "I'm tired of this lifestyle. I'm ready for the Lord to take me."

Yarbrough had been ill, but he refused to see a doctor. His body was discovered by another transient in the vacant warehouse behind Spirits of Abilene, the liquor store at 917 S. Treadaway that he listed as his mailing address.

A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he was buried three days later in Oplin Cemetery in a service performed by Mark Hewitt, pastor of The Mission. He was given a 21-gun salute in recognition of his military service.

"Everybody liked old Tom," said Joe Martin, the liquor store owner who doled out Yarbrough's Social Security check to him in appropriate amounts for food and liquor for the last six years.

"Them liquor salesman were always joking with him," Martin said. "He'd been around here so long that everybody knew him."

Near the end, Yarbrough had quit coming inside the store. Instead, he just walked up to the drive-through window, Martin said.

"You could just see him getting a little slower," Martin said. "He didn't clean up at all after a while.

"It was his choice. He could have lived a different way, but he didn't want to do it."

The day before he died Yarbrough complained that his hip was hurting him, Martin said.

"He wanted something to drink and I wouldn't give it to him," he said. "I gave him a glass a water and told him to go lay down. He looked like he was sick."

Yarbrough came back about 1 p.m. and bought a quart of beer.