When Bill Hubbard died last week at 91, the Pioneer Valley lost its dean of antique dealers. With his passing went a moving, breathing repository of knowledge to which I once had privileged access. I usually took his advice as gospel, and on the rare occasion I strayed — once — I got scalded. Lesson learned. Bill knew antiques and those who peddled them.

My first memory of Bill, known to his closest friends and wife Eleanor as “Hub,” is a lean, tallish, balding and bespectacled man with a professorial air about him, the father of my best friend, from Sunderland. I was in the fifth grade and had met this friend, the late Jon Hubbard, playing baseball. We became instant pals and swapped sleepover weekends at each other’s homes through junior high school, wearing a deep bicycle path between South Deerfield and Sunderland.

I didn’t know it then but Bill, his classic home and its Americana planted a seed in fertile loam blanketing my bedrock; gray, cranial matter in which it would eventually sprout, take root and bear tasty fruit. It was Bill who showed me what it meant to be a New Englander with deep Connecticut Valley roots. The decorating style he introduced to me was at first, in my wayward, distracted youth, ignored, then chased with hungry passion as an adult collector and hunter. Fact is I’m still collecting. Always will. Not to mention reading and exploring. All because of what I observed around that Hubbard homestead.

At the beginning, I recall the shop, the office, the barn and the customers. Then there was hired hand Dave Pinardi from North Amherst, a pleasant North Amherst chap who reminded me a lot of my artist Uncle Ray and repaired furniture and picture frames and whatever between visits from customers; also everyone’s favorite insurance man, Billy Burns, then a recent Deerfield grad performing odd jobs around the place, taking us to his city-league ballgames at night. That was before Bill had opened his auction gallery, and his shop drew an eclectic, distinguished crowd: from tall Amherst tycoon Walter Jones in that big Stetson hat (I think it was a Stetson) and devilish grin, to flamboyant Poet Laureate Archibald Macleish in one of his flashy tartan kilts, to the first openly gay couple I ever laid eyes upon, New Yorkers to whom I later made a few weekend antique deliveries to their secluded Ashfield country home. My introduction to these alternative types taught me at a young and impressionable age that just because someone is “different” doesn’t mean they’re weird or dangerous. I found the two men to be bright, articulate, genial and generous, also interesting, and I will always entertain fond memories of them and their warm demeanor.

After he had opened the North Amherst auction gallery that made him a small fortune, I vividly recall the time Bill came upstairs early one morning, woke Jon and me and asked us if we wanted to take a ride and make a few bucks. We popped out of bed, threw on our clothes and accompanied his crew — two vans and a U-Haul truck as I recall — to the picturesque western corridor of Connecticut, where we cleaned out a colonial hilltown mansion from cellar to attic, a fascinating treasure hunt I will never forget. I once even worked as a runner at his auction but regretfully didn’t stick with it. By then I had discovered other enticing interests and couldn’t get far enough away from adult supervision. But I came back to Bill as an adult and built a new friendship I cherished. He had a classy, venerable way about him and taught me things I will never forget, may someday even share with my son and grandsons if ever they become interested in arts and antiques and the hands that crafted them.

I visited Bill at the first nursing home he entered in Hadley several years ago, then saw him often at Charlene Manor, right down the road from me. But I never did get to the Holyoke Soldiers Home he died at. It was faraway and too difficult. Every time I walk into one of those places I remember my late grandmother, the one who bailed me out of many jams, begging me, tears flowing, to take her home. It left a permanent scar. Have I a choice, no one will ever get me into one of those places. Sadly, sometimes there is no choice.

I miss talking to Bill at his museum-quality antique home. We’d sit there in matching La-Z-Boys talking about this and that, maybe even gossiping a bit — that rare, diminutive Deerfield tap table between us, carved shore birds and books behind him, Miss Childs’ handsome, Federal, tiger-maple desk and bookcase from Conway facing us, its ancient lacquered patina gleaming like a harbor beacon. I loved to pick Bill’s brain and feel fortunate that he welcomed my queries. Life is all about the interesting people you meet. I have met many. Bill was one. Hopefully, there will be many more.

I’m sure I will often think of Bill Hubbard before I join him among the departed; I already do. It was he who placed a precious Sanderson family tall chest in my home, and it was he who warned against buying that four-drawer chest I overpaid for. His spirit lives in both bureaus, and it’ll soon inhabit a special riverside burial ground I never tire of visiting.

Bill and I were brothers of sorts, our deepest roots crossing in many places, some bright, some dark, all sacred. We were kindred valley spirits and damn proud of it.