Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."



Bob Greene says ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere.



(CNN) -- It was still early enough in the evening that the main dinner crowd had not yet started to show up; the restaurant, east of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, was less than half-filled.



The party of 10 at the table by the front window had arrived promptly for their 6 p.m. reservation. Nine of the 10 studied their menus, but the 10th, the man at the head of the table, did not.



Muhammad Ali, 67, stared down toward the white tablecloth and drew on a piece of paper. He sketched a picture of a mountain.



There are a handful of men among us who, simply by appearing out of nowhere, make other men and women pause involuntarily to consider the long paths of their own lives. It is as if these men have always been with us, and if you should unexpectedly spot Bob Dylan in an airport, if you should see Paul McCartney walking through a hotel lobby, if you should encounter Sean Connery entering an office building, it will bring you up short. It's like opening a diary, even if you have never met them, even if you have never seen them except on a television set or a movie screen.



Yet Ali is different even from them. Ali -- his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible -- makes people mist up the moment they lay eyes on him. It was happening tonight inside this restaurant called the Rosebud Steakhouse; diners at their own tables, not quite sure for a second that they were really seeing what they were seeing, let their gazes linger and could not look away.



Ali drew.



The other men and women at his table -- this was a gathering of family and friends to celebrate a birthday, and Ali had come into Chicago from his farm in Michigan -- talked animatedly and laughed. Ali did not speak. He wore a blue-and-white Hawaiian-style shirt; someone had tucked a white napkin into the space above the top button.



Over the speaker system of the restaurant, a slowed-down acoustic knockoff of the old Tom Petty hit "Free Fallin' " was playing softly:



"She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis ..."



A family, across the way, talked spiritedly among themselves. They were deciding something.



The father and the children stood up.



From the ceiling, the song:



"... and I'm free, free fallin' ..."



They walked over to Ali's table.



"We apologize for the intrusion," the father said.



Ali looked toward them, showing a gentle expression.



The father had a camera. He said to his children: "This is the most famous face in the world."



It is difficult to know what the children made of this. Youth and strength and beauty are so fleeting. The man in the Hawaiian shirt once embodied all of those things, before these children were born. Three times the world heavyweight boxing champion, the center of global fascination and frenzied controversy after winning his first title and then changing his name from Cassius Clay, endlessly mesmerizing with his float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee ring style, called "the greatest of all time" so often that the words became almost an official designation, the sight of his flawless face and the sound of his confident-beyond-all-dispute voice a sustaining part of the very atmosphere. ...



But his road has turned hard, and here were these children, who were not around for any of that, standing with their father next to the table.



Ali's family members and friends said it would be all right for the father to take some photos, so he did. When he left, Ali went back to his drawing.



More diners were beginning to
who said that ali embodied youth What did Bob Greene say? What did Greene say about Ali's life? What did Green say Ali embodied?
Bob Greene ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere. his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible Youth and strength and beauty
question: who said that ali embodied youth, answer: Bob Greene | question: What did Bob Greene say?, answer: ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere. | question: What did Greene say about Ali's life?, answer: his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible | question: What did Green say Ali embodied?, answer: Youth and strength and beauty