old man

Tim sounds like one mean hard living, dried out old cowboy. And you just know all that "telling it how it is" meant Tim was someone you would not want to rub the wrong way. 

This dude just wanted to ride the bus, but went out on a limb and lied about his identity. It's literally like a sitcom episode where one lie snowballs into a web of bigger and bigger lies. Sounds stressful. While lying is usually the wrong thing to do, people do it all day every day. Sometimes the results work out way too well.