At age 70, Brother Ron is slowing down, and these days he's trying to save your soul with a sign-covered sedan rather than his signature station wagon.

By any measure a Top 3 Milwaukee character, Ronald C. Stanis has been cruising city streets for 33 years now, ever since his own religious conversion from a past life of carousing, drinking and believing the lies of the devil.

His 1989 Chevy Caprice just looks wrong and unfinished. It falls short of the bizarre standard he set with a string of station wagons and even hearses coated front to back in spiritual and political messages and booming sermons from giant speakers on the roof.

He's hoping to get the ailing 1983 Mercury Colony Park station wagon going again. It's tucked in the garage of his south side home.

"It's losing compression," he told me. "I know it's breaking away from the frame. The tie rods are going. I had to fix the gas line and the brake line and the brake cylinders. The doors won't close proper. The windows won't roll down proper. The lights don't work proper. The horn don't work proper. And a lot of other things."

We met this week at his "office," the McDonald's restaurant on Miller Park Way near National Ave., though we never made it inside. He leaned against that rusty, peeling-gray Chevrolet four-door for nearly two hours and talked about his street ministry and what some call his Jesus mobile.

Why does he do it? Why does he spend his days preaching from a pulpit on four wheels?

"Because you don't," he replied. "Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to be a heavenly cop out there and tell the truth. I owe God so much, and everybody else does, too."

Even Brother Ron's Army jacket bears his messages and an upside-down American flag, along with a yellow silk rose to soften the effect. He wore a winter scarf, a hat decorated with a bald eagle, dirty blue jeans and half-laced work boots. His reddish-gray beard is scraggly. His ears are covered with earmuffs wrapped in duct tape with "Shhh" printed on them to shut out the noise of the world when he's studying God's word.

Brother Ron survived a heart attack and bypass surgery six years ago. You didn't see him crisscrossing Milwaukee as much this winter because it was just too cold. Sometimes he would chat online at home with other street preachers. He doesn't get out as often as he used to.

"It used to be every day, Jim," he says. "You know the old car wears out, the old driver wears out, everything wears out. It's temporary."

That's the heart of his message. What you see here on Earth will pass away and you better get right with God and start thinking about your eternal soul and keeping it out of hell.

But a lot of the messages on his sedan, written in a sort of texting shorthand, are more political in nature, accusing judges, police, lawyers and politicians of being liars. That probably comes from years of being ticketed and arrested on charges that seem custom-made for what he does: "Obstructed driver's vision with unauthorized sign" and "Impeding traffic by slow speed" and "Noise over 50 feet."

"I've been shot at. I've had knives pulled on me. I was thrown in the mental institution. I was thrown in jail with mental patients. The Sheriff's Department wanted to get me hurt or killed. I've had all kinds of vandalism done to my property and my vehicles," he said.

Vandals have damaged the Ten Commandments sign on his house, which he fought in court to keep. "They broke them in more ways than one," he said.

In past versions of his cars, I don't remember the racially offensive messages that he is displaying now, in part because of his disdain for President Barack Obama. And one sign includes the term "retard." Jesus would not be pleased.

Brother Ron, who sometimes refers to himself as Milwaukee's icon, says he has tried to donate his cars as museum pieces and even as Channel 10 auction items.

"They won't touch it. I said, 'Well, it's your loss.'" He also said he called this newspaper years ago and offered his services as a writer. He was rebuffed.

It's tough to break him away from his sermonizing, but he did say he grew up one of seven children on S. 27th St. and wound up in foster care and reform school after quitting school. He drove a truck for a while and opened a Christian car repair shop that didn't work out. His religious conversion came in a tavern in 1981 when he asked God to save him from some enemies who had surrounded him. He also said he's a military veteran.

Brother Ron doesn't have a church at the moment, and he said he has experienced a lot of rejection from traditional ministers, strangers and even his own family, some who see him as a Jesus freak.

He lives with his wife of 43 years. He won't let her ride along with him because, he said, Jesus didn't take women with him when he preached. There was a plastic bag of cookies on his car seat that he said his wife made for him to take along.

Amid all the other junk in his car was a shopping bag holding his Bible along with paper and markers to make more car signs. "I just dream them up, and I wake up and write them down," he said.

People will sometimes spill their guts to Brother Ron. He has tried to deputize some supporters by helping them cover their own cars with signs and speakers, but their families and neighbors put a stop to it.

Brother Ron said he doesn't worry about what people think of him. Normal is a broad enough term to include guys like him, he thinks. And he expects to meet God some day and be told, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

"What I want to do is get the word out there. I'd write it in the sky if somebody gives me a million dollars or whatever it costs," he said.

Brother Ron accepts whatever local fame he has earned. He talks only half in jest about having a section of S. 27th St. named for him someday.

"I wanted to change Milwaukee from the beer that made Milwaukee famous to the boy that made Milwaukee famous. The boy and the Bible. The Bible and the boy. I hope I did that, and a lot of people said I have."

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com.