I got the news Monday morning as I was driving through Central Illinois. Bobby Fletcher, my buddy from Washington who I chose to immortalize in print, had passed on over the Memorial Day weekend at the age of 34. I turned off the radio and drove down miles and miles of asphalt, with corn fields on either side of me for what seemed like ages in silence. There is no way to convey to you, readers, just what that crazy son of a bitch truly meant to his friends, his family, and to the automotive community. I took my best shot with the “Ballad of Bobbo” series, which you can read HERE and HERE, but what can you say about a guy who embraced being an internet meme, drove onto an Army installation in a hacked-together big-block Dodge Diplomat with side pipes made out of sewer-grade PVC pipe, and pissed off a tech inspector at Pacific Raceways when the pizza-in-foil he had been warming up for lunch was discovered?

Bobby is one of those precious few people who took the “live” part of “live life to the fullest” and ran with it farther than anyone ever dared to do. The Diplomat he built is one of the most infamous to ever come out of the FJM world that I’m aware of (and I’ve been deep in that world since the dawn of the Internet). In person, his online personality and his in-person experience was one and the same. The flame-throwing Razor scooter that he gained Internet fame for was real and functional. The Diplomat went from a small-blocked screamer that would do donuts on command to a big-block beast that, looks aside, he put his heart, soul, and engineering prowess into to make work…and it did, rather well, so long as you look past the transmission failures. He knew how to say “screw it” and have fun with whatever car he happened to own, whether it was the Baja Bug, the Subaru Legacy he used as a daily beater, or the Ford truck that he drove around.

He’s also the kind of guy who would play a gig with his pants dropped. Bobby didn’t like to party…he was the party. And he wanted everybody to jump in and join the fun, no matter the scene or situation.

I’m gonna miss that crazy f***er. And some angel is going to wonder who just powerslid through the Pearly Gates.