I sat down to watch the local news on TV last night, and learned that one of my oldest friends is dead.

I’ve written about him here before, calling him “Elmer.” Since I don’t know how his family would react to my reminiscences (though I have no reason to think they’d be offended), I’ll continue to use that name.

Elmer and I met in elementary school, back in Kenyon. As our class’s social hierarchy evolved, the two of us found ourselves thrown together more and more, not because of similar interests or personalities, but as partial outsiders, boys who didn’t play well with others. A sturdy, black-haired kid, Elmer was not in the least diffident, and if he possessed any sense of shame I never saw a sign of it. He loved to say and do provocative things, just to get a reaction.

After high school we lost touch for a while. Like many others of our generation, he got sucked into the drug culture, and had some trouble with the law.

When he received Christ as his Savior, he lived it out in his accustomed, off-center way. Instead of returning to the Lutheranism he’d been raised in, or even joining an ordinary evangelical church, he joined a Messianic synagogue. He became a Sabbath observer and went kosher one better by adopting a vegetarian diet.

He used to call me once or twice a year. His great passion was end times prophecy. Every time he called he’d have a dire warning about some international situation that was a clear fulfillment of prophecy and meant Armageddon was coming in a few weeks or months. Six months or a year later he’d call again, entirely untroubled by the failure of his previous prophecy, to explain a new date he’d embraced. He’d also invite me to prophecy conferences and events at his synagogue, which of course I always declined.

He was absolutely convinced he knew how to do cold fusion, if he could just find an investor to underwrite the project.

If you listen to conservative talk radio you’ve probably heard his voice, because he used to call most of the national hosts regularly. I heard him on Laura Ingraham and Michael Medved, and I know he called other shows as well.

This past Saturday morning he was on his way to church, when a guy joyriding in a pickup hit him as he crossed the roadway on his bicycle, sending him flying through the air. The driver panicked and fled, while witnesses called for an ambulance. Elmer was rushed to a hospital, where he died. The pickup truck was easily identifiable, and the police were closing in when the driver turned himself in. Charges have been filed.

“Elmer” was one of the more colorful characters in my life story.

I should put him in a book sometime.