It was 2005 and I was browsing the Green Bay News-Chronicle forum — remember those? — when a friend dropped a great anarcho-libertarian quote that he attributed to Wally Conger — wait, what?

Wally was a good friend and entrepreneur I had never met. Back in the sixties when we were both teenagers, he sent copies of his fanzine Spidey Fan to anyone who had a letter printed in Spider-Man comics. (It was a more innocent time when the writers’ full names and addresses were printed on the letters page.) That was how Wally and I became friends, as pen pals bonding over Webhead.

We lost track over the years — after all, I lived in New Jersey and then Wisconsin, and he was in California in those pre-internet days when long-distance calls cost a lot of money. 

So, to see his name attached to a bit of wisdom was a surprise — not because it was wise, but because it was Wally Conger.

Since now it was 2005, it only took a few minutes to determine that yes, it was MY Wally Conger, and that our political philosophies had grown along similar lines — possibly rooted in our admiration for a vigilante with the proportional strength of a spider.

We reconnected with joy. Wally introduced me to blogs, and that led me to podcasting and everything else I do online.

He was an outspoken and brilliant writer whose contributions to the cause include “The Anti-Electorate Manifesto” and “Greetings From Ground Zero.” He had married a woman he adored named Debbie, and I was living with a wonderful woman named Carol Jean (you may know her as Red) whom I would marry eventually, and in email conversations and two or three phone calls, we agreed it would be fun when Debbie and Cj met, somewhere down the road.

I followed his online career — he put out some interesting ebooks about agorist theory and business ventures, as well as some podcasts with the likes of Scott “Rhino Success” Alexander. He was a champion of Refuse to be Afraid and did an interview with me about A Scream of Consciousness, helping me to promote my first two non-fiction books.

Wally and Deb joined the exodus from California and lived in Reno in recent years, where among other activities they hosted a monthly movie night that sounded like great fun in his Facebook posts. I loved his film recommendations and usually agreed with them, although ironically his favorite movie, The Third Man, still leaves me flat after repeated viewings.

He hated clowns and loved posting creepy pictures of clowns and Easter rabbits.

I missed my chance to introduce Wally and Deb to Red, but finding a way to bring Mary out there has been high on my “things to do after I retire” list.

So it really slammed me to the floor when Deb messaged me the other day to say Wally died suddenly on April 21. I hadn’t really stopped laughing at this year’s crop of creepy Easter rabbits.

I’m still in shock. I have always described Wally as the best friend I’ve never met, but I always assumed we would meet someday. There was plenty of time — Wally was a couple years younger than me, and I’m still here, right?

I can’t write a eulogy that would do proper justice to a guy I never met — I know nothing of any dark sides and I never sat in a smoky room where he was enjoying a (hopefully) fine cigar. I only know the cheerful curmudgeon that was his public persona, along with long-ago letters and a few heartfelt emails and conversations. That was enough to tell me he was a courageous guy willing to step out of his comfort zone to try something new, like fanzines and blogs and podcasts and ebooks, or striking up a conversation in a coffee shop to see if he had a skill set he could lease to a new friend. That was one of his business models.

I do know he was the best friend I never met, and I hate that now I never will. I miss him dearly.