Some sad news about a longtime forum member

[Bokonon]

I have sad news about a longtime forum member.

Jim Beek -- who used the alias "JimB+" here on Mercedesshop -- passed away in his sleep last Friday.

I count Jim Beek among the funniest, smartest, sharpest and best read people that I have ever met. I was honored to count Jim among my best friends.

As a mutual friend commented, Jim was a modern day renaissance man. He was well educated and had a dry sense of humor. He also had a love of things mechanical, from cars (particularly diesel Mercedes cars, which he considered "deeply honest" and which he loved above all others) to firearms and vintage watches.

I am sitting here now, at my desk, trying to imagine the future, and trying to grasp the reality that Jim has passed out of reach. Jim's telephone number is still tacked up on the side of my computer monitor, for a call that I owed him regarding some books he'd sent me, but which had not yet arrived. I have several e-mails from him from last Wednesday still in my in box, still unanswered. We were trading viewpoints on E. Howard pocketwatches, and a particular guy that collected everything from fine watches to sailboats to old Packards, but was a complete "tool", in Jim's phrase.

I wish that I could call Jim right now, one last time, and talk to him. The problem is, if I was able to get him on the telephone, I probably would not be able to keep my composure, and Jim would have hated that. "Oh, come ON ... its not that bad," I can hear him muttering if I choked up.

The hard thing to imagine is that these conversations are now over -- the e-mails that would make me laugh out loud, the phone calls that started with Jim's gruff voice saying "Jim Beek here," or the get-togethers when I made my way back to the Washington, D.C. area so that we could share bad food, good beer and the occasional cigar. That ... and his perpetual attempts to get me to buy an old Mercedes diesel, if for no other reason than to annoy my wife.

Jim's passing is a loss. A major loss. For his many friends on this forum.

I was privileged to know him.

I'll let everyone know what the memorial plans are when they become known. At this point, we seem to be looking at a service in early January, in the Washington D.C. area.

-- Bokonon