One of my best friends in life, Bob Chandler, died last night. I felt it in my sleep. Dr. Robert Chandler, "Bob" to everybody, was a historian for the Wells Fargo Bank History Department for decades. I met Bob about 1980 through Doug McDonald, and we were best friends forever more. Bob was a unique historian - one with a tremendous sense of humor, wit and an uncanny ability to tell stories. His specialties were certainly the Express business, but also Gold Rush monetary systems and California in the Civil War. Our first mutual project was going to be a Wells Fargo display in Reno in 1983. We built cases, got everything ready, then the economy tanked, and we shelved the project. My own passion for collecting rare western documents led to many discussions, as we learned things together about the western financial systems during and just after the Gold…