Hinterberger To Go -- Some Reflections, Friends, As This Column Inches To A Close

The days dwindled down . . .

This is the last of my midweek columns for the Scene section, with the exception of some occasional guest columns. My food and restaurant pieces will continue in Tempo and Pacific.

And although this change will free me up to devote more time to my daily radio talk show, my feelings as this final day approached got pretty close to some raw emotion. I will miss it - terribly.

How did I ever get to be a newspaper columnist, anyway? I guess it all began with Lou Guzzo. Or maybe with the novelist, Tom Robbins.

You know Lou - as a television commentator. But back then I knew him as an editor and columnist. It was the early '60s, and the world was innocent, going to San Francisco (or Berkeley or San Jose or Fremont) with flowers in its hair.

I had just been hired by The Seattle Times as its police reporter. I had never written a police story in my life.

I had written a couple of plays. Some poems. And I had apprenticed at The Times as a summer replacement reporter.

I had just gotten my M.A. from the UW. Not in journalism; in drama. I had never taken a journalism class in my life, either. Nevertheless, I was off to the Cop Shop. Ready for a life of crime - overjoyed.

Two weeks later, Tom Robbins sidetracked my life. Robbins had been working as Lou Guzzo's back-up critic and fine-arts writer. Guzzo was The Times' Arts and Entertainment head and its drama critic. Robbins quit. He wanted to write books or something.

I got a call from the City Desk: Guzzo wanted me to replace Robbins.

"Why?" I asked.

Because you have degrees in drama and fine arts and he needs you as a critic.

"Critic! I hate critics! None of them know ANYTHING about what they write!" I said. (And I still half-believe that.)

But we will add three years' seniority to your pay if you become a film and drama critic, they said.

Still hating critics, I became one. As a reporter, I had an occasional byline. As a critic, I had a byline and my picture in the paper.

"You'll get known in this town," said an old photographer.

"Hmmph. I could have been a hard-boiled cop chaser."

But I discovered I enjoyed writing film reviews, and I felt at home writing about theater. I stayed with it for several years - until the late '60s, when the Vietnam War was spilling over into America's streets. The nation was in agony and I was going to movies, eating popcorn.

My hair had gotten long. I had regrown the beard I had in college.

Fed up with Dean Martin Westerns, I went to the managing editor - Henry MacLeod - and asked to be sent to Vietnam to cover the war.

"We can't send the movie critic to Vietnam!" he said.

"I'm a former Special Forces sergeant," I said. "I can JUMP in. Not only that, I'd probably even survive."

Out of the question, he said.

I almost quit the newspaper that week. Not in a huff, but almost in despair. I felt history - the biggest story of my life - was passing me by. I had exploratory talks with some young war correspondents who were starting up in Saigon, Dispatch News. We never quite connected.

But at least I was going to stop seeing Dean Martin Westerns for the duration. I asked for a transfer to the City Desk as a reporter. Goodbye popcorn; hello real world.

The real world in Seattle was a mess. Student protests; tear-gas weekends on University Way. The SDS in dark houses and darker taverns. Pachouli oil.

I would never again smell marijuana without linking it with tear gas, late nights, the seductive sniff of conspiracy and huge, ghastly hamburgers at the Hasty Tasty at 2 a.m.

I bought a cowhide jacket and a British motorcycle. That made it easier to move back and forth between protesters and cops. To my surprise, after six months in the streets, the paper asked me to write a column. It ran every Saturday. It was called Nightbeat. They ran it on Page One. My picture was back in the paper.

I remember the first Nightbeat column. It involved a stabbing witnessed in a First Avenue tavern; somebody trying hopelessly to mop up blood with an old brown paper bag. Which wasn't absorbent. Guy standing there amazed at the hole, peeking at it between bloody fingers, not wanting to go with the cops.

The war years passed. One column a week became three. I got a little mature; got another picture. Got married; started a family. The baby didn't like my beard. It came off. Started writing humor columns on Sundays.

Then came belly dancers at the House of Greece; the Venusian Church and free love (free? It was a clearance!); tennis elbows and the first hot tubs (". . . I have precious little discretion but damn good knees"). Started the Washington State Gas Works Park Chili Championship and Duck Stampede. Printed the recipe for Clam Spaghetti. The Prefect and live Alaska crabs racing through the kitchen like terrified tap dancers.

Rode up the Oregon Trail on my motorcycle. Tried to get on Richard Nixon's Enemies List - and failed. Blow-dried hair by Gene Juarez.

Somehow managed to set my front lawn on fire while burning weeds, which went underground overnight and ignited ancient telephone poles buried underneath turf. Woke up to fire trucks. Firefighters chopping at my front lawn with axes as I gaze in astonishment, clad only in Budweiser towel. Neighbors nodding heads at dawn.

Could he write a restaurant column, too? Sure. As a joke, decides to run for water commissioner. Job loss threatened. Begs voters to let him lose. Wins primary. Loses, barely, in final. Ex-wife runs instead, and wins in a sweep.

He could really do a number on the Paris fashion shows? Goes twice. Gets kicked out from backstage at YSL by French undercover cops while interviewing naked models, none of whom speak English.

Learns to drive race car and wonders about life.

Bitten by fit of activism, starts up Bucket Brigade to protest S & L ripoff. Goes to Washington. Shy writer goes public. Survives stage fright and national TV. Gets talk show.

Things kind of changed . . .

I had always thought of the column as something wondrous, with a life of its own, happening over a long, long time. But it wasn't. It was short. So short.

These precious days I spent with you.

John Hinterberger's restaurant and food columns appear in The Times in Sunday's Pacific magazine and Friday's Tempo.