LETTERS FROM HOME: CHARLES HILLINGER & HARD TIMES IN THE BIG EASY

May 1, 1997

Dear Pat,

When a fledgling reporter in Northern California, I read the Los Angeles Times mainly to see what another reporter named Charles Hillinger was up to. He was the Times' version of Charles Kurrault, roaming the West in search of the unusual.

His subjects might be avocado farmers or silent movie queens or big Las Vegas winners, but he always uncovered the quirkiness that made them all-the-more human. Maybe the farmers had discovered a novel use for avocado skins, the actress couldn't afford to go to a beauty shop anymore, the jackpot winner couldn't read.

When I think of Hillinger I think of Bolinas, Calif., a town that dislikes tourists so much that the city limits signs keep disappearing. Hillinger's kind of town.

His writing didn't exactly glow from within, but he always got the real story and considered human nature with some tenderness.

I romanticized him as a hero who had the perfect job.

Then Charles Hillinger came to town.

A local fundamentalist church called The Lighthouse was suddenly news because one of its members, Efrain Rios Montt, had become the president of Guatemala. The Lighthouse had a mission down there.

This was just after the Jonestown mass suicides, so everyone naturally wondered whether the fundamentalist preacher who ran The Lighthouse suddenly might be running Guatemala by proxy.

Hillinger flew in one foggy Sunday morning to find out. He attended a church service and got his interview, in which the preacher assured everyone he had no interest in global politics. (As it turned out, Montt's presidency lasted only a year and a half.)

Hillinger arrived at the newspaper to write his story in a wrinkled suit of indeterminate color. He appeared to be in his mid-50s, ruddy-faced and flabby. He asked if we had a typewriter.

Fortunately, the publisher's secretary hadn't yet been sold on those new-fangled computer things.

Hillinger pummeled the typewriter keys for less than an hour, stopping only to make a few fast phone calls. Then he read the story to someone in Los Angeles.

He had one other thing to say on his way out the door.

"Do you have any vending machines?" he asked.

He bought three candy bars and a cup of coffee known around the newsroom to be the caffeine source of last resort.

I'd hoped to talk to him about The Lighthouse, his life and work but he just waved and said, "Got a plane to catch."

So much for Hillinger's life.

I must be thinking about him now because DC recently found some old pictures of me to show our college friend Carlos. In one is the bearded, longhaired reporter stubbing out a cigarette, before him a kitchen table occupied by a typewriter surrounded by beer cans. I am Charles Hillinger in the making.

In the second photo, taken five years later, I am clean-shaven, coiffed, wearing a white tuxedo shirt. Disillusioned with journalism, I am a New Orleans bartender who serves drinks to hookers, dealers and alcoholic millionaires sitting side-by-side. Years earlier my boss testified before the Rackets Committee investigating organized crime and now has a coke habit, the manager is a former prostitute having trouble going straight and one of the other bartenders calls everybody "Baby" and is a proud racist.

There are innumerable ways to encounter human nature and get the real story. All things considered, Hillinger's was the easy one.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.