Goodbye, Mr. Smith : He wrote about it all. Column after column, year after year. Through him, we got to know about the city we love most, about him, about each other. : Master of the Loneliest Job in Journalism

The last time I saw him out of a wheelchair, he was sly and slim as always, touring guests through The Times and introducing me as his favorite writer, good friend and personal car consultant.

Bald and pleasant overstatements. But in so doing, he turned his importance over to me. Such was the deep and open-hearted kindness of Jack Smith.

The first time we shared anything was a quarter-century earlier when he was established, widely syndicated, and to Los Angeles what Herb Caen is to San Francisco and Mike Royko to Chicago and Jimmy Breslin to New York. A conscience, a muse, a crier.

I was trying to be the same to Phoenix, producing 800 nervous words a day, five anxious days a week, as columnist for the Arizona Republic.

One reference caught Jack’s eye and he called for permission to use it in his column.

Me? You want something from my column? Only with your permission and full credit. Which is about all we columnists get paid, he said.

We columnists. He had made an unknown his peer. Such was the simple generosity and fellowship of Jack Smith.

We were never intimates in the sense of dinner parties and two seats at Dodger games. But we were joined by sharing the persecutions and black addiction of writing daily columns.

Jack believed and I agreed that it is the loneliest job in journalism. Readers love you only when their biases match your opinions. Beat reporters, once allies, show scorn because you have an office and are semi-retired from risking death on dirty streets that give us this day our daily grist.

Writing a column, I used to say, was living a soap opera. Lines are learned one day, performed the next and immediately recycled for endless tomorrows.

Jack quoted Marilyn Hudson, co-hostess of the Round Table West. She believed a daily column is like making love to a nymphomaniac. When you’re finished and think you’re through, you have to start all over again.

Jack was a dinosaur in the most flattering sense of the word.

His prime was our best of times, somewhere between the crassness of “Front Page” and the political correctness of “All the President’s Men.”

He evolved during an era when only editorial writers spoke political arguments, theater critics were curmudgeons, and daily columnists were expected to produce something called human interest.

What a calling a column was. It’s where vignettes of a city find a platform and a few hours of significance. A cop who could hurt despite years of seeing it all. A child’s triumph over an adult ill. Lost love. Found fortune. A leg up for underdogs, a kick in the pants for fat cats, and all in 800 words.

Jack Smith was a master of that and higher levels.

He crafted phrases and sculpted his column.

He played with words, skinny words, green words and pretty words, until they giggled. He made us think by tweaking and chuckling, not thrashing and cursing. Knowing his foibles made us feel better about not being able to hang a screen door. He wrote of his bad heart and closing in on death and then we knew how important dignity, gratitude and loved ones are to whatever time we have left.

And if sometimes Los Angeles, its people and seedy corners seemed a little brighter and warmer by his words, then maybe that’s how our city really is.

You may not have noticed everything. You may have read through the intent of his past few months and thought that Jack Smith had finally lost his fast ball.

No. He was chronicling his end. Because he accepted that a loyal legion was diminishing and needed to know of his falls, of passing out among friends, of throwing up on a cruise ship. By sharing his humiliations, by forming a common damning of infirmity, maybe his old fans would be less afraid.

In this, Jack took readers with him to the last breath.

The parade never really passed for Jack Smith. But it slowed, inevitably, as he did. We spoke about dwindling days and changing times during our last meeting and there was a sadness in his wry smile.

After a time of early retirements, employee buyouts and layoffs, Jack felt a little uncomfortable visiting The Times. So many young writers. Few old friends. Nobody seemed to know him. He could look around, he said, and wonder if he ever worked here.

But he was happy to be writing one piece a week. It provided purpose and kept a columnist’s juices stirring. He still spent every day searching for ideas. He still dreaded one day groping and finding nothing to write.

Regrets at dropping a daily grind? Just one. Every day had been so much damned fun it’s a shame you don’t get to do life over again.

Today’s cynicism is to believe no person is irreplaceable. Jack Smith is.

He even taught a younger writer instinct.

I’ll bet this piece comes in just under 800 words.