2013-10-16_16-08-04_402.jpg.jpeg

The lawn chair is where Herbie sat for more than a year, homeless on Hawthorne. The flowers were placed there after he died this week.

(Tom Hallman Jr.)

The photograph arrived Wednesday via cellphone: A vase of flowers propped up on a lawn chair. Taped to a wall above the display was a sign.

Herbie Died.

10/13/13

Thanks everyone who helped him.

Most people saw Herbie a handful of times a year. But they knew nothing about the man, not even his age or last name. At best he’d get a wave from a customer while he went about his business in the open kitchen at

on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.

But now he was gone, and so, too, was another bit of old Portland.

Even if you’ve never been to Hawthorne or

you need to know about Herbie.

It’s a story about a street.

It’s what happens when a man realizes his time is over.

It begins at Nick's and ends about 10 blocks away on the corner of 47th Avenue, where a sign, vase and lawn chair serve as a tombstone.

* * *

Back in the day, Hawthorne was a gritty, blue-collar place that regulars called “the avenue” because boulevard sounded too uptown for a street featuring vacant buildings, an XXX-rated arcade and a parking lot where you could buy drugs.

The only bright spots were the

and just a few doors up the street, Nick’s Famous Coney Island, which opened in 1932. In 1960, the original owner sold the business and the building to an employee.

Frank Nudo didn’t change a thing. Nick’s remained a no-frills tavern. But Nudo’s charm – at heart he was an actor who remembered everyone’s first name – attracted both the city’s working class and the elite who would cross the river for lunch. Step inside on any given day and you’d find the mayor, big-time businessmen and judges eating Coney Island dogs alongside truck drivers, carpenters and old-timers nursing a cheap draft beer.

Nudo had two employees: The Commander ran the register and took orders. Herbie handled the kitchen.

By 2008, Hawthorne was hip and Nudo cashed in by selling the restaurant and the building. He retired and The Commander and Herbie were cut loose. Nick's closed for seven months, then reopened with a new operator. The Commander died a few years back.

And Herbie just faded away.

***

Then about 16 months ago, Herbie appeared like a ghost on Hawthorne near the

– about 10 blocks up from Nick's – where a waitress and a chef were his friends.

Michael Emert, a certified public accountant who works out of a building he owns across the street from

, saw Herbie walking on Hawthorne.

“He recognized me from being at Nick's,” Emert said. “He said he was looking for work. He dreamed of being a cook someplace, but he couldn’t get hired.”

Hawthorne had no need for a man like Herbie.

“He really didn’t know how to cook anything,” Emert said. “He was good at making sauce, shredding cheese and chopping onions. But who needed that on Hawthorne?

“That Hawthorne,” Emert said, “was long gone.”

Emert kept bumping into Herbie and asked him what he planned to do. Herbie said he didn’t know, and one day admitted he was homeless and near broke.

“He told me he had two addictions in his life -- alcohol and gambling,” Emert said. “He liked playing video poker games at bars around here.”

Tony Abbott, the Space Lounge chef who was Herbie's friend, said Herbie’s life spun out of control about two years ago when his rental home out in deep Southeast was sold.

“He had to move and wanted to come back to Hawthorne,” Abbott said. “He’d spent 35 years at Nick's. The street was his life and he wanted to be back.”

Herbie told the chef he had about $1,000 a month in Social Security and veteran benefits. But Hawthorne rents had skyrocketed.

Emert let Herbie use his office telephone number to call around for a place, but even a low-end room rented for more than $400 a month, not counting utilities.

And with the drinking and gambling, he had nothing left.

***

“He was a proud man,” said his waitress friend, Debbie Maier. “He wouldn’t take a handout. I told him there were motels where he could pay weekly, but the gambling ate up most of his money.”

He finally told Maier he’d made a decision.

“Since he had no place to go,” she said, “he came back to the place he knew best and where he had the best time of his life – Hawthorne.”

About a year ago, Herbie admitted to Emert that he had nowhere to go and wouldn't live in a shelter.

“It would be on Hawthorne,” Emert said.

So the accountant let Herbie sleep in the alcove of his building. Herbie always made sure he was gone and the place clean when the office opened for business. He'd sit around the corner in a lawn chair throughout the day.

“He was robbed and once viciously beat up,” Emert said. “ He had his sleeping bags stolen, his suitcases and even that folding chair. I think he had four coats stolen.”

Herbie said he had a sister who lived in Gresham who offered him a place to stay. “But he told me that he would be out of his community,” Emert said.

A few months ago, Herbie asked Emert if he would pray for him.

“I told him the truth,” Emert said. “I had been.”

***

The neighbors started looking out for Herbie.

Management at the Space Room made sure he had something to eat each day.

Todd Bertges, who lives in a house next to Emert’s building, let Herbie store his belongings there so they wouldn’t be stolen.

“He would sit on that chair all day,” Bertges said. “He was well-groomed. He’d spend the day reading the paper, talking with people and going on little walks around Hawthorne.

“The street,” he said, “was his world.”

A few months ago, Herbie started losing weight and ended up in the hospital. When he was released, he came back to Hawthorne.

He told Emert that doctors had discovered cancer.

“He told me he didn’t know how long he had to live,” Emert said.

A week ago, gaunt and ill, he ended up in the hospital again where doctors found that cancer had spread over 95 percent of his body.

He never returned to Hawthorne.

He died last Sunday.

He had told Maier that he wanted his ashes spread on Sauvie Island, and she's working to make it happen.

What few belongings he had left were donated to Goodwill.

On Wednesday, Bertges and Emert set out the chair and flowers.

His name was Herbie Chinn.

He was 67.

--Tom Hallman Jr.