CANNON BEACH – The crowd that gathered Wednesday night in the Cannon Beach History Center to listen to stories about the North Coast’s former alternative newspaper, the Upper Left Edge, and to honor its editor, Billy Hults, probably resembled much of the paper’s readership.

Former hippies mixed with current “New Agers,” city activists lingered with musicians and shopkeepers sat next to writers and artists. Their mutual interest: giving a final “thank-you” and farewell to Hults, who suffers from cancer and other medical conditions.

The mood among the standing-room-only crowd, however, was cheerful, and, as the newspaper’s writers doled out their memories, laughter filled the room.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here,” Hults said to shouts of delight and applause as he arrived late and joined his fellow newspaper staff.

From March 1991 to March 2002, Hults and his small team of mostly volunteers published the cocky, whimsical and often insightful broadsheet that had a steady readership from Cannon Beach to Ireland and included San Francisco; Chicago; Wisconsin; and Paris, France.

Watt Childress, a local columnist who got his start at the “Edge,” recalled his first impression of Hults when he saw the editor at Bill’s Tavern in Cannon Beach.

“Billy walked in with a big stack of papers fresh from the printer,” Childress said. “Folks swarmed around him, reached behind him to snatch up copies of the broadsheet like he had just arrived at a potluck with delectable finger food. He seemed comfortable being the center of attention and just being among the people.

“Billy is a folk artist,” Childress added. “He has a knack of bringing together people in the pursuit of happiness.”

Hults delivered his editorial comments in the irreverent paper as “Rev. Billy.” Others on the staff included Sally Lackaff, artist and graphics editor; “Uncle” Michael Burgess, “voice of reason” and writer of a popular “therapy page,” horoscope and column called “Behind the Times”; “Professor” Peter Lindsey, education editor; Peter “Spud” Siegel, “wildlife informant”; June Kroft, writer of June’s Garden; and Victoria Stoppiello, who wrote the “Lower Left Edge” column.

For many of his contributors, the paper offered an outlet for their creative genius, their rants and their serious discussions that other area newspapers might not carry. Headlines were always quotations Hults might have found in books, overheard in conversations or discovered on bathroom walls.

Such headlines included: “I have not come this far to worry about where I’m going now,” which was posted behind the bar in the Old Oregon Tavern in Lincoln City. Another: “Blessed Are the Cracked, For They Shall Let in the Light,” author unknown.

Although he was publisher and editor, Hults said he never edited the stories and columns in the paper.

“I don’t edit; either I printed it or I didn’t. I don’t edit – that’s pretentious,” Hults said. “If I can write better than him, then I’ll write it. If she writes better than I can, then I don’t touch it.”

But he admitted to one minor editing attempt that backfired.

“I tried to edit Professor Lindsey one time. I thought it was just a spelling error, but no, it was a word I had never heard of. But he had.”

The line, contained in Lindsey’s column, talked about a “copse” of alders. “I thought he meant a ‘corpse’ of dead trees,” Hults said.

Lindsey never let Hults forget the mistake – even on Wednesday night when Lindsey read the column and quoted the sentence the way he had originally intended.

Jan McAllister, right, of Cannon Beach, and Cathie Fulton, of Jewell, glance over a November 2001 copy of the Upper Left Edge that was passed out to the audience. McAllister and Fulton met Billy Hults, who published and edited the Upper Left Edge, more than four years ago when they took a class learning to play the washboard taught by Hults.Photo by ALEX PAJUNAS – The Daily AstorianFrom left, Peter “Spud” Siegel, Gary Keiski who wrote the column Dr. Karkeys, graphics editor Sally Lackaff, and June Kroft who wrote the column June’s Garden reminisce over how they became involved in the production of the Upper Left Edge. Photo by ALEX PAJUNAS – The Daily Astorian”It was one of the best sentences I had ever written,” Lindsey said, mournfully.

Hults said he was proud of some of the things the monthly paper accomplished. Several staff members continued the careers they had begun at the “Edge” by publishing books and writing for other publications. Hults said the attention the paper paid to some local police officers caused the then-police chief to initiate a community policing in Cannon Beach.

In addition, the “Edge” helped to stop the development of a condominium project on the estuary north of Seaside, Hults said.

The paper became so well-known that it even captured the attention of the Oprah Winfrey show, Hults recalled. One day, one of Oprah’s producers telephoned, asking for Burgess.

“She said they were doing a show on advice columns. She said, ‘We have all of these female advice columnists, but we don’t have any male advice columnists. And we saw Michael’s column and thought we could get in touch with him and see if he could be on show.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, cool.’ “

But, Hults already knew “This ain’t going to work.”

Hults gave the producer Burgess’s phone number. Later, he asked Burgess if he was going to appear on the show.

“He says, ‘I don’t think so.’ They had asked him test questions. They asked, ‘What was the one thing you would never want to see your spouse do? Michael’s answer was, ‘Reading a book with Fabio on the cover.'”

Apparently, Hults said, Oprah was “quite fond” of Fabio, the long-haired male Italian fashion model who, for a while, posed for the covers of romance novels.

Eventually, it became too expensive to publish the “Upper Left Edge,” said Hults.

“We went through three doublings of the price for pulp,” he said. “We took it from 200 some-odd dollars to $800, $900, and we just didn’t have the advertising to support it.”

Some of the ads in the paper weren’t actually sold, Sally Lackaff admitted, but were for items or services staff members personally enjoyed. “We hoped they would like the ad and pay us for it,” she said.

An occasional unexpected $20 check in the mail from a reader couldn’t keep the paper afloat. In March 2002, the Rev. Billy wrote his last editorial for the “Edge.”

“I shake my head when I think how cheap and easy and fun it was to exercise my First Amendment rights and publish a small-town newspaper,” Hults wrote.

The headline above the editorial came from something Hults heard local musician Danny Barnes say:

“You can’t make the universe behave, but you can select how you wish to interface with it.”