Jim Inghram may have been The Oddest Kid who worked in the sports department of The Sun in the 30 years from 1976-2006. And that’s covering some territory.

He could tell you what was on all four corners of every intersection in just about any city he’d ever been in … but he couldn’t punctuate a sentence.

He had incredible recall — and not just for sports trivia — and was as quick-witted as anybody who walked through the door in those three decades. Yet assembling a news story was a seriously difficult concept for him.

He often knew all sorts of information about people around him … without revealing much of anything about himself.

Ultimately, he was a Mr. Mysterioso.

What did he want? What did he aspire to? Where was he going?

I can’t say I knew. Certainly not at the time.

Unlike his clerk contemporary, Adam Harper, who clearly aspired to Be Somebody Famous … Jim Inghram didn’t seem to have any apparent urges — other than to move around almost ceaselessly. Driving here, there, everywhere. Seeing everything once, maybe?

I once told him he reminded me of Andrew Cunanan, a multiple murderer from 1997. I said it not to be nasty, but because he did really remind me of him … They looked a bit alike, and Inghram, like Cunanan, seemed to be a “guy from nowhere we never really knew.” He didn’t seem to take it too badly. Not that I could tell.

Even as I write this, I have e-mails out to several of his contemporaries, trying to fill in some of the gaps in his story. I hope some of them reply, because otherwise I’m going to have a lot of “about this time” references coming up.

I suppose that’s how someone gets to be a Mystery Man.

Jim came to the paper in, I’m going to say, 1992. A bit after the aforementioned Harper.

We had a clerk opening posted at Cal State San Bernardino, and I believe that’s where Jim found out about us. My recollection is that his brother was going to school there and Jim was visiting … but not actually attending college.

The Brothers Inghram hailed from Blythe, the little sun-blasted town on the west bank of the Colorado River, on Interstate 10. The Colorado is down to a pathetic trickle by the time it gets to Blythe … but its channel forms the border between California and Arizona, and Blythe is one of the great middle-of-nowhere gas-and-eat stops in the country.

It’s 150 east miles to Phoenix and 110 west to Palm Springs, and 150 to San Bernardino.

Another famous California desert “road trip” stop, Barstow, is “next door” to civilization, by way of comparison to Blythe. Barstow is a mere 70 miles from Berdoo.

Blythe really is the epitome of nowhere, a collection of fast-food joints, gas stations and low-price motels. And 22,000 people hunkered down for the interminable summer, when it’s 100 degrees for months on end. Nothing but desert in every direction.

We probably could read something into Inghram’s personality given that he grew up in a place like that. Especially a smart kid. Cut off from the wider world. Or seeing it whiz by on the 10 and wondering what was out there.

I can tell you this, from 31 years of working in San Bernardino County … when you’re in the desert, distances aren’t as daunting. When you live in Berdoo, 50 miles is nothing. When you’re in Barstow, 100 miles is no big deal. In Blythe, doing the 150 miles over Chiriaco Summit and into Berdoo … hardly worth mentioning.

Jim did mention how he used to buy every newspaper he could find, growing up in Blythe. Just to find out what was going on in the outside world. The Arizona Republic, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the Los Angeles Times … all of them bulldog editions. Jim was starved for information.

He said his father was the athletic director at Palo Verde High School, in Blythe. But Jim himself didn’t compete in sports, unless I’ve forgotten. But he certainly knew about sports. He probably could name most of the starting lineups in the major leagues. But he didn’t play himself. No.

He seemed happy to be out of Blythe. And I know he went into Los Angeles more than occasionally. He seemed fascinated by the crowds and the glitz. Which reminds me, he had one aspiration, I believe: He really wouldn’t mind being wealthy. Though I’m not sure he had an idea how that was going to happen. I now remember him saying, whenever anyone mentioned a purchase of any significance … “You must be rich!”

In the office, he was quick to the phone, and the desk people appreciated that. He quickly learned the area, and you might have thought he had grown up in the IE, so well could he piece together random facts from this and that high school or team.

He was good with nicknames, and bestowed them liberally. I was “Bhopal” — a take off of “PaulO” … and connecting me to a city in India where a lethal gas cloud from a Union-Carbide plant killed thousands of people. “Hey, Bhopal-O,” he would say, by way of greeting.

He called another staffer “Squishy” … and used to say it in a fake, high voice. It was very silly. When I taught my younger daughter, who was maybe 3 at the time, to say “Squishy!” in her own high voice and put her on the phone with Inghram … he seemed amused to hear it coming back at him.

Anywhere we went, socially, Jim was sure to be there. Any party, any late-night gathering, he was there. Usually on the periphery. Rarely, if ever, moving the action or determining where we were. He didn’t seem to drink much; I don’t recall ever seeing him drunk.

I have a recollection of him coming in after a weekend and announcing he had been at a party in Los Angeles at Davis Gaines’ house. Gaines being fairly well-known, still, as the Phantom in “Phantom of the Opera.” Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that our clerk had ended up at a star’s house. He probably met someone and was hanging around when someone else said, “Hey, this thing is going on …” and Jim ended up there, probably in the background but noting every single thing, animate or otherwise.

That would fit the pattern.

The nickname eventually hung on Inghram was “Hootie.” A desk guy named Brian Neale dispensed that one, if I remember correctly. Because the athletic director at Alabama in the ’90s went by the name of “Hootie” Ingram. So for most of those who worked with him in San Bernardino, or came to know him, he is known instantly as “Hootie.”

He left our paper in the fall of 1993, a former colleague tells me. I thought it was later. He went on to the Orange County Register, perhaps as a part-timer and certainly as a stringer. We continued to see him from time to time, perhaps as he drove past on the I-10, headed for Blythe. Because I remember the “Cunanan” thing, which I recall quite distinctly, and that was 1997. Maybe he was visiting?

By 1998, he was hooked up with the L.A. Daily News, because my generally fruitless Google searches for him (his name is spelled oddly enough that I ought to be able to find him) … yielded several bylined stories from 1998. He was listed as “staff” writer, which means he must have been a part-timer.

By 2000, he has a Daily News byline with a “correspondent” title on it, which generally means he no longer is formally employed by a paper. Was he going to school at Cal State Northridge? Might have been.

Not long after that, he went to St. Louis. I think he wanted to work at The Sporting News. For sure, he worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 2-3 years, as a stringer. Anyway, St. Louis seemed an odd place for him. A nice drive, sure, but perhaps a little short on glamour.

Then again, maybe St. Louis was a great, centralized starting point for his peregrinations. One former colleague writes, “He was big on travel, but just to say he’d been there.”

There is a facebook.com entry for someone with his name, and it almost has to be him. He says he lives in Aliso Viejo and works in Mission Viejo for Crittenden Research, publisher of newsletters on real estate. Someone told me that can be a lucrative field, and Aliso Viejo isn’t an inexpensive place to live. Hootie must be rich.

The facebook entry sounds exactly like the guy I knew: He says he has been to 209 cities in three countries (and he can tell you what’s on the corner of First and Main in all 209 of them) and visited 57 stadiums.

Another former colleague said he was more than handy to have on staff, but, yes, a little opaque away from the office.

“Outside of work, that’s where he’s different. A voracious reader, he’d go to a Barnes and Noble often and spend many hours just reading through magazines. Or he’d go sit at coffee shops for hours, thumbing through media guides or magazines. I think it was mostly just to meet people. Never met a stranger. On a plane, in a bar, at a restaurant … anywhere, he could strike up a conversation with anyone … He has a very disarming manner, laid-back and unassuming, that I think puts people at ease.”

Hmm. My take was that the more I was around Jim Inghram, the less at ease I was. His adaptability to whatever group he happened to be with struck me as cleverly chameleon but never quite genuine. What did he really think of you and your friends? You were left guessing.

Another former colleague said Hootie’s enormous ability for recall got him over social barriers … at least for a bit.

“He knew tons of trivial shit about towns and universities. Knew of landmarks, places of interest, notable happenings, even if he hadn’t seen them himself. (“Hey, the Steinbeck Library is pretty cool.”) He was pretty good at carrying an initial conversation with any girl in any part of the country. He would find out her college and then spout a ton of trivial shit about her school or hometown. It was amazing. Lots of times it was creepy. But I would always marvel at how he could start a conversation with even the hottest of chicks.”

So maybe Jim Inghram does come into focus a bit, after all. A guy wh0 grew up in about as remote and boring a location as possible, exposed daily to tens of thousands of people whizzing by to faraway places … who dreamed of getting out, making a little money and seeing the world for himself.

I wrote this while collecting information, and the item morphed as I went along.

Hootie perhaps isn’t as odd as I thought. But he’s still memorable.