Charlie Bakst’s last column for this paper will run a week from today.

You’ll miss him. You might have sworn a few times, even mangled the paper, in reaction to his words. You might have sent him an e-mail, left a late-night phone message telling him he is actually the guy carrying the hand basket in which the country is going to hell.

A very good columnist will do that, cause some readers’ veins to bulge and their spit to fly.

But you’ll miss him. You’ll miss him because, though he might have made you mad at times, he made you think. He made you consider how you felt about things that you might have been avoiding. He prodded and poked and peeled back the cover. He gave a whole bunch of people something to talk about.

Even now, as I type this and look past my Mister T coin bank to the place where Charlie does his job, it is difficult to imagine him not being a part of this place. There’ll be no more of him leaning over the partition to favor me and reporter Bruce Landis, who shares our remote little corner of the newsroom, with a pithy observation on the state of our world or state or newspaper. Or Tom Brady.

Charlie’s a presence in red suspenders. He’s the guy from The Journal. And I’m pretty sure they’re not making any more of him.

He has put in four decades at The Journal. He has used a typewriter. And when he walks out of the building Friday afternoon, there will be some bets on when the first call will come from the newsroom to his retirement digs in Barrington, asking a question only he can answer.

He is 64 and was only months from retirement when The Journal announced buyouts as a way of reducing staff. It came at a good time.

“I’m not leaving in a huff,” he told me.

But he is leaving, and he is taking a load of political treasure with him. He has talked with the powerful and those affected by the powerful. He has taken a ride with presidents and some who wanted to be president. He has worked the Rhode Island State House as a kind of cranky relative, opening the doors and inquiring.

Charlie has gone to prayer breakfasts and settled in at inner city churches and gone to vigils and rallies and marches and heard the anger and disappointment and resolve of people who take their stands in the less official places. And he has attended more sporting events than anyone I know outside our sports department.

And he has brought all of it and more to his column. He has given us a mix of experience and intelligence and a generous helping of himself.

A newspaper column can be just an empty word game without a strong, underlying sense of personal honesty. And Charlie has brought that to the paper three times a week. He’s one of the old guys, with old standards that endure. Swear at him or praise him, you know where he stands.

“Sometimes, when you take on prominent people or take up an unpopular cause, you get a lot of negative feedback from those people and from readers,” he says. “For instance, when I write about discrimination against gays or immigrants, the nasty e-mail tells me I’ve struck a nerve and should keep on writing.”

We share some critics, who apparently see us as The Journal’s liberal tandem.

“First of all, I deny knowing you,” he says when I ask him about this liberal thing. “And when I sit down to write about x, y or z, I don’t sit here and say ‘I wonder what the liberal thing to say here is.’ ”

So maybe we don’t pass the liberal handbook back and forth. But we do share one thing — a deep appreciation for the job we have and the freedom it gives us:

“The best part of the job is I do what I want,” says Charlie. “I go where I want to go and try to bring the readers with me. I try to get them to think. It’s a soapbox, and you try to do some good.”

He has done some good. And he has made people think, if sometimes in fuming, wall-pounding ways.

Charlie has made things personal. He has looked for social justice and been dismayed when he hasn’t found it where it should be. He has often been the voice of people who wouldn’t have had one without him.

He has no retirement master plan. He has been wise enough not to take up golf. He will probably spend more time at Red Sox spring training next year. He’s just getting started. He’ll figure it out as he goes.

“Many people look at retirement with a sense of dread,” he says. “Some look at it as utopia. To me, it’s a journey of adventure and discovery.”

Safe journey, Charlie. Thank you for all the good words. And don’t forget to leave your phone number at the city desk.

bkerr@projo.com