Larry Flynt, bootlegger, American military veteran and publisher of unabashedly pornographic magazine Hustler, is dead, leaving behind either a legacy of filth, or a legacy of upholding the First Amendment, depending on your point of view, religious sensibilities and, very often, gender.

Back in the pre-internet days, we got our pornography from magazines, like cave men, and the magazines were hoarded in dorms and in barracks. A veteran friend of mine fondly recalls the "skin bin" of hard copy porno that went into the field with the troops.

Long ago, in a minimum-wage galaxy far away, I worked as a hotel janitor. The job was boring, dirty and poorly paid.

There were few comforts to the job. Sometimes, they sent down the remains of a business luncheon, and we feasted on cheese cubes and ham sandwiches with visible fingerprints in the bread. There was also the shared joint out by the trash compactor.

And there was porn.

At the end of every hallway on every floor, there was a maid's closet. It was where the maid stored her wheeled cart when she finished for the day. There was also a metal shelf for linen and cleaning supplies.

Behind the right hand side of every linen shelf in every maid's closet on every floor, there was also a stash of porn.

In those pre-internet days, before there were porn movies on TV in every room, you had to go to a store, and commit the degrading act of buying a pornographic magazine.

People who came to our big city hotel from other, smaller places were ashamed to buy skin mags at home, but they felt no shame in a big city where they knew no one. They bought the porn, read (if that is word) the magazine during their visit, and left it behind in their rooms because they couldn't take it home.

The maids threw the porn magazines in the trash. The janitors fished the magazines out of the trash, and hid them in the maid's closet.

The only other thing needed was for the janitors to steal straight-backed, lightly padded chairs from the hotel's banquet department. One chair was put in every maid's closet, and the janitor who had a few minutes from his busy round of carpet sweeping, and picking up garbage-laden room service trays, could sit in the chair for a few minutes, reach behind the metal shelf for a magazine and enjoy the company of women in color photographs.

Every now and then, we'd find a copy of Playboy, with its pretense to gentility, Truman Capote short stories and articles about pipe tobacco and ascots, but in general, we found much rougher stuff.

The man who got only two or three chances a year to look at pornography did not want the low-proof ironic nuance of Playboy. No, he wanted straight up filth, and Larry Flynt delivered with Hustler.

You knew why you bought Hustler. The store clerk knew why you bought Hustler. Your wife, had she known, would have been very sure why you were buying Hustler.

Every so often, management would send one sad janitor to take the chairs and porn out of every maid's closet, but the magazines and chairs always came back, moved by unseen hands for the greater good of the $3.35-an-hour men who mopped vomit out of the toilets and ran linen to the maids.

I'm not so sure why I remember this fondly more than 40 years later, but I do. Maybe because I just needed to sit down for a minute or so. I don't remember being really fond of the porn itself. In fact, I have never bought a pornographic magazine. Still, it was a comfort and a little bit of rebellion on a job that didn't allow either.

Thanks, Mr. Flynt.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a fully clothed collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, GooglePlay, Kindle and iBooks.

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