Yesterday, PG read an article commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Mike Royko.
PG is certain that most of the world has never heard of Royko, a Polish-Ukranian newspaperman who wrote a daily column for the Chicago Daily News for many years.
When the Daily News closed down in 1978, Royko took his column to the Chicago Sun-Times. When Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times, Royko quit with the comment, “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.” He finished his career at the Chicago Tribune.
Royko was the quintessential voice of the little guy and the ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, skewering the politicians of the Democratic party machine and the wealthy Republicans who supported them whenever the occasion arose. And the occasion arose quite frequently. He attended a junior college briefly, but had no formal training in writing other than what he absorbed working in newspapers.
Every day when he got off work, Royko went to the Billy Goat Tavern, the blue-collar after-hours haunt of Chicago journalists. He was well-known for being rude to any slumming young executive types who tried to talk to him while he was drinking.
When PG was commuting to work at his first couple of jobs in Chicago after graduating from college, he read Royko’s column every day. He remembers one Royko column discussing the replacement of Men’s and Women’s restroom signs at Chicago’s O’Hare airport with pictographs – outline drawings in the shape of men and women. Royko opined that this change was necessary because Chicago aldermen kept walking into the wrong bathrooms at the airport.
Following is one of Royko’s classic columns. For some context, Mayor Daley is Mayor Richard J. Daley, who served as mayor of Chicago for twenty-one years and died in office. After a few short-term mayors, Mayor Daley’s son, Richard M. Daley served as mayor of Chicago for twenty-two years. While plenty of their political supporters were indicted on various corruption charges, each of the Daleys managed to skate.
Mayor Daley walked to the white piece of ribbon and put his hand on it. He was about to give it a pull when the photographers yelled for him to wait. He stood there for a minute and gave them that familiar blend of scowl and smile.
It was good that he waited. This was a moment to think about, to savor what was about to happen. In just a moment, with a snap of the mayor’s wrist, Chicago history would be changed. That’s no small occurrence·the cultural rebirth of a big city.
Out there in the neighborhoods and the suburbs, things probably seemed just the same. People worried about the old things·would they move in and would we move out? Or would we move in and would they move out?
But downtown, the leaders of culture and influence were gathered for a historical event and it was reaching a climax with Mayor Daley standing there ready to pull a ribbon.
Thousands waited in and around the Civic Center plaza. They had listened to the speeches about the Picasso thing. They had heard how it was going to change Chicago’s image.
They had heard three clergymen·a priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant minister·offer eloquent prayers. That’s probably a record for a work by Picasso, a dedicated atheist.
And now the mayor was standing there, ready to pull the ribbon.
You could tell it was a big event by the seating. In the first row on the speakers platform was a lady poet. In the second row was Alderman Tom Keane. And in the third row was P. J. Cullerton, the assessor. When Keane and Cullerton sit behind a lady poet, things are changing.
The only alderman in the front row was Tom Rosenberg. And he was there only because it was a cultural event and he is chairman of the City Council’s Culture Committee, which is in charge of preventing aldermen from spitting, swearing, and snoring during meetings.
The whole thing had been somber and serious. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra had played classical music. It hadn’t played even one chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
Chief Judge John Boyle had said the Picasso would become more famous than the Art Institute’s lions. Boyle has vision.
Someone from the National Council of Arts said it was paying tribute to Mayor Daley. This brought an interested gleam in the eyes of a few ward committeemen.
William Hartmann, the man who thought of the whole thing, told of Picasso’s respect for Mayor Daley. Whenever Hartmann went to see Picasso, the artist asked:
“Is Mayor Daley still mayor of Chicago?”
When Hartmann said this, Mayor Daley bounced up and down in his chair, he laughed so hard. So did a few Republicans in the cheap seats, but they didn’t laugh the same way.
After the ceremony, it came to that final moment the mayor standing there holding the white ribbon.
Then he pulled.
There was a gasp as the light blue covering fell away in several pieces. But it was caused by the basic American fascination for any mechanical feat that goes off as planned.
In an instant the Picasso stood there unveiled for all to see.
A few people applauded. But at best, it was a smattering of applause. Most of the throng was silent.
They had hoped, you see, that it would be what they had heard it would be.
A woman, maybe. A beautiful soaring woman. That is what many art experts and enthusiasts had promised. They had said that we should wait that we should not believe what we saw in the pictures.
If it was a woman, then art experts should put away their books and spend more time in girlie joints.
The silence grew. Then people turned and looked at each other. Some shrugged. Some smiled. Some just stood there, frowning or blank-faced.
Most just turned and walked away. The weakest pinch-hitter on the Cubs receives more cheers.
They had wanted to be moved by it. They wouldn’t have stood there if they didn’t want to believe what they had been told that it would be a fine thing.
But anyone who didn’t have a closed mind·which means thinking that anything with the name Picasso connected must be wonderful could see that it was nothing but a big, homely metal thing.
That is all there is to it. Some soaring lines, yes. Interesting design, I’m sure. But the fact is, it has a long stupid face and looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect. It has eyes that are pitiless, cold, mean.
But why not? Everybody said it had the spirit of Chicago. And from thousands of miles away, accidentally or on purpose, Picasso captured it.
Up there in that ugly face is the spirit of Al Capone, the Summerdale scandal cops, the settlers who took the Indians but good.
Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible.
It has the look of the dope pusher and of the syndicate technician as he looks for just the right wire to splice the bomb to.
Any bigtime real estate operator will be able to look into the face of the Picasso and see the spirit that makes the city’s rebuilding possible and profitable.
It has the look of the big corporate executive who comes face to face with the reality of how much water pollution his company is responsible for and then thinks of the profit and loss and of his salary.
It is all there in that Picasso thing the I Will spirit. The I will get you before you will get me spirit.
Picasso has never been here, they say. You’d think he’s been riding the L all his life.
Link to the rest, including a couple of additional Royko columns, at the University of Chicago Press, which has published a One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko
For years I had a mail subscription to the Chicago Tribune.
When Mike Royko died, I let the subscription lapse and have never renewed.
Royko’s best line was, “We haven’t seen an candidate like that since Mayor Daley last says his toes.”
…last saw his toes.
My first year in college someone would always read Royko’s column out loud in the dormitory lounge when the Daily News arrived in the afternoon. Most of the students in the dorm were from out of town, but after a few weeks, even the New Yorkers were paying attention. After more weeks, I started to get it. A group tried to get him to come to dinner with us on the South Side, but he wasn’t the college type, he said. Studs Terkel didn’t have any scruples about our free food and booze, although neither was very good. Ebert was in our dorm frequently for a few weeks. He was always lively.
Where did you go?
UChicago
I went to Chicago once and only once. Stayed in a hotel downtown. Don’t remember the name of the hotel. Do remember that it had an Olympic-size swimming pool on the 20th floor.
Asked the bellman if he knew where I could find the best tour of the city. He looked at me in my Resistol and boots and said, “Yessir. Get on the El and ride it end to end.”
I did. He wasn’t wrong.
that’s a wonderful story antares; thanks
This tale FTW.
Sounds like you stayed at the Intercontinental on Michigan.
My kids think I’m nuts for having used the El so much when I was in college and dental school in Chicago. Only had a problem once when some gang bangers started toward me on a platform by the dental school (may have been the Racine stop). I was the only other person on the platform and was at the far end. They eyed me for a few seconds then started toward me. I was just about to bolt up the stairs and out, but hell, I’d spent money on the fare already. So I stood my ground and lucky for me, a train came.
My boss at Loyola, however, was mugged on a train going north from downtown. He was an older Southern man, and I’m sure looked like easy pickin’s. He came in with a black eye and some bad bruising.
I loved reading Royko’s columns. Like Mencken and others with a fine flair for the poison pen, he was perceptive, passionate, and provocative. And he never censored himself or flailed about trying to be PC or “nice.”.
I didn’t read Royko as a kid because there were two camps in Chicago: you either subscribed to the Trib and didn’t read the Sun-Times or the Daily News, or you subscribed to one of the others and wouldn’t have the Trib in your house to line a birdcage. I discovered Royko many years later.
His assessment of this sculptural monstrosity matches my own. I didn’t like it when it was unveiled. I don’t like it yet. It reminds me of a constipated baboon. Maybe this was what Picasso thought of Chicago, and the joke was on the city honchos who spent good money for the thing.
That sounds right. And probably a whole bunch of good money, too.
Constipated baboon? Substract the constipated and that’s what I thought the sculpture was: a baboon. When I came to the line about how it was supposed to be a woman, all I could think is that this is what you get when you ask Picasso to do your art 😛
I never discovered Royko, as he died several years before I moved to Chicago for college. My first internship was at a magazine published in the Chicago Sun-Times, but I was neutral on the rivalry between it and the Trib: I didn’t notice it. The closest I came to knowing about it was when some of my classmates warned that the Trib’s recruiter at a journalism job fair was stuck up, “so don’t bother talking to her.” I did anyway just to verify for myself. She was quite brusque 🙂
I remember Mike Royko, although not too well. Every so often the Omaha World Herald would run one of his pieces, some of the less Chicago-centric columns.
Picasso was enough of an a**hole he might very well have made something ridiculous to be the symbol of a city he’d never visited. I wonder what information he was given when he accepted the commission.
Royko and Roger Ebert were the only reasons I bought newspapers in the ’70s and ’80s.
Rokyo and William T Farrell and Studs Terkel… have all their books, read many times.
They were the old storyteller guys, some nonfic, some fic.
Royko hated people who slavered over him. Terkel would walk away from apple polishers. They all put out a ton of work.
And were closer to the steel workers, stevadores and union guys than they would ever be to men with soft hands, including the owners of the papers and book houses.
Terkel had said, give me a man who builds mountains rather than the braggert who climbs them and thinks he has really done something.
Royko was loved by factory people, bus mechanics, stenos, just regular people. They thought he clipped the well off, made fun of the rich, those who claimed they were higher up.
Class in Chi-town was and still is, a very big deal. And they have no Royko nor Terkel, nor Farrell to lift the middle of the very long frakas that has always been chi-town.
A town I lived in and loved, but living in at the steel mill bottom, very different cultures than those officing on Michigan Ave.
Royko was considered sainted because he carried a longtime spurning and not so politely pointing out the leprosies of the ‘better off’ who made their $$$ off the backs of the poor, or else held severe exclusions for the working class in banking, real estate development, law enforcement and more.
It was a time. Now, Chi newspaper down to Trib, still looking for buyers.
The old days: Chi Sun Times, the working mans paper, the buses and subways filled with people with worn down shoes, holding a ‘holdable’ tabloid size newspaper.
When the Sun set, many of us felt, ‘end of an era’, meaning news taken up avidly by the working class, the working poor, who had no money to buy a f’n computer nor pay for ‘access.’
People on El, purposely left the Sun Times for others to read, knowing many could not afford the few cents to buy a fresh one.
It was a time.
Haven’t looked recently, but as of the Cubs’ WS victory, there was still a Sun-Times. I bought a couple copies that commemorated the occasion…
Royko fan from back in the day, myself. Sometime in the early 80s the Trib offered white sweat socks with Mike Royko’s signature in red on the tops. I couldn’t resist. Wish I had framed them or something.
I read and enjoyed many Royko columns, going back to his Sun-Times days (the Daily Herald column was before my time). He always was funny, interesting and thought-provoking.
I’ve come to appreciate the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza a bit more as time’s passed, but I was a kid when it was unveiled and I think Royko’s column embodies my (and everyone I knew at the time) reaction to it.
But then someone told us that it was a representation of a woman and I can remember trying to see in what way it was. I remember one of my friends seeing something pornographic in the representation. So then we studied it even more. 🙂
Royko was one of the best things about living in Chicago. I hate to admit this, but when my husband took me to see the Picasso, I thought Picasso actually built that thing himself.
Wow! That was a brutal, and probably accurate, column. I love a writer who can take something and find the completely unexpected angle. I think it was Ernie Pile, who, on the Normandy beaches, wrote an article about the unit whose job is was to repair combat boots. Meanwhile, all the other journalists were trying to do basically the same combat story while stuck at headquarters or a mile behind the lines.
As a former ink-stained wretch, I have a fondness for this anecdote from Richard Roeper:
Roeper adds: “If you were a newspaper columnist in a big city like Chicago 50 or 25 or even 15 years ago, you were more than a little bit of celebrity, and you were the envy of many, and important people courted your attention—and sometimes you’d meet someone who might not otherwise give you the time of the day, but because your picture was in the paper, she’d dance with you at midnight.”
That was an era when there were four mainstream daily newspapers and many more niche newspapers in Chicago. The Chicago Daily Defender, founded in 1905, was written by and for African-Americans in Chicago and elsewhere.
These were what people read on subways and trains before iPhones. Everybody read Royko because he was a truth-teller, a funny truth-teller.