Reflections of Royko

Memories of Royko  -- Creative Non-fiction Writing – JRome

 If there is journalist heaven, Mike Royko probably resides somewhere up there, sipping suds with buddies.  I like mixed drinks with the consistency of, Shirley Temple or Jack Nicolas, mixed fruit juice and tea blends, with zero alcohol.  We’d never meet at infamous, Billygoat Tavern, rubbing shoulders, chugging, sharing ribs, talking trash.  People are different.  Everybody has a life.

Unless you liked sipping sauce under the tracks, or were a glutton for hard grueling work, one had to wonder about Mike’s friends.  My brief and limited experience working for him as a messenger, I personally felt hot coals from the despicable side of his personality.  Maybe I caught him on his bad days, or, they were all bad days; either way, Sadism does not run in our families.  The brief relationship lasted less than a week.  If I learned anything from it, it was stay away from a mound of snow (for better words) to avoid avalanches, walk away from volcanoes before they began smoking, nothing relating to good journalism.  One was better off reading Royko’s column in, Chicago Sun Times.  Nevertheless, you had to admire a man even if from a distance, coming to bat in defense of free speech, when he staked his job, rightfully defending columnist, Anne Landers’ using the word, Pollack; and Royko consistently demonstrated loyalty to friends.   

My fondest formative memories were prior years, while age three; I remember standing on the corner, with my sister and my parents, when Candidate Dwight Eisenhower stepped from his motorcade limousine, to shake my hand (and Dad, Mom, Sister).  He told me that someday, maybe I could be President, and somehow I always believed him, for years, before I realized that babies were not just miracles, and few people achieve such stature.  Even now, I still want to believe that if I live my life in a way such as I would, if I were President, I would probably be well prepared, just in case it ever happened, having practiced during life’s course.  We should always be prepared.  With Eisenhower, he left a lifelong impression, and something for me to aspire, for whatever thoughts might have existed in his head that day he said to me, “someday, you could be President.”

Memories of Royko, probably put peppers in my mouth initially, which certainly I mean no disrespect for anybody as great, not only for his writing but his fortitude, whatever it was for that day; maybe it might have been better to meet at a picnic in LA.  Usually we never get to choose strangers we meet, who run into us, or we serve.  A given choice between Mike Royko and Mother Therese would be tough irony, as she’d be saying, why don’t you have children; and, I’d be saying, “no, you do it.”, while Mike would say, “get outamyway.”

People get what they want out of reading and mostly it is superficial or light, chit-chat, one thing I never did around, Royko.  I was more interested in setting time-stamped delivery records around the city, while winning more than one cop chase and racking up a reputation for solid reliability, without taking carp from a curmudgeon, in my opinion.  Mike was the best writer they said, and I agreed with them, but I knew I was the best driver; and a solid, no-ticket driving record demonstrated my unwillingness to jeopardize that for anybody’s orders of unnecessary stress.  In retrospect, perhaps my mannerisms might slightly have contributed as well; few people had gall to pedal a self-published paperback in front of Royko’s haunt, but it worked.  Coincidentally, years later while enroute to Saskatoon, a friend gifted me, Mike Royko’s book, Boss; which ironically got stolen on the way. You have to admire people who go to bat for others, even if from a distance.  If one were to pursue journalism, Mike’s column might have been a perfect study; he knew how to dot I’s and cross t’s.