Mike Royko and Our Crossed Paths
by Robert M. Katzman © April 30, 2022
I’m a writer. I interviewed Mike Royko in May 1968 for my high school newspaper, the University of Chicago High School Midway, when I was 18. He was 36.
The same issue where I wrote an anonymous column about how two plainclothes Chicago cops beat the hell out of me the week before, when I was still 17. By mistake, it turned out. I looked a lot like another teenager they were after. You know, all us white guys look alike sort of thing.
Seemed like something Royko might have written about, except I never told anyone about it. The school’s Journalism Advisor thought it safer that I not sign the column. Think about that.
Mike was exceptionally patient with his time during our interview in his tiny cubicle at the Chicago Daily News Building. I told him I sold his column every day at my newsstand in Hyde Park. I felt he was at first confused about how I could go to that sort of school and work like I did, where I did. Then I think he realized I was the kind of guy he wrote about, working class, real world, not everything has to make sense. Sometimes, better to not ask too many questions. Because sometimes answers might embarrass a guy. Any guy. There was something warm and accepting about him.
Later, after he published it, I sold his book, “Boss” in my still-wooden newsstand because I was proud of him, how he was, and what he meant to lots of people. I didn’t carry paperbacks for sale in my newsstand. But when Royko wrote about the powerful Mayor Daley Chicago Machine world I was still trapped in, I made an exception. I was 21, he was 39.
Still later, in 1989, I had my own Chicago bookstore, where I kept his book in stock, of course. I was 39, he was 57. I was getting closer to him, that certain time of life when things were clearer than before.
He died on April 30, 1997, my 47th birthday. He was then 64. I was still catching up to him. Two middle-aged Chicago guys. He wrote words and I sold them. Newsstands at that point were extinct in a city which once had thousands of them, everywhere.
Chicago, the last city in America with four daily newspapers.
Five, if you counted the Chicago Daily Defender, a Black-owned newspaper. I counted it.
But by 1997, I had a store called Magazine Memories where I was selling antique paper, old Daily News issues with his column in them from decades ago. I did that until April 10, 2016. After thirty-one years, I hung it up. Now we were both out of print, you might say. I was almost 66, surviving Royko by two years.
Sorry, Mike. Didn’t mean anything by that. Knew I’d catch up to you someday. Now I’m 72. Damn!
In a way, we never left each other, two vintage newspaper guys from different ends of a Chicago newspaper truck’s path. Now I’m old, still a writer, very proud to be sharing that job description with Mike Royko.
We had something else in common: We both knew an asshole when we encountered one, regardless of the cut of his suit, and we both knew class when we encountered it. Class, that is — character, — was something money couldn’t buy.
Rest in Peace, Mike. You were really something, especially to the little guys, the working guys. Me.
******
Publishing News!
Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words
Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.
Please visit my new website: https://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.
Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
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Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:
Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.
Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM
Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping
For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95
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I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.
My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.