Like I Was Sayin’ . . . Royko Was a Revelation

Every once in awhile something happens that makes me think, geez, I could use a drink. Something like that happened the other night, and so I called a friend at City Hall and asked her to meet me at The Redwood.

I’d polished off one gin and tonic and was still waiting when the bartender said something I hadn’t heard in years: “Welkos! Red phone!”

Welkos is a reporter. The red phone is a direct line to the city desk, just like in the movies, just like in “Lou Grant.” Only a block from the paper, The Redwood has provided succor to reporters for something like 50 years. The first time the red phone rang for me it felt like a rite of passage. Now I work in Chatsworth, and there’s no tavern within walking distance. Mike Royko would have been disgusted.

I gave the lime a squeeze.

“Watch it!”

It was my friend Deputy Mayor Barbie, the diminutive mistress of spin control that Mayor Riordan first encountered when he bought a big chunk of Mattel Inc. Wiping juice off her plastic face, Barbie leaped on the table and took a hefty sip from my drink.

“Who died?” she said, smirking.

Her idea of a joke. Ha ha ha.

“Slats Grobnik,” I said. My idea of a joke.

She fixed me with her beady baby blues and hmmmphed.

“Slats isn’t dead. Royko’s dead, not Slats.”

“Without Royko,” I replied, “there is no Slats.”

“Waddaya mean?” She really sounded angry. “I just talked to him. My network is huge! And he’s really in mourning, not looking for an excuse to get buzzed. Royko was his friend. You never even met the guy.”

“Look,” I told her. “You know and I know that Royko didn’t really keep bumping into this childhood-pal-turned-Joe-Sixpack named, of all things, Slats Grobnik. He was just a gimmick for Royko to spout off.”

Somehow Barbie managed to roll her stationary eyes.

“Why would I think something like that?”

I let it go. I didn’t want to discuss the nature of existence. I just wanted to reflect a bit about Royko, the great Chicago columnist I’d admired from afar ever since I was a copy boy, years before he first called Jerry Brown “Governor Moonbeam.”

Royko was wickedly funny, wickedly smart and sometimes just wicked. He was syndicated in hundreds of papers, but in these parts no one did what Royko did. Reading him was a revelation. Others may have done a better job of comforting the afflicted, but nobody afflicted the comfortable quite like Royko. He loved abusing Californians, who all look comfortable from Chicago.

Oh, he could be cruel. Back when Prince Charles was getting married to Diana, Royko did a number on the Royal Family. The women, he said, look like horses. I couldn’t help myself--I laughed out loud and read the line to some other reporters. They were not amused.

But Royko could break your heart too. After his first wife died after many years of marriage, Royko wrote of her so lovingly, so perfectly. Years later I saw that column tacked and yellowing on a partition by a colleague’s desk. And I bet she hated the piece on the Royals.

Then I found myself writing a column myself. There is no graduate program for columnizing. You are supposed to jump into the deep end and try not to sink. You thrash about and sometimes think you might find something to cling to in used book stores, hoping something might rub off.

Being an L.A. guy, I read Jack Smith and Jim Murray, of course, but also several others. A few years ago I stumbled upon one of Royko’s “Like I Was Sayin’,” with columns from ’66 to ’84.

I had it with me and riffled the pages. “Jump in,” I told Barbie.

She landed--what a coincidence!--on one of my favorites, a March 2, 1984, investigation inspired by a Washington Post story about a terribly fancy society affair in Washington, D.C., attended by 120 people, including high-ranking Reagan administration officials and many prominent Republican women.

It said that at the fashion-luncheon, carnations were sprinkled in the toilet bowls.

When the ladies came in and used the toilet bowls and flushed them, a maid (presumably a Democrat) would scatter more carnations in the bowl.

Naturally, this item set my social conscience to quivering with thoughts of poverty, the jobless, homeless, foodless, and cutbacks in social programs.

In the midst of this suffering, there were all these Republican ladies having flowers scattered, not at their feet as is traditional, but at their . . . Well, you know . . .

So I decided to track down the full story and find out why they put carnations in the toilets. I mean, I entertain, too, and I’ve always thought that Ty-D-Bol, that blue stuff, is pretty classy. . . . Protecting the public’s right to know, Royko discovered, among other things, that whole carnations weren’t used, but merely carnation petals. Informed that no more than a dozen carnations were used during the three-hour affair, Royko observed, “those Republican ladies must have the bladders of camels.”

Deputy Mayor Barbie, a Republican, wasn’t laughing. “No wonder Royko’s such a hero of the liberal media.”

Yeah, right. Tell it to Governor Moonbeam.

“You know what Royko column impressed me the most?” Barbie said. “That apology a couple years back.”

I remembered it. Royko had written a little-guy-vs.-the-system column about the mess that happened when some bureaucrats assumed a woman named Maurica must be a man named Maurice. Then Royko, being outrageous, decided that Maurica’s parents were to blame. Then he went on with a diatribe complaining about why so many black Americans give unconventional names to their children.

Now readers ripped him. Editors said, well, you know Royko. And Royko knew Royko too--and he realized that this time he’d made an ass of himself. So he printed the best letters. He said his critics were absolutely right and admitted that he was absolutely wrong.

We toasted Royko and then Barbie drove me home.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.