Earlier this year the University of Chicago Press reissued Mike Royko’s first book, a 1967 collection of pieces he’d written for the Chicago Daily News since it made him a columnist in ’63. Back then the title was Up Against It. The new edition is called Early Royko: Up Against It in Chicago, and the name change gave David Royko a problem.
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In one important respect it turned out to be better than a discharge. Wildly exaggerating his credentials, claiming he’d already done some reporting for the Daily News, which he hadn’t, Royko got himself put in charge of the base newspaper, the O’Hare News. He promptly assigned himself a column, “Mike’s View.”
David had heard some funny stories about the O’Hare News, but never expected to read anything his father had written for it. Then he experienced what he calls “total serendipity.” Digging through boxes he’d piled in his basement after Mike Royko died in 1997, looking for old pictures to illustrate the letters in Royko in Love, “I found a lot more,” David says. “I couldn’t believe it.” In a scrapbook stuffed with loose pieces of paper, he came across a “little mini holy grail . . . two completely new columns. And they sounded like Dad.”
David Royko marveled when he read this. “I got so excited,” he says. “Ignats Phnff! He already had a Doctor Kookie”—the later Royko’s fictitious all-purpose expert. “And I got a kick out of Afghanistan.”
“Dear Miss Hellpall: When I am with girls I don’t know what to talk about. I get nervous and upset. Sometimes I feel so shy that I swallow my tongue and a doctor has to be called to prevent my strangling. A girl once said hello to me, and I was so shocked I hid in a sewer for three days. It was cold. What can I do to become a life of the party? Shy.
After hearing the siren, the first thing to do is to swear. If you are a Republican, you should swear at the Democrats, and vice versa. If you are an independant [sic] voter you swear at both parties. If you don’t swear there are other emotional outlets such as breaking street lights, pinching girls, and letting the air out of tires. All are recommended.
