DATE: Monday, May 5, 1997                   TAG: 9705030069

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:  104 lines

COLUMNIST EMBODIED CHICAGO'S GRITTY SPIRIT

I PICKED UP the newspaper on Wednesday morning and was shocked to read that Mike Royko was dead. A few hours later I sat down at my computer keyboard in the newsroom and found that the screen was black.

The newsroom computer system connects journalists with news stories from around the United States and abroad via wire services.

My first thought was that THE GREAT NEWS WIZARD who controls such things has blackened every reporter's computer screen in the country in tribute to the greatest newspaperman of our era.

But it was just a routine glitch.

A few minutes later the computer system came to life again. I was able to tap into the streams of electronic copy about Royko that had the urgency of a Chicago police car with bubble-light flashing.

The best lead I found was written by Don Terry for The New York Times: ``Mike Royko, the increasingly cantankerous voice for this city's little guys and working stiffs, whose newspaper column seemed as much a part of Chicago as the wind, died today at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.''

It was an obituary most newspapermen would kill for. All Royko had to do was die.

A few years ago at a gathering of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, the question was asked ``Who is the best newspaper columnist in the country?'' Royko won by a unanimous vote.

It was his extraordinary range that made him the icon for those practitioners of the craft who peck and squint in lesser newsrooms than the Chicago Tribune.

Royko could take on a subject as weighty and philosophical as national involvement in the Vietnam War and bring a clarity and focus to it lacking in the writings of syndicated pundits specializing in national politics.

He once wrote: ``If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this: Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us.''

But he was also the master of the throwaway column, the fluffy pieces on everyday subjects many columnists deem beneath their dignity.

In one, he claimed to have given up timepieces because everybody else was wearing a watch and he simply asked them for the time. Royko believed there was special place in hell for jerks with expensive watches, or at least for those who replied: ``I see by my Rolex that it's ten-oh-five.''

Royko would respond by observing that the person next to the Rolex-wearer was wearing a Patek-Phillipe that showed ten-oh-three, wondering if he should accept the time of the more expensive watch.

The son of a tavern owner, Royko made his reputation as the champion of Joe Six-Pack who couldn't fight city hall on his own.

``For every honest, inoffensive, harmless citizen, there is a bureaucrat waiting to goof him up,'' he once wrote. The City of Big Shoulders also had aldermen with big butts and fat wallets. And Royko wrote about them, driving many from office.

When the system broke down, catching a helpless person between the gears, Royko was there like a master mechanic freeing things up with his caustic wit, trashing judges, mayors, chiefs of police or anyone who stood in the way.

Royko was caustic, sarcastic, sardonic. And often hilarious. He got things done because he had millions of readers connected to him by invisible emotional wires. He pushed the button and they jumped, mad as hell at the latest outrage.

The champion of the forgotten man, for most of his life he cared little for the country club set whose ranks he was eventually to join.

In response to a letter of criticism, he once wrote: ``Basically, I have contempt for people like you. You live in a wealthy, pampered, trouble-free suburb in Glenco. I live in a corrupt, troubled city like Chicago. . . What in the (expletive) do you worry about? Your crabgrass? Getting invited to a neighbor's brunch? . . . Shove your 15 cents in your ear.''

For a man who claimed to have no watch, he was surprisingly punctual. He managed to write five columns a week for decades without missing a deadline. But he missed several when his first wife, Carol, died in 1979.

When he returned to work, he wrote: ``We met when she was 6 and I was 9. Same neighborhood street. Same grammar school. So, if you ever have a 9-year-old son who says he is in love, don't laugh at him. It can happen.''

Thousands of his readers saved that column because it revealed the tender heart beneath the gruff exterior of their favorite columnist. It also showed his mastery of what Churchill called the power of little words.

Royko concluded: ``If there's someone you love but haven't said so in a while, say it now. Always, always, say it now.''

I wish I'd told him I liked him, at least. But I only talked to the great man once, phoning to invite him to speak at a meeting of columnists.

When Royko picked up the phone in Chicago, he sounded like a junkyard dog. ``WHADURYERWANT!'' he shouted.

I stammered my request. After a few moments he was almost civil. ``How far is it?'' he asked.

The meeting was to be in Louisville, I replied. He said it was too far. ``If I can't get there in a few hours by bus I just don't go,'' he said. ``Don't like to fly.''

That was almost 20 years ago. It was only after reading the obituaries that I realized he'd been leveling with me. One of them quoted from a Royko column - one I had never seen - about his fear of flying and boarding a plane for the first time in many years:

``Word spread quickly because I was howling about how terrified I was,'' he wrote. ``People decided to be kind.''

He was escorted down the plane's aisle where he saw Muhammad Ali bouncing an infant on his knee.

`` `See?' a stewardess said. `Even the little baby isn't scared.' ''

`` `You're right,' I said. `Ask Ali to bounce me on his knee.' ''

Hard to think of The Second City without Royko. He was such a big part of it . . . like Wrigley Field. . . da Bulls. . . or Michigan Avenue. He was a big un, way up there. . . hulking above other journalists with the cool confidence of the

Sears Tower.

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