Mike Royko 50 Years Ago Today: George Halas almost drafts Mike
Mike Royko 50 Years Ago Today: George Halas almost drafts Mike
Weekly Compilation January 31-February 6, 1972
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Why do we run this separate item, Mike Royko 50 Years Ago Today? Because Steve Bertolucci, the hero of the serialized novel central to this Substack, “Roseland, Chicago: 1972,” lived in a Daily News household. The Bertolucci’s subscribed to the Daily News, and back then everybody read the paper, even kids. And if you read the Daily News, you read Mike Royko. Read the daily Royko briefing Monday-Friday on Twitter, @RoselandChi1972.
January 31, 1972
How not to hit lead poisoning
Mike examines one case in City Hall’s ballyhooed new program “to protect slum infants against lead poisoning.”
The plan, already in effect and working in NYC for two years, is to order landlords to put wallboard up over crumbling walls and peeling paint. If they don’t, the city will send contractors to do it, and bill the landlord.
“One of the first targets of the wallboard program was a slum at 1542 E. 66th Pl. It had the usual features: rats, a broken furnace, no hot water, a fire-damaged basement, and a landlord who doesn’t give a damn, except on rent day.”
Here is 1542 E. 66th Place today, just west of Stony Island, across the street from the southern tip of Jackson Park, in Woodlawn.
“At least three kids in the building suffered lead paint poisoning in 1969 and 1970,” writes Mike. “Then City Hall decided to limp into action.”
Mike gives a step-by-step rundown of how the building did not get fixed, starting on Jan. 19, 1971 when the Board of Health notified the Building Dept about the lead poisoning cases. Building inspectors and contractors come and go in February, March, April, May, June, and July. Work begins but never ends.
“A tenant in the building, Mrs. Ruth Latiker, says the workmen not only had trouble finishing up, they had trouble getting started,” Mike writes. “Their problem, she says, was that they spent most of their time boozing, and little time working.”
By Jan. 26, 1972, one year later, “Michelle Latiker, 20 months old, admitted to Wyler Children’s Hospital for treatment of lead poisoning. Her sister, Kim, 3, is being treated for poisoning as an outpatient.”
On Jan. 28, their cousin Regina, in the same building, tests positive for lead poisoning.
“Jan. 31, 1972: Rent day.”
February 1, 1972
James Hughes loses 10 days
Today's one of those columns that makes you wonder how Mike happened on the story. It's not a case that would attract a pack of reporters. But Mike or his legman had to be in the courtroom at 26th and California to write down all this dialogue.
As Mike himself writes: “For every well-known criminal case, involving Angela Davis, Father Berrigan or an Otto Kerner, there are 100,000 cases like this one.” There's a tour of 1972 in one sentence, BTW.
Maybe Mike or his leg man hung around court one day to see what turned up--and it was a very confused and rumpled James Hughes. He’d been stopped for a traffic violation and then hauled in on an outstanding 1970 warrant for beating up a cop and jumping bail.
When Hughes gets a chance to speak to the judge, he says, "That is a false warrant. That isn’t me, your honor."
Mike writes that Hughes "looked genuinely confused.”
The annoyed judge shuffles through papers, verifies Hughes’ height, weight and age, and finally the court clerk admits Hughes isn't the right guy. The even more annoyed judge orders Hughes released, but cuts Hughes off when he explains: “They have had me in jail for 10 days for this. This guy--I got robbed in 1969--and I guess he’s using my identification.”
The impatient judge just sends Hughes on his way, telling him he better get it straightened out at police headquarters.
“Let’s hope Hughes gets everything straightened out and doesn’t have to be picked up a third time,” writes Mike. “But the best we can hope for, realistically, is that the bad guy using his identification will mend his ways.”
February 2, 1972
A license to kill kids?
Mike goes to the site of a breaking news story where six children died in a horrific fire that destroyed 6023 S. Aberdeen. It was a state licensed foster day-care home. Now, Mayor Daley is scrambling to address the situation.
It's so hard to read the comments Mike gathers from the firemen. The terrifying lede:
“He was among the first firemen to get there, and in an instant he knew that it was going to be bad. ‘I could smell it. When there is somebody burning, you can’t mistake it.'”
“’I got maybe five feet past the door, and I could see the cribs. But it was like walking into a blow torch. There was no way to get close, to do anything about it.’”
And the cribs were--illegally--in the basement.
Mike notes that as the firemen continued digging through the rubble, “Down the street, Mrs. Lillian Jones, who operated the child care foster home, sat in a car, slack-faced, her mink coat pulled tight around her. Her son, Gregory, 23, had to be asked to move his big, new car so the heavy equipment could get in. He moved the car--which had everything on it. Even power window buttons.”
FYR: Power window buttons in 1972 was practically like a top-of-the-line Tesla today.
Reporters ask a “high-ranking fire official” about the building's condition before the fire. He’ll only speak anonymously: “I wouldn’t be caught dead in it, that’s the kind of building it is.”
And yet state social workers had looked the building over, and approved it for child care--despite a city building department inspection that found among other things that the basement was illegally converted to living quarters. Turns out the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services doesn’t check the city building department records before licensing facilities.
“The mayor yesterday said he deplored the killings in Northern Ireland,” Mike concludes. “And they are deplorable. But he ought to take a look around his own home ground. The casualty rate here is just about as high. And those kids didn’t fire a shot.”
February 3, 1972
Why Bears skipped Mike
Another installment of Mike’s regular “Letters, calls, complaints and great thoughts from readers”. The first one manages to combine three iconic Chicagoans: Mike, Jack Brickhouse and Papa Bear George Halas.
“D.F., Glencoe: Did I hear right? Jack Brickhouse was on TV saying that George Halas was thinking of picking you in the final round of the player draft. I would assume that this was some kind of joke, except I have seen many of the players the Bears have drafted and nothing would surprise me. What position could you play?”
“COMMENT: Halas and I did discuss this possibility several weeks ago, but out of modesty I did not mention it earlier.
“My position was to have been something unique: Halas was thinking of bringing back the old flying wedge, and I was to have been the front man in the wedge. As Halas put it: ‘You could impale half the other team on your nose.’The idea was dropped after they fed my physical qualifications into their computer, and the computer calculated that sometime around 1965 I died.”
Get details and the full list of cool 1972 prizes HERE!
February 4, 1972
What addicts do they treat?
The plight of Gateway House has been playing out in the papers, and today Mike weighs in.
“The city’s dope pushers can rejoice. City Hall has just knocked out one of Chicago’s most effective private anti-drug programs,” Mike starts. “It is called Gateway House, and for three years it has been operating quietly in a former mansion at 4800 S. Ellis Av., in the Kenwood neighborhood.”
But City Hall is forcing Gateway out, because it violates the zoning--which City Hall could fix all by itself, of course, since City Hall is Mayor Daley and Mayor Daley can do whatever he wants. But Mayor Daley is not fixing that zoning.
The rich Kenwood neighbors not only haven’t complained about Gateway House, they’ve signed petitions in support of it.
What’s with City Hall? “Naturally, it offers official, surface reasons,” writes Mike. He calls the lame reasons “thickly sliced baloney,” a phrase Steve’s boss Sol Rose likes to use. “No, the real reason can probably be found in the person of Ald. Claude Holman, one of the city’s truly bizarre political creatures.”
“Holman, who is best known for his ear-splitting cries of worship for Mayor Daley during City Council meetings, is the strongest opponent of Gateway House,” writes Mike. Holman, says Mike, told the Zoning Board of Appeals to deny Gateway House the zoning permission.
“Apparently he is miffed because the founders of Gateway House did not crawl to him and kiss his hem when they moved into his ward. He told them as much. And in his ward, everyone must bow to Holman.”
And, says Mike, the University of Chicago--which “was behind the creation of Gateway House…caved in.”
Mike’s big finish:
“And so, if you find those tell-tale needlemarks on your kid’s arm, and you can’t find help, just take him over to City Hall and show him to the mayor. Ask him what he has done to replace that which his crowd has destroyed.”
Gateway House, BTW, still operates in several locations in Chicago--but not in Kenwood.
By complete coincidence, I toured the mansion at 4800 S. Ellis about ten years ago. It had just been completely rehabbed, with all the original details restored and its yellow brick perfectly scrubbed, as you can see from the picture farther up. There was a real estate open house, and who can resist an open house when the house that’s open is SO big? Takeaways: The first floor double living room, as they called it, was big as a circus tent. Naturally there’s a ballroom on the third floor. You could build another house with the oak pocket doors. And the finished basement is, by definition due to the gigantic footprint of the house, large enough for at least two families to dwell there quietly without bothering anybody.
As we here all know, weekends could be sad for a Daily News family because Mike Royko wasn’t in the Daily News’ single weekend edition. So we look for Mike elsewhere on weekends.
We continue our journey this week through Mike’s first column collection from 1967, “Up Against It.”
We’re now up to the section titled “People I have known, heard of, or imagined.” This column—”A Flaw in the Gray Flannel”—is a classic imagined Royko character, the personification of an era type. Through this character, Mike explores the 1960s cult of the perfect businessman. Imagine, if you will, the articles Don Draper would have read about how to get ahead in business.
Mike often “runs into” these imaginary characters. Today, Mike runs into “a successful business executive” in a bar. “His hand shook so violently that his drink spilled on his impeccable suit. He explained that something terrible had happened.”
The nameless successful business executive details the lengths to which he has gone to become and remain a successful business executive.
“There has been nothing written in a financial page or business section on the subject of how to be a successful executive that I have not read,” he says. “And we receive more advice from experts than anyone else, even golfers, drunks, teenagers and other unfortunates.”
The business executive has worked hard to be youthful, yet mature. He’s in better shape now than when he was 25—”I walk like a panther.”
He’s perfectly groomed, he’s learned to speak like Hugh Downs, he doesn’t waste his time reading anything irrelevant to his business, so he hasn’t read anything he’s enjoyed for five years. He’s made sure to follow the career course dictated by all the experts. “I even quit a job I loved because a chart in Newsweek magazine said it was time.”
His wife understands she’s part of the management team and makes sure to be a good conversationalist AND a good listener, etc etc. “She has become so perfect I can’t stand to be around her.”
What happened, Mike finally asks.
“Some time ago, I forgot what my job is,” confides the successful business executive. “I’ve been going to the office for weeks, not knowing what I should do. I’m afraid to ask. Indecision is bad for an executive.”
And that’s not the worst part.
Did he get fired?
“No. Promoted.”
By the way, this feature is no substitute for reading Mike’s full columns. He’s best appreciated in the clear, concise, unbroken original version. Mike already trimmed the verbal fat, so he doesn’t need to be summarized Reader’s Digest-style, either. Our purpose here is to give you some good quotes from the original columns, but especially to give the historic and pop culture context that Mike’s original readers brought to his work. You can’t get the inside jokes if you don’t know the references. Plus, many columns didn’t make it into the collections, so unless you dive into microfilm, there are some columns covered here you will never read elsewhere. If you don’t own any of Mike’s books, maybe start with “One More Time,” a selection covering Mike’s entire career and including a foreword by Studs Terkel and commentaries by Lois Wille.
Do you dig spending some time in 1972? If you came to MIKE ROYKO 50 YEARS AGO TODAY from social media, you may not know it’s part of the book being serialized here, one chapter per month: “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” It’s the story of Steve Bertolucci, 10-year-old Roselander in 1972, and what becomes of him. Check it out here.
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