"That's like being the elephant who's best at sticking its thumb up its trunk."
Mike Royko
So long, Mike
Tribune Editorial Board
April 29, 1997
Chicago hardly suffers at the departure of one of its inexhaustible supply of sycophants, stumblebums and thieves, secure in the knowledge that another will always show up the next morning with notions of making a quick buck in a fast town.
Chicago suffers deeply today, because it has lost its great chronicler of those poseurs and self-appointed princes, and he will never be replaced.
Inside Royko's copy of "The Neon Wilderness,'' there is this handwritten inscription by Nelson Algren:
Because he has it in his head,
To kill all bad guys till they're dead,
May happy phantoms guard Mike's bed!
May happy phantoms guard him now. This newspaper, this town, weeps. |
