Mike Royko, Slats Grobnik
Obits , Red Skeleton, Directory Shetland Ponies,
It's hot in the city this time of year. The pavement and buildings seem to join together to capture each and every photon of energy from the sun and bounce them back and forth like a game of handball gone awry.
Fortunately, escape or at least momentary relief is available by ducking into a local bar, of which there are many in the working class neighborhoods. On entering, it takes a moment for the eyes to adjust to the friendly darkness and comfortable shadows, as if planned to reassure, the bar is directly ahead so even a blind man can find relief.
Having made out that the bar was crowded on this particular day, I spied an open stool and made my way to it, only to be told in a gruff manner by the occupant on the next post, "It's taken". So I stood and while the keep pulled a draft of Old Milwaukee, I looked at the messenger on the next stool. Big guy, hands could have been wearing oversize well worn out gloves, but they weren't, they just looked that way. Fingers that probably couldn't pick up a matchstick, and you had to wonder how he could possible manage the buttons on the long sleeve shirt he wore.
So I stood and drank my beer. And then as if speaking to someone on the empty stool, he said, "You always loved the city. Even the lousy pols, Daley, Washington and the rest.
When they had the Demo Convention here, you gave them your best.
Yeah, and remember when they tried to stuff mattresses in them coal tunnels to keep the loop's basements from flooding - them dumb clucks read in a book that they used mattress' on the Mississippi to control erosion and just assumed it was the king-sized ones sold on the corner, not ones made out of concrete and wire cables.
The old lady said you sometimes quoted me and I got to tell you I caught hell for what you said I said, but that's OK. Long as them, green-as-gourd-guts kids trying to run the government got the message.
Yeah, you told em real good, cause you really loved this town."
Then, he says to me, "Watch my stool, I got to go to the lo". And he was gone.
The barkeep picked up my dollar, dipped the glass in the basin of salt water, wiped the glass with his bar rag and put it back on the shelf. Finally he said, "He's gone and Slat Grobnik, he's gone too". Then I looked, and there was no space at the bar, no empty stools, just the usual crowd of crones there to get in out of the heat.
***
Mike Royko (and his friend Slats), 1933 - 1997
***
ABOUT Joe Wortham