An article in this week’s edition of the Reader points to a new online collection of articles by Mike Royko. The Reader‘s Michael Miner notes that the articles were recently unearthed by Royko’s son, David Royko, while he was in the process of collecting images for the Press’s latest addition to the Royko canon, Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol.
Though titled “The Earliest Royko” the new articles fall chronologically after the contents of Royko in Love which collects correspondence between Royko and his childhood sweetheart, Carol Duckman, while Royko was stationed at Blaine Air Force Base in Washington state . The new articles pick up after Royko returned to Illinois to serve at O’Hare Field where Royko finagled his way into taking charge of the base newspaper, the O’Hare News. Characteristically Royko, Miner writes: “Was there ever a time when Royko was too young to sound like Royko? He must have been a wisenheimer from day one. If the cold war was good for anything it was absurdity, and here he is at 22, strutting his stuff.”
Read the Reader article or browse “The Earliest Royko” on David Royko’s website.
Find out more about about Royko in Love and the rest of Royko’s work published by the Press.