Touch and Go (27 page)

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Authors: Studs Terkel

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I often quote from his book
Point of Departure,
a collection of dispatches from all over the world:
I cannot remember how often I've been challenged, especially in America, for disregarding the fundamental tenet of honest journalism, which is objectivity. This argument has arisen over the years, but of course it reached a fortissimo—long years after this—when I had been to Hanoi, and returned obsessed with the notion that I had no professional justification left if I did not at least try to make the point that North Viet Nam, despite all official arguments
to the contrary, was inhabited by human beings. The Americans could insist that they were a race of dedicated card-carrying Marxist monsters, and the Chinese could insist that they were simon-pure heroes to a man; both statements were ludicrous; as I had seen them they appeared to differ in no perceptible way from anyone else, and that to destroy their country and their lives with high explosive and petroleum jelly was no way to cure them of their defects, which in any case seemed to centre on a tenacious and obstinate belief in their own right to live. This conclusion, when expressed in printed or television journalism, was generally held to be, if not downright mischievous, then certainly “nonobjective”, within the terms of reference of a newspaper man, on the grounds that it was proclaimed as a point of view, and one moreover that denied a great many accepted truths. To this of course there could be no answer whatever, except that objectivity in some circumstances is both meaningless and impossible. I still do not see how a reporter attempting to define a situation involving some sort of ethical conflict can do it with sufficient demonstrable neutrality to fulfill some arbitrary concept of “objectivity.” It never occurred to me, in such a situation, to be other than subjective, and as obviously so as I could manage to be. I may not always have been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth, and that the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a very serious dimension.
50
Cameron was the first Western journalist in Hanoi during the Christmas bombings. He went to visit Ho Chi Minh, whom he had previously interviewed. They spoke in French, Ho Chi Minh saying, “I hope you'll pardon my not speaking English, Mr. Cameron, I'm a little out of practice for fairly obvious reasons.” Cameron brought as a gift a whole carton of Salem cigarettes because Ho Chi Minh loved Salem cigarettes. Ho Chi Minh said, “Mr. Cameron,
I've got to ask you some questions.” He asked if a certain fancy French hotel still existed. “You know, I worked there. My boss was Escoffier and I was his pastry boy.”
“I heard you were very good, Mr. President.” Cameron left, he had the big scoop, an interview with Ho Chi Minh; no one else had even come close to it. He wanted to return to London from Beijing, but nobody would stamp his visa. He was saying, “I
have
to go back at once!” He always traveled light and China was very cold; for three days he waited in the freezing-cold airport. He went to the visa office ten times, each time the guy said no. Cameron said, “I didn't know what to do, I was going crazy. Finally I said, ‘Would you
please help
me?'
“ ‘Help you? Well, of course I'll help you. What is it you want?'
“ ‘You know what I want, a visa.'
“ ‘Well, of course I'll help you.' ”
Stamped the visa, gave it to him. Cameron was puzzled.
“ ‘Why did you have me wait this long?' ”
“ ‘You Westerners, you're all the same aren't you? Even
you,
Mr. Cameron: “I
need
this, I
need
that.” We are your hosts. We are here to help you. The first time you said “Will you help me?” what did I say? I said, “Yes I would.” That's all. Can't you do that? Can't you Westerners say, “Will you help me?” ' ”
Cameron was just loaded with fantastic stories, all told with humor but also with a certain kind of gentleness. He once stopped off in Havana to see Fidel Castro. Fidel had heard of him and said, “Of course I'll meet with you. We'll have a
long
conversation. I'll see you at ten o'clock tonight.”
Fidel doesn't show up, so Cameron, who loves Bell's scotch, drinks a lot while waiting. It's twelve, Fidel doesn't show; one, Fidel doesn't show. Cameron drinks and drinks and finally falls asleep. About two in the morning, the tread of heavy footsteps, and he's being shaken: “Mr. Cameron!” It's Castro, of course.
“Mr. President.” He's thinking, “Oh God, I'm too tired.”
Fidel says, “You wanted to see me. You wanted to have a conversation. What's your first question?”
Cameron says, “What is the number-one obstacle you have? Start with that.”
“Let me begin . . .”
Cameron later said, “And he began to talk. And he talked. And he talked.” Cameron fell
sound
asleep.
Next morning, four, five hours later, Cameron wakes up. Nobody is there in the room, but he sees the imprint of two heavy buttocks on the bed and a note saying: “Cameron. It was a delightful conversation we had. Come again next time.” Signed “Fidel.”
I so admired Cameron's grace. He would never make fun of someone's personal attributes, and there was real ease in the way he would devastate the opposite party without humiliating that party. He had a dignified ability to demean others without ever demeaning himself. That's an art.
I think it was his kind of grace that on occasion kept me from going off half-cocked and bawling out somebody when there were other ways of making the point. When I get mad I do rash things, write angry, insulting letters. I once called someone a craven toady, and he happened to be the book editor of a major magazine. Cameron would never have done that. Quite simply, he just knew the human condition.
 
 
CONSIDER MY THIRD OLD FRIEND who spoke truth to power, Mike Royko. He was possessed by a demon. How else can I explain his almost forty years as a Chicago columnist and observer of the human race? For five days a week he put together a column on Page 3 of the Chicago
Daily News
. When that paper closed he switched to the tabloid the Chicago
Sun-Times
. The moment the
Sun-Times
was sold by Marshall Field V to Rupert Murdoch, Royko posted a fond adieu. He quit with a comment: “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.”
He wound up with the Chicago
Tribune
and worked for them at least three days a week until the moment he died. Journalists from all cities, and for that matter various countries, were curious: How could he do it? Maintain this schedule and be read by more Chicagoans than any other all this time. You'd ride the bus and immediately see half the people turn to whatever page Mike was on; he was, for a time, the city's court jester.
Some years ago, a celebrated young journalist, co-author of a bestseller, passed through town on a book promotion tour. As we sat in Riccardo's, Chicago's favorite watering hole for newspaper people, he had one pressing question: “How does Royko do it? My editor suggested I try to do what he does in D.C. I tried for a couple of weeks and came near a nervous breakdown.” A long pause. “How does he do it?” I simply said, “He is possessed by a demon.”
How else to explain the tavern keeper's kid, in a world he never made, a world compressed into one cockeyed wonder of a city; of the haves kicking the bejeepers out of the have-nots; of Jane Addams and Al Capone; of the neighborhood heroine Florence Scala, and Richard J. Daley and Richard M., too; and of Slats Grobnik, for God's sake? Royko was the right one in the right city at the right time: to tell us in small tales what this big crazy world in the last half of the twentieth century was all about. And the devil made him do it.
My favorite Mike Royko column appeared October 25, 1972. He wrote it the day Jackie Robinson died. It is his recollection of a Sunday, May 18, 1947, the day Jackie first appeared in Cubs Park.
Hundreds of stories, scores of books have celebrated Jackie's trials and triumphs. Mike's piece was not about Jackie. It was about Jackie's people who were in the stands that day.
In 1947, few blacks were seen in the Loop, much less upon the white North Side at a Cubs game. This day they came by the thousands, pouring off the northbound Els. . . . They had on church clothes and funeral clothes—suits, white shirts, ties, gleaming shoes and straw hats. . . . As big as it was, the crowd was orderly, almost unnaturally so. . . . The whites tried to look as if
nothing unusual was happening, while the blacks tried to look casual and dignified. . . . Robinson came up in the first inning. They applauded, long, rolling applause. A tall middle-aged black man stood next to me, a smile of almost painful joy on his face, beating his palms together so hard they must have hurt.”
During Royko's vintage years, when Richard the First held court in the palatinate called Chicago, he wrote what is inarguably an urban classic,
Boss
. Jimmy Breslin, no small potatoes himself, the only big-city minstrel in the same class with Royko, called it “the best book ever written about a city of this country.”
Mike's pieces seemed to flow so naturally, to read so free and easy. You'd think it was a snap, his daily chore. The laughter it evoked or the indignation or the catch in the throat did not come about by happenstance. He worked like a dog, obstinately gnawing away at the bone of truth. So it was with nailing that right word, that telling phrase. After all, they were as much the tools of his trade as the gimlet eye was to the jeweler. His obsession with detail was positively Dickensian.
I can still see him in his cubbyhole of an office. His glasses have slipped down to the tip of his sharp nose. He is listening. Some nobody is at the other end of the phone. Sometimes it is a cry for help. Sometimes it is an astonishing tip. Sometimes it is just a funny story. The human comedy has him on the hip. Most often, it's from somebody up against it. The other calls are from some fat stuff with clout whose venality Royko has exposed to the light. Not in a million years could he ever play the hero of
The Front Page,
Hildy Johnson, the Hecht-MacArthur character of the journalist who got a scoop. Scoops did not interest Royko. Speaking truth to power did.
51
 
 
RIC RICCARDO appeared in one of the most popular films ever made, though you'd never know it. He was portrayed by Humphrey
Bogart, as Rick, in
Casablanca.
Riccardo's spa was the favorite, naturally, of those who spoke truth to power. For that was this man's life from the beginning. He had the bearing of Don Giovanni, say, as played by Enzio Pinza, and he did very well in that respect. But more important, he was an anti-Fascist who escaped Mussolini's castor-oil treatment. It was a special sort of punishment for dissenters. (You may have seen a filming of that in Fellini's wondrous last work,
Amarcord
.) Ric escaped that fate. His very presence afforded the place an openness and ebulliance that made it a natural for three such as Algren, Cameron, and Royko.
Riccardo opened the restaurant during the Depression. During those years, it was he who carried painters who were up against it on the tab. He never really asked for recompense. Once the New Deal was enacted and WPA jobs were available, he was repaid by all. Immediately after the war ended, Riccardo's was open twenty-four hours a day for three days running. Everything—chicken, spareribs, the works—was on the house.
Riccardo was a most genial host. Often he'd pass through, accompanied by an accordionist and guitarist, singing songs, not only anti-Fascist but raffish. Songs resembling those of the Moulin Rouge in nature. What a scene it was in its heyday. There's no such joint today.
The building that the restaurant was in was next-door to the Wrigley building, and Wrigley owned them both. (Eventually Ric bought the restaurant building.) P.K. Wrigley's father owned Wrigley gum, which P.K. inherited. P.K. was known because he favored daytime baseball. I liked him for that, even though the Cubs are painfully less than splendid. Why are they so bad? Royko's theory was that they were lousy because they were among the last teams to hire black players.
Remember, for years people had been coming up to Chicago from the South in the second migration. The great many moved to the South Side. Though Daley Senior always claimed there were no ghettoes in Chicago, it was long years before most black people were comfortable walking around and about the Loop. One day,
perhaps fifteen years ago, a very dignified African American couple came up to me in Riccardo's. The man said, “We just want to say to you, Mr. Terkel, we come to Riccardo's every year to commemorate our wedding. We've been married for forty years. From the very first, this was the only downtown place that accepted us.”
One of the only other downtown places that welcomed integration in the fifties was the Blue Note jazz club, run by Frank Holzfeind. Frank calls one day and invites Ida and me to join him and his wife for dinner at the Ambassador. He says the Duke and a companion will be coming with us—the Duke being Duke Ellington. “Fantastic.”
We're about to hang up when Frank says, “It'll help a lot if you guys come.”
I say, “What do you mean by that?”
“I just told you.”
I said, “Even Duke Ellington?! He's got his own train, he can tell them all to go to hell.”
But that was the atmosphere of the time. Even for the Duke. Even for Mahalia Jackson. One Friday night, Mahalia finished her program at CBS Studios, which coincidentally was in the Wrigley building. She was a star; I was her emcee. After we finished the show, I said, “Let's go eat next-door at the Corridor.” No. She wouldn't go in; she was afraid to, even then. We had hamburgers across the street at a little diner.

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