Column: To my loyal readers: Until next time
This is the most difficult column I’ve written in all my years at the Chicago Tribune.
I’m typing it at a table in our new garden with Zeus the Wonder Dog at my side after a summer morning rain.
There are roses, and tomatoes, cucumbers reaching for the trellis. And Greek basil in clay pots, just as it was grown thousands of years ago in the days of bronze-tipped spears.
I still haven’t heard from that obnoxious woodpecker, the spirit animal of columnists, that smashes his face into wood for nutrients. He’s stubborn. He’ll be back.
I do apologize for backing into this, but I’m still coming to grips with it. Those of you who follow me on Facebook and subscribe to “The Chicago Way” podcast may have figured out what’s happening. Some haven’t.
You readers are the reason I’ve been able to do this for so long. You’ve stood by me. You’ve had my back. And as subscribers, you’ve fed my family and helped pay our bills. I owe you everything.
So here’s the John Kass news for the day:
The Tribune has offered me and many others a separation agreement. This is my last column for the Chicago Tribune.
Love isn’t a pie with only so many pieces. What do I love most? God, our country, Betty and the boys, our extended family.
But I have loved the Chicago Tribune. I’ve loved this newspaper from the moment I walked through the doors of the Tribune Tower as a smartass kid copy boy more than 40 years ago.
And later, I’d read those amazing quotations in the tower lobby, from Milton to Flannery O’Connor. Wisdom carved in stone. They were prayers to remind us of the great Western tradition.
My favorite, from Lord Macaulay, still gives me chills:
“Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.”
What were some of my favorite columns? The Christmas Eve column, which I rewrite every year, is one. Columns about my family, and others about political warlords in the city of tribes and their idiotic henchmen.
There was a column early on about Helene Dubin, a Chicago Public Schools teacher attacked by a student with a hammer, and her resilience and bravery in the face of fear. And one about a Loop waitress who wrote to me, afraid she’d become homeless. You readers helped her.
I didn’t want to be a columnist. I had just gotten the job I wanted as the paper’s political reporter after years at City Hall.
But Mike Royko died. Metro columnist Eric Zorn was on paternity leave to help with his twins who had just been born.
I’d left the City Hall beat, writing a snarky memo to the city desk on how to deal with Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was losing it the way current Mayor Lori Lightfoot is losing it now.
After typing the memo, I went out for a long celebratory lunch with pals to Gene & Georgetti. It was a lunch with many olives shaken, not stirred.
Foolishly, I returned to the newsroom with a stupid grin on my face. The editors rushed me into the photo department for a mug shot for a column and I panicked.
They told me not to worry and they’d use that memo. They promised I’d only write one column and then it would rotate among other reporters on other beats.
But the next morning, the big boss, Tribune editor Howard Tyner, walked up to my desk with a smile. He asked the topic of the next day’s column.
Column? I’m not writing a column. It’s going to rotate among the building beats.
No, Tyner said, you’re writing a column for tomorrow. Start writing.
He was the boss. So I started writing.
What did I write? I think it was an account of how I angered Betty and dinner guests by hitting a marauding rabbit in my garden with a hard ball of clay.
I didn’t mean to kill it. I just wanted to scare it. But the gods who smiled on Carlton Fisk guided the throw. It was perfect. The rabbit died and Betty was livid. I drove around with it in a shoe box, looking for a dumpster.
A few months later, Tyner and managing editor Ann Marie Lipinski took me to lunch at Shaw’s. They selected the “no smoking” section and ordered iced tea. I drank the iced tea.
Lipinski handed me a rolled-up page from the Tribune, tied with a red ribbon. Inside was a news photo of the pope.
“That’s Page 3,” said Ann Marie. “That’s your page now.”
They’d just offered me the best job in the world: writing a column four times a week in Chicago, my hometown.
There are so many people to thank. All the editors, all the copy editors who saved my behind, and the great legmen: Liam Ford (Slim), Courtney Flynn (Mrs. Flynn), Matt Walberg (the Swede), Tom Rybarczyk (Spartacus), Jason Meisner (Wings), Angie Leventis Lourgos (Shooter) and William Lee (Old School).
I’ve made mistakes, and the worst was saying that columnists write alone. I was so wrong. I was never really alone.
You readers were there. You had my back. I owe you everything.
What happens next? An adventure happens.
I’m not going away. If you follow me on Facebook and listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast, you’ll learn all about it.
Old Laertes puttered around in his garden talking to his plants. I’m no Laertes.
I still have a few spears left to throw.
Let’s see what happens.
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Want more John Kass? See all his columns and find his weekly podcast here.
Twitter @John_Kass
