Mike Royko and Billy Goat Tavern

Feb 7, 2019 | Uncategorized

“It’s after closing and nobody’s in here, and I see Mike when he’s dead,” Sam says. “He had some kind of pile of papers in front of him and he’s looking at the papers. I see that he is crying, and I say ‘What happens , Mike? Is anything wrong?’ And he says ‘No, no Sam, I just miss my wife.’ And the he get up, walk up the stairs out the door.”

Mike spends a lot of time at the Billy Goat, and a lot of other bars, after the unexpected death of his first wife, Carol, in 1978. He is angry, guilty, sad, and, when it is late and there have been too many drinks, he talks seriously of suicide.

He pulls out of it, gets back to work, dates a lot of women, tries to be a good father to his two grown sons. In 1982 he meets Judy Arndt, a pretty, smart, and understanding blond. She teaches him to play tennis. He takes her to the Billy Goat.

“A night was just not complete for him without a stop at the Goat,” says Judy. “I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the Goat, with its tired linoleum floor, its lack of anything fancy, its lack of pretension, took him back to his childhood before he was famous and everybody wanted a piece of him. After Carol died, I think he came there so often because he just didn’t want to be alone. And he knew Sam would not let anything bad happen to him in the Goat”

Read more stories about Mike Royko and Billy Goat Tavern in Rick Kogan’s book “A Chicago Tavern” https://www.billygoattavern.com/product/book-a-chicago-tavern/