Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Dad couldn’t cut the mustard in pre-med. The chemistry was too much for him, so he settled for pharmacy, and perhaps in his mind being a druggist was second best, both materially and socially, to being a doctor. He wasn’t in the same league as the doctors (they had houses on Brewington), but the pharmacy suited his Virgo...

UNITED STATES—The advent of the chain store, Long’s, just a block from his Main and East Lake corner, caused my dad a great deal of worry. His confrere, Harry Johnson at Steinhauser & Eaton got a chuckle out of his anxiety, mimicking my dad: “The sky is falling, Long’s is coming.” It was this big, uncontrollable, nameless, faceless thing coming...

UNITED STATES—The drug store was a place where the community manifest itself. People could make any old comment about the weather and it would pass for wit, or they could rib my dad about his shirttail sticking out. That was an enduring, endearing sartorial feature of a man oblivious to the physical details of a shirttail sticking out. Once...

UNITED STATES—Whenever we were on a trip my dad would get anxious and phone the drug store. This seemed a gross interruption of our vacation time, reinforcing the ill feeling for the drug store. As I child, to tell you the truth, my sister and I loathed the drug store as something that robbed our dad from us. And...

UNITED STATES—When I was in Mexico, a place where time-capsules have a better life expectancy than in California, I would come across these drug stores, the would be faded and filled with all kinds of merchandise, and I would close my eyes and there was that smell. Of buffered aspirin and Maja face powder and hot –rod magazines. And...

UNITED STATES—Anybody who can take a cross-country trip with a dog and write a book has my respects. Mine is barely learning to let me read in peace. I have new respect for John Steinbeck. After a trip up north, I stopped in downtown Salinas to pay my respects and read part of a Swedish mystery which was just...

UNITED STATES—Newton was in the mist of a siesta, recovering from a rigorous morning of sun and much traffic, dropping off a screenplay with his agent and doing a couple errands. He was just pleasantly drifting off. Max came and shook him by the shoulders. In one hand, he held the feeding bowl he had dug out, still specked...

UNITED STATES—The Grimes had a neighbor who had no manners. It was embarrassingly obvious even to the youngest Grimes, Max. Any fool with eyes could see Max was on his way to somewhere, waiting for his car to come and buried in earphones. He wasn't in the mood for conversation or people getting in the way of his song....

UNITED STATES—As the youngest of his children prepared to leave the nest—not tomorrow or the next day, but inevitably it would happen—the old vices came back, and a few new ones. The smoking (tobacco mostly) and drinking. Who's fooling whom? Kids see a lot now. In the middle school someone had to call 911 because a kid had overdosed...

UNITED STATES—The national holiday fell on a Tuesday. It was not one of the movable holidays, so there was a buoyant Monday, that felt like a second Friday, effervescing with anticipation for good times to come, that many commandeered for good times in the present. Right after it was all over, on Wednesday, Mr. Smith urgently deposited cash at the...