Miller Time

UNITED STATES—As 1991 matured from spring to autumn, Ahmet, the Turkish husband of Dee had his second job in Santa Monica, in addition to the car wash. And he needed a lift to the record store. With the Subaru I went into uncharted territory west. Afterward, he insisted on buying me a hot chocolate, thus exposing me to another...

UNITED STATES—I had no time to worry about the earthquake in Watsonville. Everything seemed to be falling apart at the house I was managing. The young couple from Mexico who shared the downstairs bay-window room off the other side of the kitchen had a new person living with them: Pedro’s dad from Puebla. Though his son wasn’t much more...

UNITED STATES—You wake up and you’re in this place where the clouds are all cottony as they glide across an achingly blue sky. Kinda like the over-the-top monumentality of the Paramount logo or the more subdued Warner Bros. Then you come to some Corinthian columns like they had at the Old Spaghetti Factory, before it was turned into a...

UNITED STATES—Yes, then and there, after I saw the Slavic blondie beat up the cheeky young Black kid, I vowed never to go back to the smoke shop with the green cross ever again. It actually turned out quite the contrary. The whole unexplained incident with the weight of a mystery. The isolated moments witnessed, taken together, surpassed my...

UNITED STATES—In 1899, the renowned soldier for hire, Joe Holly, defected to the Honduran Government army, a move that crumbled any semblance of integrity he may have had. Yet this move paid off handsomely, as Joe was commissioned to be a colonel and became police chief of Tegucigalpa by appointment by the current president. Soon thereafter, Joe defected again...

UNITED STATES—Six floors up at a high bar table al fresco, on top of a luxury department store in Calao, the legendary city's trendiest neighborhood. Here we travelers from America were among beautiful people, chatting, drinking beer and looking at other beautiful people as the dusking sun turned the skyline from gray to silver. I was worry free as I...

UNITED STATES—It is ironic. “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” the epic comedy often dismissed as juvenile or lowbrow by folks who consider themselves aficionados of British comedy. It was a Missouri-born American who joined a Canadian regiment three years before America got into World War II. After the war, Bill Rose stayed on in England and penned...

UNITED STATES—"Are you going to stay the night?" says the mother. Hers is the last bed in the room that has a light on over the headboard of the hospital bed. "Don't go changing the subject," says the son. "I didn't know there was a subject," the mother groans. "Can you do something about my head, so it can get comfortable?" "The...

UNITED STATES—I’m keeping my eyes on my clothes tumbling in the laundromat dryer. What do you think about separating clothes? I really don’t believe in segregation for fabrics unless there’s one T-shirt that’s bleeding all over the place and will make your whites look like they were marinated in iodine. What’s with that, China? Me, Giselle, would like to...

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...