Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Working for Wylie, a door opened at Fraser Bros. Boiler Company, the ersatz office of Wylie properties. The location next to a beauty parlor on La Brea had been adopted because the wife of the owner was doing accounting, straightening out the business of Jim Wylie. According to Cheryl, the receipts for the first year had previously been housed...

UNITED STATES—Davy goes on: "Oh, sister, it's a relief to share this with you and get it off my face, my chest, you know what I mean. Imagine how I felt, I'd driven all night to be here. I'd driven down the 5 and took the James Dean Memorial Highway, and then got to the hospital. I spent time...

UNITED STATES—Persistence is like the weather. Persistence is something we talk an awful lot about and do precious little about. I was reminded of it when reading a great quote from Jim Watkins, “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” That’s real purty, but how does it translate into action? Persistence cannot...

UNITED STATES—I was just reflecting how wherever human beings are involved, there are contretemps. Now during the height of the demonstrations this cottage was like the house at the corner of the revolution. And the dog got to be taken very seriously as a protector. He got to be let out to yap and snarl as those dogs with...

UNITED STATES—People barely tear open a bag of potato chips and they say, “I open a bag. And once I start eating potato chips, I just can’t stop.” That knee-jerk spoken reaction is as harmful as the actual fact of not being able to stop before finishing the whole bag of chips. These remarks, uttered usually with a sly grim,...

UNITED STATES—The property owner, Jim Wylie, was a gambler in a big way, but not in the literal sense. Jerry Segal, his colleague and fellow “slumlord” (they referred to themselves facetiously) thought Wylie the smartest real estate brain he’d ever known. Wylie could conceive mind-bogglingly complex deals, dazzling in their simple genius, and see angles where nobody else could....

UNITED STATES—It was a Thursday afternoon and ostensibly my “day off.” I was refuging into a movie theater, the Vista, to escape the unfolding crime and consequences. Nobody knew how Moorehead was going to react to the discovery that his belongings had been surgically ransacked. From the bright spring afternoon, I glided into the shadowy recesses of the Vista, watched...

UNITED STATES—Agnes had the idea that we could share the apartment. We could get cable TV and it wouldn't be so lonely, and she could bring her furniture. She had nice furniture, fruitwood. It reminded me of Rancho Grande where we liked to go on margarita Fridays. "It will be fun," Agnes said. It was fun for a while, and then...

UNITED STATES—One Tuesday afternoon, sunny and cool, lullabied by the sound of cars streaming from the 10 to the 110, I neared the end of another day on my Olivetti. Mac, the electrician, ran into the kitchen. “I was watching the World Series on TV,” he panted, his voice congested with emotion. “The camera started shaking. Then TV went...

UNITED STATES—Terrible rains came. Unhoused people in tents in the high school field got drenched. At my parents’ house they worked in the rain to board the hole in front where there had been a chimney. “Dad kind of stood around and watched,” my mom noted. He shut down with the earthquake. It still comes up in conversation that...