Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Crazy thing. One of the residents of Manhattan Place recognized a woman who’d left a deposit on a room I had shown. The woman had been a mental patient four years earlier. Now this great tenant, Dee, who recognized she didn’t want to live in our house any more. Go ahead, tear me apart: gain one loony and...

UNITED STATES—Freud’s rival, Karl Gustav Jung, enjoyed discussing men of power and action like Dulles. Analyzing the dictators of his era who held the fate of Europe in their hands, he had developed various power “archetypes.” Jung deemed Hitler a “medicine man” who ruled more through magic than political power. Whereas Mussolini projected the brute strength of a tribal...

UNITED STATES—No sooner had the Fiji fungus been retarded than a new plant threat emerged. It was as if creation itself in this bounteous hemisphere along the banana axis could not afford to sit still. It infected the earth, it started with the roots and then went up the elephant stem. All the canopy of elephant ear leaves above...

UNITED STATES—"Hello, this is the son of Betty Bird, and we'd like Dr. O'Leary to prescribe anti-anxiety medication for our Mom, Betty Bird, here at Wastonville Manor." Davy hangs up his phone with a sigh. "They're out to lunch, I left a message." "Yeah, yeah, I could tell," says Karen. "I can tell when it's your message voice." "The doctor's are out for...

UNITED STATES—"She always says, 'How long are you staying?' And then it's, 'when are you going?' And then: 'After you're going I'm going to cry.' And then it's, 'When are you coming back?'" "She's awful needy," says Davy. "I'm there for a 10-minute visit and she says, 'Are you going to spend the night?'" "She wanted me to get the job....

UNITED STATES—A lot of the drug store operation and staff was inherited from Mr. Meyer when Johnson Drug changed hands, in 1962. That inheritance included Alberta Johnson. Yes, she was related to Johnson, the Johnson whose surname the store bore. Alberta was his widow. He must have died early, leaving her with a daughter to raise. So even though she had a house on Cutter Drive and drove a T-bird, here...

UNITED STATES—His bosom buddy, who’d dubbed him “the incredible Yanqui,” the exiled Miguel Padilla, retorted, “Well, compadre. I’ve heard of a White House being turned into a bawdy house, my friend.” Phineas Cox sure had inadvertently done a heap more than any soul to stir up a hornet’s nest, that fussy corporate lawyer and former Attorney General, had been the...

UNITED STATES—Recently, I had a houseguest who asked, “What do you have planned for today?” and I burst out with my ideas about plans instead of burying them in silence. “Well, I usually have plans for five things,” I said. I feel a bit on the spot when someone asks, “What do you have planned for today?” I feel more...

UNITED STATES—Lead by curiosity. . . Really Sam’s story began when he had that $8000  burning a hole in his pocket, as they say. Due to his deep conviction that he was fated to make a name for himself, while wandering around the French quarter, he saw a dimly-lit alcove behind a muslin curtain billowing in the hot wet...

UNITED STATES—There are the two neighbors on either side of my house who suffer travelmania. There is the couple who went to Tokyo on the right side and, on the left, lives the couple who went to Dubai. That was just the last of a necklace of exotic destinations that are all a blur, Paris, Hawaii, Lisbon, Australia, Chile. The...