Lessons from Miss Millie

by Paul Kandarian

I had the good fortune to be in Fort Wayne, Indiana on a film shoot recently. I know what you’re thinking, because I did: Fort Wayne? That hotbed of cornfield excitement? The Big Apple of the Midwest? A place routinely listed onthe country’s most boring cities lists? That Fort Wayne?

Yes, that Fort Wayne. It is that flat and boring but honestly, I love going to places I’ve never seen before and meeting people I’ve never met. It’s what makes life go ‘round. Well, mine anyway and it’s the only one I’m living right now, so I’ll go with it.

But really, travel truly is the best education. People get locked into the areas where they’re from, of course, many due to circumstances out of their control, allowing them to go only as far as they can go. But if you can travel, it allows you to come from an area and a lifestyle to which you are accustomed and cannot imagine living any other way, into another area with people living a lifestyle to which they are accustomed and cannot imagine living any other way. And that joy of discovery, of connection, of learning what it’s like outside your bubble, is the best education in humanity you can get.

One day, I was driving down Fairview Avenue in Fort Wayne, a main drag that leads into the heart of the city, a lovely boulevard with sidewalk separated from street by a wide grassy swath. I was taken by the architecture; virtually all the homes had house-wide front porches, many of them of the brick-front variety. Not sure if that’s a Midwestern thing but a wee bit of expert research (Google, the Library of Alexandria of our time) revealed they appear to be of American Foursquare design, or “Prairie Box,” a post-Victorian style sharing many features with the Prairie architecture pioneered by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright.

They were popular from the mid-1890s to the 1930s, popping up in rail towns such as Fort Wayne, and mass produced to be bought through places like Sears, designed to fit on narrow lots. Many are just lovely, well-kept treasures of generations of families, I suspect. Others in more run-down areas of the city are not, but in the midst of a street of decay you find one restored, painted bright, which is jarring but comforting all at once.

A coat of paint is a coat of hope, I reckon. And why not? Sometimes hope is built in layers, not all at once. I see houses like this, as I told a fellow actor outside one day, I think of the homes seen in Silence of the Lambs, and joke that in one of these is a gruesomely scary basement like Jamie Gumm’s from that movie.

I later felt bad about that dumb stereotype because I have always found Midwesterners to be the nicest people in America’s cultural and socioeconomic cross-cut.

An outing later in Kroeger’s, a quintessentially Midwestern grocery chain, proved me right again.

I walked up one aisle, turned a corner and in the middle of the next were three or four beautiful young Black girls dressed in the most colorful clothing of wherever they were from, head to toe. They were tall, elegant, speaking in heavily accented English, and in the middle of them was a tiny little old white lady, 80s perhaps, maybe 90, telling them how beautiful they were, how gorgeous their clothing was. They smiled and responded in the best English they can.

All I could think was these were perhaps refugees from another country, one engulfed in strife and poverty, now in this one to make a better life and sticking out like colorful thumbs in the country’s midsection. And here was this beautiful little old white lady doing her best to make them feel welcome.

I chatted up the little old lady, telling her that indeed the young women’s clothing was stunning, which she turned to proudly tell the smiling girls

I smiled, walked away and got into line. And a minute later, this sweet old lady came in behind me, and behind her those gorgeous girls in their beautiful cultural garb. I chatted up the little old lady, telling her that indeed the young women’s clothing was stunning, which she turned to proudly tell the smiling girls.

“That’s our Miss Millie,” the cashier said to me. “She’s in here every day. She’s just sweet.”

And Miss Mille, all of five foot nothing with a pushed-up shock of gray/white hair, told me about her life working 40 years in one place, 15 in another before Covid shut it down, encapsulating a proud part of what I imagine was a wonderful life in a brief check-out line encounter I wished would not end.

“Millie,” I said truthfully, “you remind me of my Mom, she looked like you, had hair like yours, and she was sweet. Just like you…”

“Ah, forget Covid,” Millie laughed, her short arms reaching for my shoulders, “that’s gonna get you a hug.” And we hugged in the middle of a checkout line in the middle of a state in a middle of a country that could use more hugs, more sweetness, more acceptance, more humanity. More Miss Millies.

This was truly a great trip, doing what I love to do, acting in a remarkable movie based on a true story of resolve, faith and love, made by and with some truly remarkable people. But that hug from Millie just might have been the highlight of the entire experience. In fact, I know it was.

Paul Kandarian is a lifelong area resident and, since 1982, has been a profession writer, columnist, and contributor in national magazines, websites, and other publications.