Ken Miller loved telling us about the time a stranger brought him a key cheesecake.
“He knocked on the door and when I answered him he handed me this pink bakery box and said, My wife and I love your banners. Keep up the good work!” Miller recalls.
It happened from time to time. People might see the occasional grumpy homemade banners (“Dossey is killing us again!” and “One world, one race, one love”) laying Miller in the front yard of his downtown home, stopping to cheer him run. “One of the men saw me in the front and handed me $5,” he said with a laugh. He said: This is for the material! I got gift cards for Fry’s and local coffee shops. People drive cars and whistle and wave, or they stop and write my address and send me thank you notes.”
Miller believed that the whole idea of the political arena started after the 2020 presidential election.
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“I removed the election banners and started spreading messages about the pandemic. I made a nice sign out of hard plywood where I could change how many people were dying each day. Underneath I wrote ‘Good job, Trump!”
For a while, he had a 5-foot-high skeleton waving to passersby. The Black Lives Matter sign has come and gone. Complaints to Governor Ducey and American actor Paul Gosar were persistent.
People asked Miller why he put up the signs. His interpretation was, “Someone has to say something.” “I drive around town and no one expresses themselves in bumper-bumper signs or stickers. I want people to know that there are others out there who think like them.”
Miller grew up in Detroit and joined the Navy in 1968, after graduating from high school. “I did it for four years,” he said of his military career. “Have you ever seen End of the world now? I was on a boat in Vietnam, and I got a Bronze Star, all that stuff.”
After the war, he worked as a fisherman in Florida. He said there wasn’t much culture. “You know, two failed marriages in less than five years, Jesus. I had to get out of there.”
He moved to San Francisco, where he worked for interior designers. “I’m digging on wood,” he said. “I taught myself. I did all the crown casting at Ann Getty’s house. But after about 20 years, a dot com thing happened and got me out of town.”
Miller moved to Santa Cruz, where he built sailboats and learned ocean travel. He rocked as a blues musician, came out as gay in 1996, and began getting involved in stand-up comedy.
He said, “I was described as a gay comedian, and my line was ‘Laugh when you call me poof! This was around the same time that Miller started making his own rear shock stickers for the 1985 Toyota Corolla.
It has always been a political or religious thing. Then I moved here and the pandemic happened, and I kind of expanded the bumper sticker idea into my front yard.”
His neighbors were supportive of him, but not everyone appreciated Miller’s freedom of speech. His signs have been stolen and defaced. About a year ago, people started driving over the sidewalk and across his yard in an attempt to destroy the signals.
“I have a bunch of them on them with tire tracks,” he said. “I fix it up and reuse it. Normally, they drive through the yard at night, but one afternoon around 4:30 p.m. a truck passed and then went back into traffic. What the hell?”
Miller put up signs warning of security cameras, and recently built a low 4×4 fence to discourage drivers from plowing in his yard. His lawyer daughter advised him not to extend nails to flatten the visitor’s tires.
He used to get angry when a sign was stolen or pushed.
“I finally decided I wouldn’t let them get to me. Now my attitude is ‘I’m going to keep putting up banners, and you keep dropping them.'” Enjoy.’ I don’t want to join the crazy crowd.”
Miller plans to move to New York in the spring, to be near his new daughter and grandson. There, he wouldn’t have a front yard from which to send public messages.
“But I will probably hang banners from my window,” he said. “It is important to let people know that they are not alone in their beliefs, and that there are others who feel the same way.”
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