FRANCONIA, N.H. — FRANCONIA, N.H.-- --Bode Miller isn't this town's most famous resident. He isn't even the first Olympian from here to make the cover of a major sports magazine.
His favorite sandwich at a nearby cafe isn't named for him.
As a matter of fact, except for the banner above Kelley's Food Town as you swing off the interstate and onto Main Street, you might not suspect that Bode Miller calls this pretty speck of granite and deep-green trees home.
And that suits everyone fine.
"People give him a break when he comes here," says Steve Heath, whose family has owned the red-roofed Franconia Village Store for a half century. "He gets to step out of the spotlight and be himself. To everyone he's just Bode, just a part of this town."
That's not to say people in this town of 1,000 aren't proud.
The grocery store banner exhorts Miller and his Olympic teammates: "Ski Hard! Ski Fast! Win Big!"
Ellie Lovett, who runs the cash register at Heath's market, posts Miller's race results on the bulletin board by the front door. A rack of $10 T-shirts boasts of Miller's World Cup accomplishments and Franconia's place in them.
On a recent morning, with snow threatening to fall any minute, Lovett is behind the counter, reading the controversial Miller profile in Rolling Stone.
"It's just terrible," she says, looking up.
Not about what Miller said about doping, competing and any number of other things.
No, Lovett is worried about Miller friend and well-known local Dick Newby being portrayed as someone "who smokes an awful lot of pot."
"He's probably hiding out," says one of the store regulars, sipping a cup of coffee.
"I'm sure," Lovett replies, handing the magazine to someone else.
Miller's relatives and friends wander in and out of local establishments. They get introduced in a, "his mother's sister's cousin's ex-boyfriend" manner, like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with a Peyton Place spin.
Most nod and move on. Not in an unfriendly or stuck-up way. Just on a hunch that you've got nothing interesting to ask them and they have no desire to bare their souls - or Miller's- to a stranger.
Spare, iconoclastic and direct. Ask a question, get an answer. It's the New Hampshire "Live Free or Die" way, which not surprisingly is Miller's way.
"J.D. Salinger lived in New Hampshire for a reason," cracks Jack McEnany, referring to the famous, reclusive author.
McEnany is a Johns Hopkins University-trained writer whose property backs up to the farm owned by the town's most famous resident, Robert Frost. He also is the co-author of Miller's autobiography.
"I've been doing damage control," he says of the pre-Olympics avalanche of stories involving Miller's view of things skiing and non-skiing. "This stuff has been in the can for months, but everybody thinks he's going from place to place running his mouth."
Miller has been quoted as saying that baseball's Barry Bonds crossed the anti-doping line and that Lance Armstrong doesn't question what doctors and trainers give him. He has complained that U.S. Ski Team officials are negligent in the care of their athletes. And, in the most famous eruption, he admitted on 60 Minutes that he has competed "in bad shape" and "wasted," which were widely translated as meaning skiing drunk.
"Bad shape means hung over in the local lexicon," McEnany says. "You don't come in sixth in a World Cup slalom if you're drunk."
In town, people agree that most reporters cruising through town for a Miller story are mining for their own juicy angle. After decades of being sound bites for reporters on New Hampshire's presidential primary circuit, the citizens have developed finely tuned antennas for what reporters are looking for.
"What questions do I get? The same ones," Heath says. "If he [Miller] gets tired, we get tired, too."
And then in a pseudo-scolding, Heath points out that Miller isn't the town's first Olympic skier. Joan Hannah was a member of the 1960 and 1964 U.S. Olympic ski teams, and won the bronze medal in the giant slalom at the 1962 world championships.
What residents here like is that Miller remains loyal to his roots. He owns a house in Park City, Utah, but instead of moving there and training in a multimillion-dollar facility, he returns home after each season to work out on homemade exercise gear in a big red barn just across the road from the family's tennis camp.
"There you go, Bode Miller's dirty sneakers. You could probably get $1,000 for them on eBay," jokes McEnany, walking in the barn pointing to the shoes sitting on a bale of hay.
Just inside the door to the right is the "E-centric Machine," a steel frame welded by his uncle, Mike Kenney, that helps Miller control the weights he lifts. Next to bales of hay are a couple of wooden stands that look like old-fashioned mitten dryers. Miller jumps over those to build his legs. All the way in the back is a ratty weight bench that appears ready to tumble through the floorboards.
The barn door is wide-open. There are no security systems or cameras, just a large orange cat to keep watch. Live Free, indeed.
There are no signs that Miller will pull up stakes. Late last year, he bought a 630-acre farm in neighboring Sugar Hill with plans to get it certified as an organic operation.
Although the Bretton Woods ski resort a few miles away is building him a home on the slopes to go with his title of "Director of Skiing," it's likely Miller will some day let family members live there, just as he gave an Audi he won to his mother.
"He could have gone, but he didn't. He'll probably come back here to raise a family," McEnany says. "This is his comfort zone."
candy.thomson@baltsun.com
2006 Games
Site: Turin, Italy
Opening ceremony: Friday
Closing ceremony: Feb. 26
TV: Chs. 11, 4, CNBC, MSNBC, USA
Sun blog: baltimoresun.com/olympicsblog
