In Hollister, Still Standing by the Sheep

This farm town of 20,000 residents sits about an hour south of San Jose, a few miles off the main road between Los Banos and Gilroy, if that helps. Its namesake was a 19th-Century pioneer rancher. It was said in Col. W. W. Hollister’s time that he succeeded where others failed because “he stood by his sheep.” I’m not sure what that means, but I do like the sound of it.

Three major fault lines cut beneath town. Each day they serve up a couple of quakes, usually minor. Bent curbstones demonstrate how, while one-half of Hollister rides a plate of earth south, the other half pushes steadily north. Nonetheless, boosters grow testy at mention of the town’s unofficial title: Earthquake Capital of the World.

The last three years have been rough here. The Loma Prieta quake wrecked much of downtown. Arson fires the following fall finished off businesses the earthquake missed. The biggest employer, a cannery, closed shop, and as recession and drought set in, unemployment reached 20%. Hollister meanwhile was discovered by Silicon Valley computer cowboys seeking a rustic bedroom community. The population doubled, further straining already tight city services and stirring some hot debate about growth.

“We are like a prizefighter in the ring who keeps getting the spit beat out of him,” says City Councilman Dean Hallberg. “We are hanging on the ropes, and every time we manage to pick ourselves up a little bit, we get hit in the back of the head again.”

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I had heard Hallberg offer this metaphor two weeks ago at a public hearing in Oakland, where California city officials had gathered to complain about the state fiscal crisis. I was struck less by his litany of disaster--speaker after speaker similarly described their cities as all but buried--and more by his conclusion that, for all its misery, Hollister can see light ahead: “The first Christmas in three years where there has been a little hope.”

A little hope is rare by current California standards, so I came up last week to visit. “Don’t worry about a parking ticket,” I was advised while parking in front of City Hall. “We laid off the only officer who wrote them.” I was shown about town. This vacant lot was the movie theater, that vacant lot was a department store, and so forth. I was taken through new look-alike subdivisions on the town’s edge, so different from the weathered Victorians in the older neighborhoods, and driven past the closed cannery.

The tour’s tone, though, was hardly grim. Where I saw vacant lots, city officials saw handsome new edifices to come. Hollister officials have become wizard grant-seekers. They have secured enough matching funds through various programs to grow a $1-million redevelopment kitty into $16 million for rebuilding projects. “You came on a perfect day,” Hollberg said as we watched merchandise toted into the clothing store’s new brightly colored building downtown. As new structures like this go up, I was told, so do Hollister’s spirits.

“After the earthquake, everybody was saying: ‘Oh, poor me. Why me?’ ” said Al Martinez, who runs Hollister’s Economic Development Corporation. “And after the fires we really hit the skids.” Now, he said, the mood has lightened. “People see a new building and they see there is something there, man. It’s there, filling a hole! Holy mackerel, there is pride!”

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Hollister appears to have hung together through its hard times. There hasn’t been much of an exodus. Said one of my hosts: “The old-timers say: ‘Throw another quake at me, and I won’t run from that one either.’ ” A modern illustration, perhaps, of standing by one’s sheep.

Still, the town has a long way to go. “One foot out of the frying pan,” is how Mayor Seth Irish assesses matters. For all the fancy plans, vacant lots greatly outnumber new buildings. A lot of hard debate remains over how best to put Hollister back together again. Everything’s on the table--the speed of growth, the shape of city government, the shade of pink chosen for the new department store.

In this way, Hollister is hardly alone. All over California, in metropolitan blobs and tiny farm burgs, the questions are the same: How do we get by? How do we get better? Where do we go from here? There is a California reformation under way, a broad rethinking and reshaping born of crisis. And as with Hollister, there’s room for hope that what emerges can be better than what was before.

Which is high, fine talk. Right now, though, it is noon Friday, and I haven’t felt a jiggle since last night, which means a quake is overdue. And it has rained all morning, which, given Hollister’s short history of disaster, can only mean flood. So, for now, goodby Hollister. And good luck.