Time is always flowing past at its own pace. You move to a new
community or start another job and before you know it, a month has
passed. As you settle in, several more slip by and soon they total
a year. Everyone knows the phenomenon.
Even so, it came as a dull shock to me over the weekend that 35
years had gone by since I began working at the Free Lance. It was
on Aug. 5, 1968, that I took my desk, met the staff and began
learning the community.
Time is always flowing past at its own pace. You move to a new community or start another job and before you know it, a month has passed. As you settle in, several more slip by and soon they total a year. Everyone knows the phenomenon.
Even so, it came as a dull shock to me over the weekend that 35 years had gone by since I began working at the Free Lance. It was on Aug. 5, 1968, that I took my desk, met the staff and began learning the community.
Among the things that deeply impressed me about Hollister then was that for a town its size it boasted a daily newspaper with an offset printing press, when many metropolitan newspapers were still using the rotary press. It was also a pleasant surprise to find Henry’s on San Benito Street, a first-rate bookstore of extremely wide selection that would have done credit to a much larger community.
Other virtues became apparent as the weeks passed, but chief among them was the quality of the residents. It takes time to put the proper name with a face, especially when one is introduced to several hundred during the first week or so. Even so, people like John Hodges, Bob Henry, Wayne Purves, Richard Hall, Robert Scattini, Leonard Poletti, Gene O’Neill and Andrew Volosing soon emerged as distinct personalities and good friends.
The Free Lance – still known as “The Evening Free Lance” then – had moved to its present location on Sixth Street from San Benito Street several years earlier to a building designed to accommodate it. The area that now houses the advertising department was still the local Edison Company office then.
Millard Hoyle, the publisher at the time, was the owner and his quiet, almost self-effacing attitude concealed a wry sense of humor and the zeal to keep county residents abreast of the daily news, with an accent on local happenings. Millard soon became a friend, one whose value increased by the day.
The town itself has changed a great deal, including widening of downtown San Benito Street and the building of St. Benedict’s Church. Fires or the Loma Prieta Earthquake accounted for the loss of the old J.C. Penney building, the New China Cafe and Henry’s Bookstore among other businesses.
Many orchards have given way to parking lots or the site of homes and businesses, and many cattle ranches have cut back their operations significantly since 1968.
Millard Hoyle, Bob Henry and many other friends have since died or moved away, and the face of the community has altered over the years. But some things remain constant.
Many friends made back then are still friends, and the Free Lance, for all the changes during the past three decades, is still the reliable purveyor of local news and advertising. It also offers readers the opportunity to present their views on controversial issues and expresses a few of its own – on the editorial page where opinion belongs, not in the news columns.
There’s a moral in here somewhere. Perhaps I’ll find it in the next 35 years.
Herman Wrede is a Hollister Free Lance correspondent whose column appears
each week.
