Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin Page B
Authors: Lawrence Sutin
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protective, autocratic dreamer and small-time finagler Herb Hollis.
Hollis was originally from McCloud, Oklahoma. His personal identification with his retail operations was extreme. He was a perfectionist who worked six or seven days a week, a hands-on boss who installed fixtures when customer traffic was slow. Recalls Kleo Mini, "Phil always admired anybody who could control the outside world to any extent. That meant picking up a hammer as much as anything else." Customer service, product selection, and employee loyalty were matters of honor as well as mere economics. The epitome of the loyalty ethic was Eldon Nicholls, a dwarfed, hunchbacked accountant who had been with Hollis from the beginning and served as a kindly emotional buffer between the boss and his minions-the young salesclerks and repairmen who worked at the two stores.
University Radio, located at Shattuck and Center, sold radios, appliances, records, and, beginning in the late forties, a new fad called television. There was a basement repair shop. Art Music was located much closer to the campus scene at Charming and Telegraph, just four blocks from Sather Gate, where soapbox oratory was commonplace-and where, in the mid-sixties, the Free Speech movement led by Mario Savio would win national attention. In the late forties and early fifties, Art Music became a Berkeley landmark, offering classical music, jazz, and (Hollis's own favorite genres) folk music and novelty groups.
As a young man Hollis had hankered, in fantasy, for the life of a writer, and he always liked to surround himself with creative types; his employees were often budding artists from the Berkeley scene. He and his wife, Pat, never had children, and perhaps for this reason Hollis was susceptible to strays-faintly distracted, odd-seeming Berkeley idealistswho wandered into his orbit. One such was Homer Thespian, who went barefoot through the streets and was a crack repairman when he wasn't engaging his boss in surly philosophical disputes or disappearing for days at a time. Hollis kept him on the payroll without complaint.
Phil, budding artist and stray, was a favorite of Hollis's from the beginning. Phil's first part-time job was breaking apart vacuum tubes and adapters to scavenge the parts (scarce during wartime) for reassembly. Menial as it was, the job may have been-at first something of a favor to a boy in need of a break. Phil would later say that working for Hollis was his first "positive validation." For a time, Phil had an innocent crush on Pat Hollis. For one of Phil's birthdays, Hollis's gift was a choice of any recording in the catalogue; Phil picked Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, featuring his then-favorite vocalist, Gerhard Husch.
In a letter on his twenty-first birthday ("I am writing this on my own time," he states in the first line) Phil recounted how he had joined on in 1944. The letter was a paean (in a painfully self-conscious man-to-man tone) to Hollis's guidance:
The first words I ever was addressed by you, were, "If you like both albums so much it really doesn't matter which you buy; you'll get them both, sooner or later." You were right, I did, within a week. I thought: what a smart fellow. I was fifteen. Six mo. later I went to work for you at AMC [Art Music] [...]
[... ] You aided and abetted my mental growth, and also frightened me backwards occasionally, because I take everything you say seriously, then and now. [. . . ]
At 15, 1 did everything wrong, at 21 you are at AMC and can't see what I'm doing. [.]
I once made a series of pictures of you, which you seemed to like. They are still hanging up at UR&E [University Radio], and when I noticed them I am inclined to think that if I drew them again they would be exactly the same at 21 as I drew them at 16. Maybe you know what I mean. [.. ]
Love,
pkd
As the letter indicates, Phil found it difficult, at first, to cope with the job. But the anxieties and vertigo attacks arose in connection with Berkeley High-not the Hollis
Hollis was originally from McCloud, Oklahoma. His personal identification with his retail operations was extreme. He was a perfectionist who worked six or seven days a week, a hands-on boss who installed fixtures when customer traffic was slow. Recalls Kleo Mini, "Phil always admired anybody who could control the outside world to any extent. That meant picking up a hammer as much as anything else." Customer service, product selection, and employee loyalty were matters of honor as well as mere economics. The epitome of the loyalty ethic was Eldon Nicholls, a dwarfed, hunchbacked accountant who had been with Hollis from the beginning and served as a kindly emotional buffer between the boss and his minions-the young salesclerks and repairmen who worked at the two stores.
University Radio, located at Shattuck and Center, sold radios, appliances, records, and, beginning in the late forties, a new fad called television. There was a basement repair shop. Art Music was located much closer to the campus scene at Charming and Telegraph, just four blocks from Sather Gate, where soapbox oratory was commonplace-and where, in the mid-sixties, the Free Speech movement led by Mario Savio would win national attention. In the late forties and early fifties, Art Music became a Berkeley landmark, offering classical music, jazz, and (Hollis's own favorite genres) folk music and novelty groups.
As a young man Hollis had hankered, in fantasy, for the life of a writer, and he always liked to surround himself with creative types; his employees were often budding artists from the Berkeley scene. He and his wife, Pat, never had children, and perhaps for this reason Hollis was susceptible to strays-faintly distracted, odd-seeming Berkeley idealistswho wandered into his orbit. One such was Homer Thespian, who went barefoot through the streets and was a crack repairman when he wasn't engaging his boss in surly philosophical disputes or disappearing for days at a time. Hollis kept him on the payroll without complaint.
Phil, budding artist and stray, was a favorite of Hollis's from the beginning. Phil's first part-time job was breaking apart vacuum tubes and adapters to scavenge the parts (scarce during wartime) for reassembly. Menial as it was, the job may have been-at first something of a favor to a boy in need of a break. Phil would later say that working for Hollis was his first "positive validation." For a time, Phil had an innocent crush on Pat Hollis. For one of Phil's birthdays, Hollis's gift was a choice of any recording in the catalogue; Phil picked Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, featuring his then-favorite vocalist, Gerhard Husch.
In a letter on his twenty-first birthday ("I am writing this on my own time," he states in the first line) Phil recounted how he had joined on in 1944. The letter was a paean (in a painfully self-conscious man-to-man tone) to Hollis's guidance:
The first words I ever was addressed by you, were, "If you like both albums so much it really doesn't matter which you buy; you'll get them both, sooner or later." You were right, I did, within a week. I thought: what a smart fellow. I was fifteen. Six mo. later I went to work for you at AMC [Art Music] [...]
[... ] You aided and abetted my mental growth, and also frightened me backwards occasionally, because I take everything you say seriously, then and now. [. . . ]
At 15, 1 did everything wrong, at 21 you are at AMC and can't see what I'm doing. [.]
I once made a series of pictures of you, which you seemed to like. They are still hanging up at UR&E [University Radio], and when I noticed them I am inclined to think that if I drew them again they would be exactly the same at 21 as I drew them at 16. Maybe you know what I mean. [.. ]
Love,
pkd
As the letter indicates, Phil found it difficult, at first, to cope with the job. But the anxieties and vertigo attacks arose in connection with Berkeley High-not the Hollis
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