work. It didn’t seem to faze him.
While Phil was writing, I was making jewelry with my partner, Lorraine Hynes, but we weren’t getting along well. Phil went back and forth between our neighboring houses, supposedly mediating, but somehow everything between us kept getting worse and worse. Soon Lorraine quit and I was working alone in my small laundry-room workshop.
To keep me company, Phil starting making some molten globby metal forms. He loved doing this. He made an irregular silver triangle and polished it for an hour on the buffing wheel. He described this object in
The Man in the High Castle:
“a single small silver triangle ornamented with hollow drops. Black beneath, bright and light-filled above.”
He took off a couple of days from his writing to go to Frazier’s, a fine store in Berkeley, to make my first sale to Mrs. Hom, the buyer there. (She continued to buy from me for the next fifteen years until Frazier’s was forced out of business by the street people who lined the curbs with their merchandise and scared away the upper-middle-class shoppers from the Berkeley hills with their odd costumes and weird demeanor.) Phil created a jewelry display in small baskets. He cut a design in an art-gum eraser and printed handsome cards on the children’s toy rotary printing press using handmade paper an artist friend, Inez Storer, had given us. He wrote about all this in
The Man in the High Castle
, exactly as it happened.
Before I knew it, Phil was taking over the whole jewelry business. Finally I had developed something for myself besides housework and raising kids, and he wanted it. He already had his writing. It was my business. I didn’t want him working in it if he was going to completely dominate it. Huffily, I asked him not to work in my small shop anymore. He withdrew without a word, and I thought he understood.
That evening we went downtown to visit Jerry Kresy. When we were ready to leave, Phil took the silver triangle out of his pocket and asked Jerry if he’d like to have it. “Sure,” said Jerry, “I’ve got a fine place for it right on the front door,” and he picked up a hammer and a nail and nailed right through Phil’s silver triangle. Phil winced as the nail pierced his cherished ornament. Suddenly I felt bad. What was happening? Phil was being hurt—but it was too late to do anything about it, wasn’t it? I brushed my thoughts away. It was, after all, only a little piece of metal.
That summer Phil became involved with local water politics. The one-inch-diameter pipes bringing water to our house were so old and rusty that in summer when the pressure dropped, the only way I could wash dishes was to go out on the ground-level concrete front porch at midnight and use the hose. There wasn’t enough pressure in the lines for the water to rise to the level of the kitchen sink.
Phil decided to do something about this problem. He went around the town asking people about their service and was quite amazed when homeowners would tell him, “They’re pumping nothing but mud to us.” He couldn’t believe that people “were so mute” and hadn’t complained about this problem. He wrote letters and attended meetings. It wasn’t long before two-inch-diameter pipes were being laid up the two-mile hill to our house at the very end of the waterline. Phil was mild mannered, even humble, not at all pushy—but he had a way. I told him, kiddingly, “It’s lucky you’re a reclusive person or you’d be another Goebbels.”
It was a wonderful summer. The children pushed Laura around in their doll buggy on the patio. Jayne had a pancake-eating contest with Phil. She won, eating twenty-three pancakes in one sitting. Phil and the girls collected “shaky grass” in the field and put it in a vase on the dining room table. We went downtown evenings to watch the local townsmen play donkey baseball. Phil bought a huge two-handled lumberman’s saw and a giant axe to cut firewood for the
While Phil was writing, I was making jewelry with my partner, Lorraine Hynes, but we weren’t getting along well. Phil went back and forth between our neighboring houses, supposedly mediating, but somehow everything between us kept getting worse and worse. Soon Lorraine quit and I was working alone in my small laundry-room workshop.
To keep me company, Phil starting making some molten globby metal forms. He loved doing this. He made an irregular silver triangle and polished it for an hour on the buffing wheel. He described this object in
The Man in the High Castle:
“a single small silver triangle ornamented with hollow drops. Black beneath, bright and light-filled above.”
He took off a couple of days from his writing to go to Frazier’s, a fine store in Berkeley, to make my first sale to Mrs. Hom, the buyer there. (She continued to buy from me for the next fifteen years until Frazier’s was forced out of business by the street people who lined the curbs with their merchandise and scared away the upper-middle-class shoppers from the Berkeley hills with their odd costumes and weird demeanor.) Phil created a jewelry display in small baskets. He cut a design in an art-gum eraser and printed handsome cards on the children’s toy rotary printing press using handmade paper an artist friend, Inez Storer, had given us. He wrote about all this in
The Man in the High Castle
, exactly as it happened.
Before I knew it, Phil was taking over the whole jewelry business. Finally I had developed something for myself besides housework and raising kids, and he wanted it. He already had his writing. It was my business. I didn’t want him working in it if he was going to completely dominate it. Huffily, I asked him not to work in my small shop anymore. He withdrew without a word, and I thought he understood.
That evening we went downtown to visit Jerry Kresy. When we were ready to leave, Phil took the silver triangle out of his pocket and asked Jerry if he’d like to have it. “Sure,” said Jerry, “I’ve got a fine place for it right on the front door,” and he picked up a hammer and a nail and nailed right through Phil’s silver triangle. Phil winced as the nail pierced his cherished ornament. Suddenly I felt bad. What was happening? Phil was being hurt—but it was too late to do anything about it, wasn’t it? I brushed my thoughts away. It was, after all, only a little piece of metal.
That summer Phil became involved with local water politics. The one-inch-diameter pipes bringing water to our house were so old and rusty that in summer when the pressure dropped, the only way I could wash dishes was to go out on the ground-level concrete front porch at midnight and use the hose. There wasn’t enough pressure in the lines for the water to rise to the level of the kitchen sink.
Phil decided to do something about this problem. He went around the town asking people about their service and was quite amazed when homeowners would tell him, “They’re pumping nothing but mud to us.” He couldn’t believe that people “were so mute” and hadn’t complained about this problem. He wrote letters and attended meetings. It wasn’t long before two-inch-diameter pipes were being laid up the two-mile hill to our house at the very end of the waterline. Phil was mild mannered, even humble, not at all pushy—but he had a way. I told him, kiddingly, “It’s lucky you’re a reclusive person or you’d be another Goebbels.”
It was a wonderful summer. The children pushed Laura around in their doll buggy on the patio. Jayne had a pancake-eating contest with Phil. She won, eating twenty-three pancakes in one sitting. Phil and the girls collected “shaky grass” in the field and put it in a vase on the dining room table. We went downtown evenings to watch the local townsmen play donkey baseball. Phil bought a huge two-handled lumberman’s saw and a giant axe to cut firewood for the
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