Tracie Cone

They set out to tell some tales of the contemporary West, to chronicle what happens when a small farm community starts to turn big. Tracie Cone and Anna Marie dos Remedios wanted to write the story of Hollister, their adopted home. The old cowtown was fast becoming just another Silicon Valley commute village, wincing with growth pains--clogged roads, flagging sewers, crowded schools. Two big-city journalists, Cone and dos Remedios had a notion they could be Hollister's voice.

They set out to tell some tales of the contemporary West, to chronicle what happens when a small farm community starts to turn big. Tracie Cone and Anna Marie dos Remedios wanted to write the story of Hollister, their adopted home. The old cowtown was fast becoming just another Silicon Valley commute village, wincing with growth pains--clogged roads, flagging sewers, crowded schools. Two big-city journalists, Cone and dos Remedios had a notion they could be Hollister's voice.

In California, it seems, there's no such thing as a little bit of trouble. Not so long ago, in the early 1990s, disasters came wrapped in disasters like so many nesting dolls: Earthquakes, riots, droughts, wildfires, floods, an economy gone to the dogs -- it seemed to never end. Until it did. Nature was becalmed, the economy boomed. Life, for most people, was good. Now some people wonder if trouble has come knocking again.

It's a safe bet that there aren't many fans of the Hanagan family left in the Northern California city of Hollister. Certainly not as many as there were when Mike Hanagan and his son Tom first came up with their Corbin Motors Inc. venture in the late 1990s.