MEMORIES OF OLD HAWAII NEI

This remembrance is chockfull of lovely moments of life in Hawaii; it came my way the other day, credited to Greg and Gerri Delos Santos, whom I don’t know, and their reflections hit a nerve.

So I’m happy to share it here, under my “Down Memory Lane” format that appears here periodically.

They titled the piece “Just in Case You Forgot: For the Young Ones, This Is How It Was in Good Old Hawaii.”

There’s so much heart and honesty in these remembrances; the terms, the places, the people, the emotions, the candor, the innocence, the simplicity of  the panorama of Hawaii Nei, back in the day. Following the Delos Santoses’ recollections, I’ve added a few more that they might have forgotten, and feel free to further brighten the pot with long-gone, but-not-forgotten elements.

So, here are their flashback thoughts of Good Old Hawaii; the language and spelling are theirs; if you feel there’s a bit of racism among the memories, do know that some terms were utilized back in the day, minus the shred of hatred prevailing today.

So take this journey into the distant past …

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When you could buy one big sack of See Moi for a nickel… and then you ate the whole thing and licked the bag… Gramma said, you go Chinese School, you say ‘NO!’ she said, you go, I buy you see moi, you say OK.

Windward side… taro patches… rice paddies . water buffalo… 

When you mentioned Kaneohe, everyone knew you were talking about the pupule house.

When the tallest building in Honolulu was the Aloha Tower…

Radio personalities like… J. Aku Head Pupule on KGMB in the mornings saying ‘OK, all you SLOBS, it’s time to GET UP!!!’ Hey, no foget Lucky Luck’s ‘Lucky you come Hawaii!’ and remember Don Chamberlin and ‘Don in the fishbowl’ from Fran’s Drive Inn…

When you lived in Honolulu, T.H…. Signs on vacant and private property that said KAPU… When the site of Ala Moana Shopping Center was a big swamp. Waialae-Kahala was mostly pig farms. and the area next to the airport was a neighborhood called Damon Tract…

Kids chanting… Ching Chong Chinaman, Sitting on a fence, Trying to make a dollah, Out of fifteen cents… Red, White and Blue, Stahs ovah you, Mama say, Papa say, you pake… Grade school JPO’s… Junior Police Officers in their white shirts, khaki pants, polished black shoes, red helmets and arm bands… 25 cents going Saturday Matinee, Queen Theater. I remember 9 cents at Varsity Theater and 25 cents could get you movie, soda, and popcorn at Golden Wall Theatre….Wearing Band-Aids and a ‘limp’ to get into the Saturday matinee without shoes…

 Flipping milk caps on the sidewalk during recess… and deciding who got to go first by playing Jung Ken Po… And when you did something dumb everybody yelled…’Bakatare You!’ And when you did something naughty they shook their finger and said…’ A hana koko lele!’

Moonlight swimming… Bonfires on the beach… Strumming ukuleles, singing and everyone knew the words to all the old Hawaiian songs… You were greeted with… Ei, bu!… Ei buggah, how you stay? or Ei, blah-lah… Going to Maunakea Street to buy ginger leis… The old Pali road with the hairpin turns… and if it was really windy, the hood of the car blew open…

The bestest freshest poi at Ono on Kapahulu Ave… Also, bestest Laulau, Kalua Pig, Opihi, sticky rice, Lomi Salmon, Pipikaula, Na’au Puaa, Haupia.Broke da mout’! Dollar bills with HAWAII printed across them…

Going to high school football games at the ole stadium — lovingly called the Termite Palace. Guys getting their kicks sparking the wahines from under the stands… soggy bags of boiled peanuts sold by squatting sellers… and Football players smothered with leis and lipstick walking off the field…

Harry Bridges, Teamsters Union leader, calling union dock strikes…causing food shortages… Sad Sam Ichinose… Kau Kau Korner, the meeting place with the ‘Crossroads of the Pacific’ sign out front, the most photographed sign in the world… The waitresses wearing short skirts, soda hats and skates bringing your order to the car on a window tray…How good those hamburgers smelled! Aloha ‘Oe… eat fish and poi…

When those lucky people who lived in Waikiki sold their lots for $5.00 a square foot and we all thought they were getting rich… Everyone discussing the ‘Mauka Arterial’ and when it was finally completed we all got lost because we didn’t know East from West… All I knew was Ewa side and Diamond Head side… Mauka and Makai. Holding the 49th State Fair year after year. And finally becoming the 50th state in 1959…

Looking at Diamond Head… when all you could see from Waikiki was the Natatorium and the Elk’s Club. Hey, don’t forget the Town & Country Club Riding Stables and the taro patches. Old Chinese ladies with bound feet shuffling along wearing dark grey tunics and trousers… Japanese men in Kimonos carrying a towel and a bar of soap walking to a stream in the evening… Filipino men from Waipahu on the bus with their game cocks in cages… Elderly Japanese squatting, waiting for the bus…

Trying to find the coins wrapped in red paper and pieces of tissue (with holes in them that the evil spirits had to go through)…from Chinese funerals.. Watching Duke Kahanamoku surfing at Waikiki and shaking hands with him.

Beach boys with da kine, ho’omalimali and Hawaiian music under the palm trees at the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana… Surfers with 8 foot boards that weighed a ton… Waikiki sand always washing away and having to be replaced by sand from the windward side…

 Old Chinese men playing mah-jongg under the hau trees at Kuhio Beach… Saint Louis boys singing ‘We get ten thousand men steel yet, we gonna ween dees game you bet… ‘ My friend wen go St. Louis but I no tink he remember this. Rubbing maunaloa seeds on the sidewalk until they got hot enough to burn somebody’s arm…

The excitement of the Lurline coming in… Lei sellers everywhere… ‘Carnation lei… fifty cents, plumieria…. three for dollah’… Local boys diving for coins… big beautiful jelly fish… a tangle of streamers from ship to shore… passengers tossing leis overboard as the ship pulls away… if they floated toward shore, they would return…

When KGMB and KGU were the only radio stations… Lots of mynah birds on the sidewalks… mongoose living in a neighborhood tree… Going Pali lookout to ‘spahk da moon’… ‘I took my wahine holo holo kaa, I took her up the Pali, she says ‘too muchee faa.’ Pull down the shade, try to make the grade… Lanikai.. black eye!’ 

Going Diamond Head or Ala Moana to watch the submarine races… Swimming in the streams and whacking each other on the head with shampoo ginger… Never driving over the Pali with pork in your car…you going get stuck… No need test…I wen test for you and the car engine wen maki. 

Going to ‘First View’ at the Waikiki theater! …. eating crackseed… the palm trees and flowers that looked so real. . the usher who wore a feather cape and helmet and ever smiled…Every Friday night at 10:15 and you had to make reservations. 

Talking mynah birds…I had one dumb minah bird…never did speak to me. Lights out… clack, clack, clack. what’s dat?… turn on lights… one BIG centipede! 

Alfred Apaka… Kalima Brothers… Gabby Pahinui… slack key… steel guitars… Don’ forget Auntie Genoa Keawe.

Surfing at Waikiki and watching the outrigger canoes alongside of you full of mainland tourists wearing bathing caps… Surfing Waikiki all day without eating, getting red eyes… going back again the next day… because when you caught those waves and rode them all the way in… it was worth it! Underwater… trying to catch a ride on the back of a turtle… Underwater… trying to look at fish and eels without a mask…

Swimming at Fort DeRussy… trying not to get stung by da Portuguese Man-o’-War…There was a pier behind the Moana Hotel There was a jungle between the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Kalakaua. And you can go catch Samoan Crab, White Crab, Hawaiian Crab and dig for Oysters and Clams in West Loch. The big tidal wave from Japan that washed up over Kalakaua Avenue…

Being able to tell what month it was by the color of Diamond Head… When inside Diamond Head was opened to the public again.. hiking inside and finding big cannons sticking out of concrete pukas. 1949.. auwe!… a big underwater shelf broke off and shook the whole island!

Webley Edwards with his mike walking along the beach and talking to the tourists… and taking the mike down to the ocean to let everyone listening on the mainland hear the sound of the waves at Waikiki… on Hawaii Calls. When all the tourists were mostly movie stars or rich and came on Matson ships and stayed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and wore furs in the evenings!..

Walking down Waikiki Beach and sparking movie stars without their toupees, wigs and make-up… And sell them coconut hats for $10 per hat. Trader Vic’s… Don the Beachcomber’s… the Zebra Room all painted with Zebra stripes outside… Seeing painfully sunburned and peeling tourists at Waikiki.

Doing the Hula in the ‘May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii’ celebration… Using the uli-uli’s, ili ili’s and pu’ili’s… making our own hula skirts out of ti leaves… splitting the ti leaves with our thumb nails and having green hands for a week… 4 digit phone numbers? No, I remember 5 digits.

English standard schools…Japanese language lessons… When nobody locked their houses or cars…’Right on the kinipopo’… When anything that said ‘Made in Japan’ was junk… When everyone called Plumerias ‘Graveyard Flowers’… (MAKE’ MAN!!) When restaurants were called either Cafes or Grills. Wooden sided station wagons filled with bananas… ‘Banana Wagon’…

 Buying Sushi cones on way home from school from the Sushi man and his cart on the corner… Sunday morning, December 7, 1941… masks… air raid drills. backyard bomb shelters… 442nd, ‘Go for Broke’… ‘bobbed waivh’ on da beaches… KILROY WAS HERE… Eating lots of Spam…

Kaimuki red dirt…everything you bought white turned reddish brown… your sheets, your underwear… Surfing in your palaka bathing suit… Fitted Holokus with long trains with a loop for your wrist… Tita dress: cuffed up Levis, Aloha shirt with the sleeves rolled up twice, ear rings and slippahs… Wearing a white sailor hat.. Wooden slippahs with two slats of wood across the bottoms…we called them ‘clop-clops’… when you could buy sox and tennis shoes that came in-between the big toe and the rest of your toes…

 Waking up with mo’os in your bed, sometime dead because you slept on them and sometime just their tails were left behind… Shave Ice on a hot day… Finding Japanese green, white and lavender glass fishing balls in various sizes floating in to the beaches on the North shore… ‘Calabash cousins’… Watching sea weed being harvested on a weekend.. Torch fishing at night…

Example of a ‘dumb haole’… driving up Tantalus and Round Top Drive and haole says, ‘I bet these roads are really dangerous when it snows’… Listening to Hawaii Calls… Playing around the mouth of Blow-Hole… trying to guess when it would blow… so you could run… Playing on top of the reservoir in Kaimuki… When there were so many palm trees that coconuts were falling on people’s heads… and owners cutting them down for fear of getting sued…

 Arthur Godfrey playing his ukulele… Hale Loki… ‘Hawai-ya, Hawai-ya, Hawai-ya?’ and Chesterfields… Listening to the Japanese radio station and hearing Japanese men grunting…The traffic cop in a little booth in the middle of the street with an umbrella over it… Uku-pile-a-roaches and FLIT GUNS… later to be replaced by…the SLIPPAH. Servicemen… complaining about ‘life on the rock’, drinking, swearing, hitchhiking, making passes, driving too fast, and sometimes getting blown off the Pali on their motorcycles…

 Manoa Valley… swiping painted candles from the Chinese Cemetery… laying on the graves to see what it felt like to be dead.. looking at all the photos on the gravestones and wondering about their lives. sliding down the ti leaf slide and going home covered with mud… going ‘mountain apple-ing’… hiking to the falls in the rain through the bamboo when there was no trail… ‘liquid sunshine’ everyday about the same time… fire crackers and smoke filling the valley and the houses on Chinese New Year..

 When everyone had a pune’e and at least one old Koa table in their home.. When Nu’uanu Valley was a thick, lush, tropical rain forest.. with many upside down falls… the monkeypod tree in the middle of the road at Nu’uanu and Vineyard…

Kapiolani Drive-In… Fran’s Drive In ..KC Drive In (for Waffle Hot Dogs & Orange Freeze — umm ono!) alongside the Ala Wai Canal…Kelly’s Drive In… When Kalakaua Ave. was a two-way street… Admission to the Honolulu Zoo and the Aquarium were free… Waialua, Ewa, Kahuku and Waianae sugar plantations…working in the cane fields… cane trains… the irrigation system was up on wooden stilts…

Honolulu Airport was on the Diamond Head side of the runway… Jumping into the water holding a Hau leaf in your mouth so the water wouldn’t go up your nose… Working in the pineapple factory and the fields… Riding horses in Kapiolani Park… When the Natatorium was called the Tank…

The Manapua Man…The Lunch Truck at Ala Moana Beach and their ONO chow fun and the curry beef stew over rice when you’re cold from swimming. The Japanese neighborhood vegetable wagon. Lau Yee Chai was on Kuhio Ave. and set off firecrackers every Saturday evening at 6…

Going to dances at the Ala Wai Clubhouse and dancing under the stars (and sometimes raindrops!). Riding the electric boats on the fragrant Ala Wai Canal.

Going to the Saimin Stand for a bowl of Saimin for 15 cents and BBQ stick for 10 cents… wonton mein for 25 cents. And, big cone sushi for 5 cents a pc.

Dose were the good ole days!!!

— Julie & Paké

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So here are a few of my additions to the lovely recollections above:

Quite an extensive list of memories,  but perhaps these were forgotten and should be added to the compilation:

The HRT trolley buses, cruising down the streets to downtown and back; sometimes, there were pauses, since the overhead hook-ups fell off and the driver had to rehook ‘em…

Dole Cannery, then the Hawaiian Pineapple Co., had the world’s largest pineapple –a watertank symbolic of one of Hawaii’s biggest industries..

Waikiki Sands was Hawaii’s first buffets – so yep, locals became instant chowhounds, and a new form of dining was launched. … Spencecliff was Honolulu’s “chain” restaurants, from frankfurter joints downtown to family dining (The Ranch House) in Aina Haina …

Maurice Sullivan, who also launched the Foodland brand of supermarkets, brought the first McDonald’s franchise, to Aina Haina; officially launching the birth of fast food … Liliha Bakery had two smaller locations in Liliha, before moving its counter-service/bakery operations on Kuakini … Fine dining was the finest at Canlis’ restaurant in Waikiki, where waitresses donned kimono as the required service dress. Years later, the Maile Restaurant at the Kahala Hilton would adopt the kimono as house policy …

Lippy Espinda, proprietor of a gas station on Kalakaua Avenue, might be the creator of the shaka sign (some dispute this honor), but the area’s nighttime “name” was the rauchy, infamous queen of  wee-hour dining, Hot Dog Annie, whose Kalakaua stand was frequented by the likes of Don Ho pau hana time …

KGMB was Hawaii’s first TV station, on air since Dec.1, 1952; it showed a test pattern on screen; initially, the station televised programming from three of the four major nextworks, but was primarily CBS; it lost NBC when KONA (now KHON) went live two weeks later, and relinquished ABC when KULA (now KITV), was launched in April 1954. …

Carl Hebenstreit, whose on-air name was Kini Popo, was the first to be seen on local TV; he was a morning drive personality on KGMB (preceded Hal “J. Akuhead Pupule” Lewis), and was hired to host a morning TV show on KGMB, “Sunrise,”  with Lei Becker; thus, a.m. programming was launched. Later, “The Kini Popo Show” became the handle …