Back in the day…..
The saying “there’s no place like home” is especially true if you were born and raised in Hawaii. In so many ways, it’s not unlike any other place in these United States. Never mind the uniqueness of being the ony state consisting of a row of islands thousands of miles from the remaining forty nine out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I can remember so many years ago, being in Uncle Sam’s Navy and flying home on leave after bootcamp in San Diego. I’d never been away from home but six days after turning eighteen, I raised my right hand and promised to “protect and defend” for at least the next four years. Although bootcamp only took me away for a few months, flying back at the end of basic training was a much anticipated return home and like tourists flying in for a vacation, I found myself straining to see out the window from my aisle seat as the plane descended in a wide circle toward the airport.
You noticed it as soon as you step from the plane and enter the terminal. The air feels different, people dress, walk and talk different. Brightly colored shirts, shorts and sandals or thongs ( and I mean flipflops, not underwear) is the predominant style of choice. Sights, sounds and fragrances of home, I thought. Home at last!
For most who are there for the first time, it’s a bit of a pleasant cultural shock but I relished a return to a lifestyle that I had taken for granted.
Flashback several years before that time and I’m just a barefooted kid, one of seven, growing up on a one-acre farm on the north shore. Now here is a prime example of the simple life in one of those “so small everybody knows everybody” neighborhoods. The family car was a Plymouth “Valiant” and dad’s pride and joy was his Red Chevy pickup truck. It’s not all fun and games on the farm. There were animals to feed, a huge yard to mow, gardens to maintain and participation was mandatory. But looking back, we had it all right there. If you can name it, we raised it. Fruit trees including different kinds of papayas, mangoes, avacados, tangerines, guavas, bananas, figs. Along the highway, at the far end of our huge front yard, was a row of coconut trees. Often busloads of tourists, dressed in their matching his and hers aloha shirts and muumuus, would stop by and we’d sell them freshly picked fruit. This bare-footed country boy would climb up the tall coconut tree and knock down a few coconuts for them. I was just a kid, with no concept of danger and a “four-feet tall and bulletproof” mentality, and I’d scramble up the trunk of that tree, not really aware that up there, where I was at coconut level, was about twenty feet or more from the hard ground below.
With the exception of occassional hikes back up into the hills behind our house, most of my other recreational activities took place in the ocean, which was just walking distance from the house. Through the years my memories drift, from going fishing on the shallow reefs at low tide, bamboo pole in one hand, plastic bag of bait shrimp in the other, to paddling out into the surf on my board in the early morning hours, to going nightdiving with my brother and/or good friend Jimmy. That was the simple life, indeed. Early childhood days gave way to the teenage years and summers in the sun, picking pineapple for Dole Pineapple Company. A mere $1.40 an hour was just a small financial step up from doing yard work for friends of the family but it gave me a little pocket money to spend on junk food and soda pop.
So many memories, so long ago and so far from the place I long to be. Kids grow up and life goes on. There was a time when I thought I’d be there for a lifetime. We can only guess what destiny holds in store for us all. But give me a hot, summer day and some time to reminisce and I’m back there again, even if only for awhile.