You From The Islands? So You Surf?

Living in the intermountain west, it's hard to find a descent beach without driving out of state some 10 - 12 hours to the west coast.  Just like the commercial "Got milk?"  So goes the yearning for the sun, sand, and warm ocean waves, "Got beach?'  Maybe this is just a reaction to the recent Corona (sp) beer commercial where people are sitting on the beach chairs staring out into the ocean waves while sucking down their beer, or it could be a non-alchoholic beverage or whatever.  But it's the soft rumble of the ocean waves breaking in the distance that is enchanting.

Back to surfing.  Back in the day, surfing was not an a common sport, especially since where I lived, we didn't have sandy beaches with waves breaking between 4 - 6 feet in height.  Heck, the only logical place nearby where there were any waves of any consequence was Honoli River, where the river emptied in the ocean.  On the shore, there was only rocks, rounded ones, little pebble ones and bigger shotput size and larger.  If you wiped out, and your board was being carried to shore, definite bust, dings, etc.

The reason I describe the scene is to let you know, I never surfed as a youngster.  We didn't have surfboards or skateboards, or skimming boards, or even boogie boards.  That stuff didn't arrive till I was well on my way out of the islands.  Besides that, it was expensive to buy a surfboard, and those that had boards, walked around with knobby knees or kneecaps.  Yeah, checkem out!  I guess it's from the perpetual kneeling on the board.  I knew people who had boards but that group was small in number. 

People outside of the islands had this impression that anyone or everyone must be a surfer or they were poor swimmers.  Hey bruddah, yes I'm from the islands and yes, I can swim.  I learned how to swim from hanging out with my friends at Kanaka pond or Pake pond or Buesta pond.  These were fresh water river swimming holes where we kids would wild away our summer days. There was no swimming pool in our community, so we went to the rivers.  We learned to swim, dive, and do cannon balls or jack knive jumps.  You just had to know where was it safe enough to dive or jump in that was deep so you wouldn't get a "puka" head (hole in the head.)  Came close, but never got one.  That would ruin your day, and your parents would ground you from swimming there again.

The most popular times were in the summer, lots of sunshine, warm weather, and you could pick wild fruit near the swimming ponds, like banana, guava (both sweet and sour varieties) wyvee, mountain apple, rosie apple, lilikoi, poha, and avocados.  Yeah, we could have a blast swimming and enjoying all the fruits available there. 

The ocean beaches for the east side of the island were really rocky.  Contrast that with the sandy beaches on the west side.  So, growing up, our forms of entertainment or sport at the beach was swimming, diving, or throwing rotten guavas at each other.  If we were at the beach, we would fish, using a fishing pole and bait.  We would also scour the large rocks along the coast line to pick opihi and other shell delicasies.  In the rivers, we would catch river shrimp and river shell delicasies. 

Of course we would go diving with eye masks and a barbed spear to look for fish.  My parents would always lecture us about how dangerous spear fishing was.  So alot of the time, we relagated to just taking a fishing pole and bait.  If we caught anything, my parents would clean and prepare it for dinner. 

I lived in an area that provided excellent environment for learning skills of living off the land and taking care of the land.  It was bountiful in its offerings. 

So, going back to the question do I surf?  The answer is no, but I enjoy boogie boarding, snorkling, and making castles in the sand.  And yes, I am from the islands. 

On a side note, I have a son-inlaw who surfs and skateboards.  So do many other family relatives and so on.

Small Kid Time

When you are a youngster, the world seems to vast and larger than anything you could imagine.  Looking back, if you can remeber that far, reality is not what you thought it would be.  Many things that have come to past are bright and wonderful, while there are some that didn't meet your expectation.  So, these ramblings are not to be categorized as absolute or otherwise definitive.  Just blowing in the wind!

A little over a month ago, I drove past the elementary and Junior High School that I attended in my youth.  It looked so familiar from a distance but with a closer look, I found the hallways and classrooms much smaller than I remembered.  The stairs, railings, and walkways looked conveniently built for small people.  Peering through the windows, desks, chairs, and shelves were modernized for little people.  Wow, big difference from the old desks with names carved in the woodwork.  Yeah! No hole slot for our ink bottle or paste jar.  Things were sure different.

Where todays youngsters hang their backpacks on hooks along the wall, we had homemade school bags sewn out of denim for our books and lunch.  The cafeteria had modern tables built for little people and where we took our assigned turn working in the lunchroom with the cooks and staff, you only find hired staff doing all the work.  Understandable when you stop and think of safety, insurance cost, sanitary environment, and other requirements.  My friend's mom was the cafeteria manager back in the day. 
There's a designated school bus pickup zone for those who ride the school buses while those of us who lived close enough would walk to school and back home.  That even meant sunny, windy, rainey and even cold days.  Oh, it never snowed on us.  We could only wish. 

While in the fourth grade, my classroom was on the second floor and we could look out and see the white caps on days that were windy.  On occassion, you could spot a whale cruising offshore.  It made for a challenge paying attention to our teacher. 

For most of the time attending school, I never wore shoes.  All my toes were liberated and allowed to  breathe.  The soles of my feet were customized to walk on dirt, grass, sand, pebbles, and plain hardtop.  The walk or run never bothered our feet.  All the fancy and expensive shoes didn't exist back in the day.  Converse or Keds were the only just being noticed, if you could afford them.  Being barefoot meant that you were "tougher than dirt!" 

We wore jeans, the denim kind.  Being cool was being able to role up the length of your jeans and form a nice even fold, doubled.  The lighter blue color of the inside of the denim was like having racing stripes.  Of course, maybe wearing shoes with them would make things a notch higher in the dress standard. 
I should admit here that if you didn't wear shoes or went barefooted, you wore slippers or flip flops.  Yeah, the flopping sould was cool also.  It allowed your toes to feel the freedom while enjoying the comfort of some cushion on the soles of your feet. 

On those occassional rainy days, we carried bamboo umbrellas, made of bamboo, and covered with a wax type paper that was covered with a varnish to make it somewhat waterproof.  It's the kind you see in movies with geisha girls twirling.  With it raining often, these umbrellas would last a year at the most. 

We weren't without transportation.  My parents had a car, the family car.  An older model Plymouth with classic running boards, it was built solid.  It wasn't as fast as todays cars but coasting downhill, we could hit 60, maybe 65 with a good tail wind.  You could push start it to get it going, and you tried not to grind the gears when shifting.  Remember to let off the clutch gently while shifting into gear. 

How the world has changed?  I guess I should be grateful to technology, but I miss the old days when life was really living in the slow lane.

Eh! Who Wen Steal My Musubi?

Before I ever saw a Micky Dees or a Burger King there was only a DQ in town but lots of little lunch shops.  These shops offered stuff that would go well in a boxed lunch.  Among my favorite staple was the musubi.  It could have been a spam musubi, or a traditional musubi of a rice ball with an ume in it's center and wrapped in a nori sheet.  That musubi along with a piece or two of fried chicken, or spam and garnished with a little daikon really made the meal great.

We'd take it to the beach or just sit in the shade of a large tree and eat.  The musubi was our strength.  It was not until the publishing of "Pidgin to da Max" with it's cartoon of a musubi fight scene did it change the prominance of the musubi in society. 

Musubi yesterday, today, and tomorrow!  Long live the musubi!