Thinking of Hawaii

Looking out on the cold and snowy world that is Indiana right now, my mind wanders to warmer climes.  One of those is a glorious place called Hawaii.  I'm going to write about it.  If you don't want to read it, move on!

I've been to Hawaii twice as a Navy dependent.  The first time was circa 1951 or so, for three months while my dad's ship, the USS Henrico (APA 45) was put in dry dock for repairs in Pearl Harbor.  I was probably 5-years-old then, but I do have memories.  The second time was a one-day stopover in 1957, on our way to Dad's duty station in Japan.  I was 10 that time.  These are my random memories of those visits.

1.  Both times, we traveled by Navy ship.  There were other dependents on board both times but few amenities for civilian "guests".  (I don't remember any other children on board on the first trip.)  In other words, we weren't exactly on the Carnival Cruise Lines! There were no swimming pools, deck chairs, shuffleboard, or anything else entertaining...and especially nothing for kids.  Everything was painted battleship gray and labeled in white stencils. There was the engine hum and always the smell of diesel around the ship.

2.  The first trip out, we left from Coronado, CA, where Dad was already stationed.  The second trip, we left from San Francisco, CA, after traveling cross country from Illinois where Dad had been stationed.  That second trip, our way out to sea was past Alcatraz Island (which was still a prison in those days) and under the Golden Gate Bridge.  I was impressed!  Both times, we observed our car being loaded into the ship's hold by crane.  We would have wheels when we got to where we were going.

3.  (The rest of these comments will apply to the first visit, unless otherwise mentioned.)  Pulling away from the dock was preceded by several blasts of the ship's horn...and then we could feel the ship moving.  Shortly after getting under way, there was the required Life Boat Drill.  Everyone was assigned a life boat station on deck.  When the alarm was blown and the unending PA announcement "This is a drill;  This is a drill,"  came through, all hands were to dig out their life preservers and present themselves on deck at their LB stations with preservers on.  The preservers were big and bulky and heavy, covered in khaki canvas that smelled like old canvas, and we had to stand at our stations until the drill was declared over.  In my young, impatient mind, it went on forever.

4.  There was a young bachelor lieutenant on board named Pruitt.  I developed a bit of a crush on him.  He told me that if I would learn a hula dance while we were in Hawaii and perform it for him on our trip home, he would buy me a doll.  I didn't forget that.  (I think I was 5.)

5.  When we finally approached the islands, we could see them but were stopped dead in the water outside of the harbor.  Huh?  Why weren't we just steaming on in?  I didn't know it then, but many harbors (and especially Pearl) had obstacles that ships' captains/navigators would not know of, so we had to wait until a pilot was brought out to the ship by tugboat to guide the ship in.  Each time, there were at least two, maybe three, tugboats that towed us slowly past the obstacles, directed by the pilot. One of the obstacles was the USS Arizona which was sunk on Pearl Harbor Day ten or so years before and was still only a sunken wreck (no memorial).  I do recall my mother mentioning it as sacred "ground" as we were towed past--that many American sailors were buried down there.

6.  Once tied up at dock, there was a greeting party: a troup of Hawaiian dancers--hula girls!  We were on deck watching those when we were also greeted by leis put around our necks.  Leis made of real flowers!  It was so festive and so welcoming.  Fantastic!  Somewhere there is a picture of my mother, sister, and I at that moment....

7.  When we finally debarked, we got in a taxi that took us to our motel, the Pua Leilani.  (I'm going to misspell some of these words because I don't totally remember them.  I was pretty young.)  The motel was surrounded by beautiful exotic flowers and shrubbery, but the taxi ride there had us terrified!  The driver darted in and out of traffic like a madman.  We were so grateful to arrive at our motel safely!

8.  I don't remember how long we stayed at the Pua Leilani housing.  I don't think more than a day or two.  We soon moved to an apartment building--the Ala Moana, I think--right across the street from the Alawai Canal.  Our apartment was on the second floor.  I remember nothing about the interior of that apartment except my mother having me taste fresh pineapple in the kitchen, saying that it was the real thing!

9.  My sister needed to be enrolled in school.  I remember going shopping for school supplies for her, one item of which was a blindfold for an afternoon nap.  Shari was probably in 5th or 6th grade. I thought nap time was only for Kindergartners, not understanding that many countries in warmer climates have siesta time in the afternoon.  I think Shari resented it.

10.   Coconut trees were everywhere.  Once in awhile, Shari would pick one up off the ground and bring it home for my father to crack open, and the instant he showed up outside with a hammer, a number of other American kids would show up with coconuts for him to break for them, too. Coconuts have an outer husk and an inner shell that one has to get through before the milk and meat can be reached.  Not an easy task!

11.  The area around the apartments had plants that we called Elephant Ears.  The lore among the children was that they were poisonous.  I remember one event when a child supposedly decided to bite on a leaf of one of the plants and was immediately met with a burning mouth.  True or not, I don't know...but I remember that I felt awed.

12.  Our apartment was on the second floor of the complex.  Outside the front door was a cement walkway with a low cinder block wall for a rail.  One day, a sudden rain squall occurred.  One of the neighbors made a dash to the street to shut his car windows, and Dad hurriedly went out on the walkway to yell at him to shut our car's windows, too...when he slipped on the wet balcony and smashed the instep of his foot on the cinder blocks, making a nasty gash. This required a trip to the doctor.  Because of the location of the cut, the doctor decided not to stitch it but to immobilize it with a small cast to keep it from re-opening with every step.  That evening, Dad went into shock...was vomiting, etc. (don't know if alcohol was involved), but before the night was over, Dad had cut off the still-wet cast.  Mom was frustrated, but Dad was not about to be fettered like that.  Somewhere, there is a picture of my father sitting on a blanket on Waikiki Beach with a bandaged foot. I guess it healed...

13.  As earlier mentioned, our apartment complex was right across the street from the Alawai Canal. There were small motorboats moored all along the dock.  I used to play there, all by myself.  Some days, I played with little black crabs.  Other days, I pulled out little clear jellyfish and messed with them as if they were mud pies.  (I have no clue why I was never stung, unless these were a stingless variety.)  Mom always said that there were baricudas in those waters.  I believed that baricudas were people-eaters, so I never wanted to be IN the water...just NEAR it.  I also enjoyed getting on the decks of the boats moored there, just to play.  (I would have killed my own kid had she done that!)
We knew none of the boat owners, nor did I have permission to be on their boats.  And no one ever caught me, except Mom.

One day, the parents had some afternoon function to go to.  Shari was to babysit me.  She had a girlfriend over, with our parents' permission.  The last thing my mother said to us was, "Stay away from the canal and the boats!"  We vowed faithfully that we would.  So, of course, the first place we headed when they left was the canal and the boats.  Shari and her friend were pretending to ballroom dance on the deck of a boat, while I stood watching.  I got elbowed, and into the drink I went, scraping my back on the side of the boat on my way down.  I didn't know how to swim.  I grabbed the anchor rope and was quickly pulled out of the water so the baricudas wouldn't get me!  Shari and friend rushed me up to the apartment, put me in the bathtub to get me all washed off, then put me in my pajamas to be ready for bed as we all swore to secrecy.  The only problem with the whole scenario was that when the parents got home, it was only 4:00 PM!  There I was, bathed, pajama'ed and ready for bed, but it wasn't even close to dark yet!  I showed my mother the scrape on my back with some lame excuse for how it happened, but if the parents suspected anything, they never let on.. I think Shari and I were in our 20s or 30s before we confessed to that caper.  It was one of the FEW times that we didn't get caught!

14.  While in Honolulu, we often frequented Waikiki Beach as well as Fort De Russy Beach (an Army/military location).  One time at Fort De Russy, my sister came out of the water screaming that something had stung her on the leg.  The lifeguard determined that she had been stung by a Portuguese Man of War...a particularly venomous form of jellyfish often found in those waters.  He applied an orange liquid that he had in a gallon jug, and all was well.  Scary!

15.  We never island-hopped, but we did explore the island of Hawaii a bit.  The most identifiable feature of the island is Diamond Head Crater...an extinct volcano.  That can be seen from almost anywhere in Honolulu.  We ventured into the mountains once or twice.  We went to the Blow Hole, which is a hole in the volcanic rock near the ocean's edge.  When the waves come in just right, water spews through the hole like a geyser.  Another spot was the Pali, a cliff where legend has it that some warrior king was pinned during a skirmish.  He jumped off to commit suicide but was blown back up by the winds.  (I learned the difference between leeward and windward sides of the islands on those days.)  On one such excursion, we drove past pineapple and sugar cane fields.  Dad stopped the car, broke off a cane so we could suck the sugary syrup out of it, just for the experience.  I'm sure it wasn't something he was supposed to do, and I worried about that...but there aren't too many kids who can say that they sucked on a sugar cane in rural Hawaii!

16.  We went to one luau where I was exposed to a traditional Hawaiian dish:  poi.  It was awful!

17.  Halloween happened while we were in Hawaii.  Shari and I had satin Chinese pajamas that Dad had brought to us from Hong Kong.  Those became our costumes.  We worked the apartment complexes alone, she and I.  (No parents came along in those days!)

18.  As we were getting short on time before leaving Hawaii for the US, I reminded my mother that I needed to learn a hula for Lt. Pruitt.  Somewhere, somehow, she found someone to teach me the "Little Brown Gal".  Shari and I already had muu-muus and grass skirts.  I was all set!   Behind the scenes, Mom had to remind Lt. Pruitt of his promise of three months before.  On board on the way home, I performed my hula dance, and Lt. Pruitt gave me a little stuffed doll--a Hawaiian girl in a little grass skirt.  How fitting!  I never forgot that.  (Wish I still had that doll, but it was lost in all of our other Navy travels.  Mom didn't keep much because of our constant moving.)

19.  On the second trip to Hawaii, we were only on a one-day stopover on our way further westward to Japan.   The family spent the entire afternoon at Ft. De Russy Beach.  I'm not sure what we were thinking.  There was no such thing as sunblock in those days, and suntan lotion was only supposed to enhance a tan, but I don't remember a single application of anything to protect my skin. That day, I got the worst sunburn of my life!  I spent the entire rest of the trip to Japan wearing a sundress that tied at the shoulders, only because I couldn't stand anything else touching my skin.  My back and shoulders blistered and peeled.  I was miserable.

20.  On the trip home from Japan (in February of 1958, which has nothing to do with this blog about Hawaii), the world had been hit with something known then as the Asiatic Flu.  I had it.  My brother had it, and I think my mother had just gotten over it when we departed for the US.  It was nasty. High fevers, susceptible to relapse.  People all over the world were dying from it.  Our ship, in order to keep the dependents amused, was showing movies nightly.  One was Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  It had everyone spooked.  And then, just one night out of port in the US, it became known that a dependent wife, mother of four, had died of the flu on board. That put a pall on everything.  I was sure, when my sister and I were put on a plane for Illinois less than 48 hours later, that I would never see my parents again.   Thank God, it didn't happen that way, but it certainly taught me a little about the brevity of life.

Enough about Hawaii.  How 'bout if we just bring a little bit of Hawaii to Indiana now?  I'm ready!

Please note the comments below this post.  I took it from something my sister sent me and posted it. Although it says "Peggy says", it is actually "Shari says".  Do read it, if you are interested.  Some of what she says was not part of my memory but hers, but it sure does put things in perspective!