Trip to the Big Island

“Here’s to the golden moon
And here’s to the silver sea.”
“Tiny Bubbles,” Don Ho

I kept hearing Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles” in my head as I embarked on an eight-day trip to glorious Hawaii. Toni and I had seen Don Ho live several times at Duke Kahanamoku’s nightclub on at Waikiki’s Hawaiian Village in Honolulu while we lived on Oahu in 1965-66. We visited Maui in 1990 and Honolulu with Miranda three years ago, but I had never before been on the “Big Island” of Hawaii. I flew with Tom Dietz from Phoenix to Kona International Airport. It only rains on the Kona Coast about ten inches a year, and the terrain can best be described as a lava desert. It’s quite beautiful though, and people have used white coral stones to write messages about loved ones on the black lava rocks.

Home base was a gorgeous house at Waikaloa Village. The only fast food at the nearby shopping center was (thankfully) a Subway, and at the Food Market Steinlager Beer imported from New Zealand was on sale for $12.99 a 12-pack. Most days I hiked there (a 20 minute walk) for coffee and pastry to start the day. On Monday (sunny and in the seventies, perfect for touring) Tom, Joe, and I headed for Kohala, along the northern coast. First stop was Puukohola Heiau, where King Kamehameha built a temple to the war god Kukailimoku as he prepared to conquer his rivals and unite Hawaii under his rule. Then we visited the ruins of a 600 year-old fishing village before driving to the breathtaking Pololu Valley lookout. It was once a place of refuge for Hawaians who violated the strict kapu system; if they could make it there alive, they could atone for their crimes. One taboo forbade women from eating bananas or coconuts. After downing smoothies in the town of Hawi and snapping photos posing with a colorful statue of Kamehameha we drove through cattle ranch country, encountering black goats, a mongoose or two, wild turkeys, and donkeys by the road.

Tuesday we toured the Hilo side, visiting Akaka Falls on the way to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, home to Kilauea volcano. Unlike the tourist posters, about all one sees at the crater is a big hole with steam coming out. In 1790 a rival king named Keoua was marching against Kamehameha but lost a third of his troops when a major eruption occurred. Some saw it as evidence that fire goddess Pele was angry over his troops throwing rocks into Kilauea and that she favored Kamehameha. Keoua subsequently tried to surrender but was slain and sacrificed at Puukohola Heiau. Another major eruption occurred in 1924, and in 1990 a lava flow destroyed most of the town of Kalapana. Kilauea is still very active but finding its way to the sea through a lava tube. Driving around the southern tip of Hawaii, we often encountered lava flows from Mauna Loa, the largest of the five volcanoes that formed the island, whose most recent eruption occurred in 1984. Meanwhile we listened to hits from the 70s and 80s (Cars, Deep Purple, Average White Band, Fleetwood Mac) on LAVA radio 103.5, frequently singing along to oldies such as “Magic Bus” by the Who.

Most other days we visited beaches along the Kona coast, usually near beautiful resorts. Some were of the black sand variety, while other white sand beaches were perfect for body surfing. With 12-foot waves breaking a hundred yards from the shore I hadn’t had that much fun in the water in years. We saw huge turtles along one shore and whales surfacing on the horizon while using a Marriott Resort hot tub (I also swam laps in their giant pool). Thursday evening Marriott had half-price night on dinner entrees, so they did get some of our money.

My last full day on the island we went to the 175 year-old Hulihe’e Palace in Kailua-Kona, which included many traditional artifacts, including dishes and mallets for pounding poi, as well as things brought back from his world tour by King David Kalakaua, the so-called “Merry Monarch,” who built Iolani Palace in Honolulu, where I did research into the administration of Governor Joseph Boyd Poindexter for my masters thesis. There was a special bed built for Princess Ruth Ke’elikolani, who weighed 400 pounds and was almost seven feet tall. The guide mentioned that sugar planters imported the mongoose to combat rats, but since they are active during the day and rats are nocturnal, mongooses feasted on birds and their eggs, causing many beautiful species to become extinct. Eating sliders and fish tacos at Huggo’s On the Rocks during Happy Hour, we listened to Hawaiian music and watched the sunset (it got more applause than the entertainer). Before we left a hula dancer charmed the standing room only crowd. We topped the evening off at the Royal Kona Resorts (no problem walking through the grounds even though we were non-paying visitors), gawking at the ocean surf and listening to music from a stage show.

I took along David Balducci’s novel “Last Man Standing” (a suspenseful “page turner” – the villains were white supremacists who blew up an integrated school in Virginia) and managed to finish it by trip’s end. Other reading material at the house included Mark Twain’s “Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands” and a delightful children’s book “Princess Bianca and the Vandals.” A Wall Street Journal Arts section contained a review of Pico Iyer’s “The Man Within My Head” about Graham Greene that contained this quote by my favorite novelist about keeping a journal as a form of therapy: “Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint, can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in the human situation.” I remained pretty oblivious to news events but did watch the thrilling NFL playoff victory of San Francisco over New Orleans. People watching at the Kona Airport, I saw folks who reminded by of old Upper Dublin teachers Frank Gilronan and Geraldine Biles.

Home to find snow on the ground (no surprise), the For Sale sign gone from the unit next to us, and a new furnace for the condo (the old one went out during the snowstorm). Sunday’s Post-Tribune had a Jerry Davich feature on 93 year-old Tuskegee Airman Quentin Smith, looking forward to being a special guest at the Chicago premier of George Lucas’s “Red Tails.” Smith told of being put in the Fort Knox stockade at war’s end for refusing to leave an officers’ club reserved for whites only. After Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP protested, President Harry S Truman ordered the men released. Clara Danes won a Golden Globe award for her portrayal of a CIA officer on the TV series “Homeland,” said to be Barack Obama’s favorite show.

IUN’s library was closed for Martin Luther King Day, but I managed to get in and expunge the 200+ emails that had accumulated in my absence. One from the owner of the condo next to us mentioned that renters (a mother and daughter) will be moving in shortly. The university appeared to have made it through the first week of the Spring semester without me. One event I missed lamentably was a program about the 1961 Freedom Riders. The panel included former Gary mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher. Jon Huntsman, the only decent Republican presidential hopeful, withdrew from the race. As Martin Luther King, who would have been 83 years old today, said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish as fools.” Near the entrance to the Archives is an exhibit Steve McShane put together about the student demonstrations leading to the university observing Martin Luther King Day. For our forty-seventh wedding anniversary Toni cooked up steaks, potatoes, and cauliflower. Dave invited us over for dinner, but we begged off as we were both tired.

I Do, I Do

Toni and I saw the play “I Do, I Do: A Musical about Marriage” on Saturday evening with the Hagelbergs in Munster. Beforehand, we ate at a nearby Mediterranean restaurant (Mishkenut) run by Palestinians that served delicious food at very low prices (my shish kabob was $10,99 and could have been enough for two. The place doesn’t serve liquor, so I wonder if they’ll make it financially. My back was really sore, so I wasn’t very good company. I noticed the radio was on near the kitchen, and I heard familiar songs by Owl City and Phoenix. The station was probably WXRT. “I Do, I Do” was witty and kept me awake most of the time. It had a cast of just two and just one set – a bedroom, living room and focused on married life episodes over a half-century, beginning in 1895. The songs were snappy although none was memorable with the possible exception of “My Cup Runneth Over.” On Google I learned that it opened on Broadway in 1966 and starred Mary Martin and Robert Preston (the “Music Man” guy who sang “Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana”). Most of the audience was older than me probably and very appreciative.

Got in seven board games at Dave’s on Sunday. My two victories were both in St. Petersburg, which until recently Tom Wade dominated. Dave won three games, including Air Lords, invented by a friend of ours who changed the rules several times in an effort to get it marketed. We like the original version best, however, and have a homemade board so we can play it. Dave put the Cubs game on, a rout of the Brewers to complete a three-game sweep in Milwaukee. In a bold and somewhat desperate move manager Lou Paniella has moved Carlos Zambrano to the bullpen to be a set-up man. So far, so good.

Wrote down some things to include in my Wednesday talk to the Hobart Kiwanis, to wit: Steel Shavings magazine started out in connection with having students do family oral history projects and then publishing the best of them. Most articles focused on the immigrant experience since few Region residents have been here more than three generations. One early issue focused on Latinos. Others centered on themes within specific time periods, such as Depression experiences, WW II Homefront activities, the Postwar Age of Anxiety, Relationships between the Sexes during the Teen Years of the 1950s, and Racial Tensions during the 1960s. Doing family histories can teach students about both local and national historical trends. I have edited special issues on Portage, Cedar Lake, and Gary, with the dominant emphasis being family life and social change over time. Social history encompasses sports, work experiences, school experiences, popular culture fads and fashions, and leisure activities of young and old (i.e., square dancing), and I have put out issues on all those subjects. Starting in the 1990s I gave students the option to write about themselves, looking back on memorable moments as well as keeping journals of day-to-day activities (everything from working out to making out). These stories often provided insights into what I call the contemporary history of adolescence although at IUN there also were many nontraditional students writing about the perils of married life and encounters with death and illness. One article, entitled “Emptying Nest,” dealt with taking one’s youngest child off to college.

If I had a future issue devoted to the social history of Hobart, one subject could be how Lake George has changed over time. Another could explore how bowling alleys have evolved. At Cressmoor Lanes, where I bowl in the Sheet and Tin league, players used to keep score themselves and tip pinsetters by putting a dollar bill in one of the holes at the end of the night. Other topics deserving of coverage include July Fourth parades and fireworks displays, the unique Art Theater, and Hobart’s bar and restaurant scene (Rosie O’Grady’s is now Cagney’s). I’d love to see a history of the Hobart Jaycee Fest where in the Strack and Van Til parking lot I have seen Blue Oyster Cult, Cracker, the Smithereens, and Joan Jett perform, as well as my son’s band Voodoo Chili. Stories about Hobart social activities have appeared in most issues. In the Nineties issue, entitled “Shards and Midden Heaps” (a phrase borrowed from my favorite Region author Jean Shepherd) there are eight pages alone devoted to Brickie Pride, the football program under Coach Don Howell and three humorous remembrances of high school days. I’ll conclude by persuading six people to read excerpts from Ryan Maicki’s humorous remembrances of his high school days, entitled “Bad Seeds.” Volunteers will get to keep a copy of the issue.

Jeff Renn, who invited me to speak to the Kiwanians, is one of my favorite former students. Going into his final year, he was the second leading scorer on IUN’s basketball team. Then some really talented players were recruited, and Jeff was happy letting others take most shots so long as it helped the team. He’s a real class act and invited Toni and me to his graduation party at the Patio. I invited Fred McColly to be my guest and read part of Ryan’s “Bad Seeds” when I talk to the Kiwanians. His latest Facebook message deals with a story that made yesterday’s news shows. He writes, “Eggs and smoke bombs in the Ukrainian parliament over an extension of the Russian lease on the naval base at Sevastopol...I have to admire their editorial elan...perhaps bottle rockets in the imperial Senate would enliven public interest in the legislative process here.” One Ukrainian legislator was fending off eggs with an umbrella.

Finished Anne Tyler’s “Noah’s Compass” – the title is from a question Liam’s young granddaughter asks him about Noah’s Ark. Noah didn’t need a compass because he really wasn’t going anywhere, just trying to float above water. As in many of Tyler’s books, the main male characters are less interesting than the women in their lives. Finished it and picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s 1997 novel “Timequake,” in which people (including one of the author’s doppelgangers, Kilgore Trout) are thrust back in time ten years and doomed to repeat every thing they did once again. Vonnegut claims ‘Timequake” would be his final novel since at 74 he was way past his prime and with his older brother having died, “Now I don’t have anybody to show off for anymore.” Vonnegut constantly belittles those with literary pretensions and writes: “If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have nerve enough to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.” At one point in this semiautobiographical novel he writes: “You want to know why I don’t have AIDS, why I'm not HIV-positive like so many other people? I don’t fuck around. It’s as simple as that.”

I have two new Facebook friends, Lorraine Todd-Shearer and Colin Kern. I was surprised but pleased that they requested hooking up with me. Lorraine is married to former Voodoo Chili drummer John and is one of my favorite dance partners. She is always upbeat and fun to be with. She was at Marianne’s Superbowl party and had dinner with Dave, Darcy, Marianne, and me prior to the Steely Dan concert a few months ago. Colin is the son of friend and former colleague Paul Kern. I knew him when he was a kid and would talk to him at some length when he’d answer the phone when I called Paul. He is a graduate student at the University of Delaware, where I once applied for a teaching position. The school is a traditional rival of Bucknell, where I was an undergraduate. I applied for a job there, too, and never heard back from the History Department. I had sent them copies of my books “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” and “City of the Century” and told them they could donate them to Bucknell’s library when they were through with them. Some months later, the librarian wrote me a note thanking me for the donation. Looking back, I am glad I stayed at IUN.