Going Back in Time— My trip to Hawaii in 2020

Forty years ago, we lived on the Big Island of Hawaii. We lived there for 2 ½ years, from February 1978 to August 1980. It was an adventure—the tropics, an unspoiled paradise, prejudice, and so much more. In February of 2020, I returned to the Big Island with my daughter Diana and her family. But more than that, I went back in time in memory to those idyllic days.

Hawaii, forty years ago, was very primitive. I recall coming off the plane and coming down steps—not even

a ramp or unto a gateway. That was my first taste of what it would be like. The Big Island back then was predominantly Japanese—not haole (Caucasian), with plenty of Polynesian, Portuguese and Chinese mixed in. I recall the local McDonald’s in Hilo always served Sushi on their menu along with hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes. This time I came off the plane, we had ramps/stairs leading down from the plane and then we walked to the gate.

The local school our children attended was a small school with only 12 to 15 children in each class. Many were Polynesians, but also many were Japanese.

I checked online about the Kaumana Elementary School today, and here are the statistics

Kaumana Elementary School Enrollment By Race The student body of Kaumana Elementary School in Hilo, Hawaii County, Hawaii is made up of 7 ethnicities. The largest ethnic group of the 264 students at Kaumana Elementary School is Pacific Islander. This is followed by Asian (13.6 %), White (8.7 %), Hispanic (6.1 %), Mixed Students of two or more ethnicities (4.2 %), Indian (1.5 %) and Black (0.8 %). Race      Number            % Indian    4           1.5 % Asian     36         13.6 % Hispanic           16          6.1 % Black     2           0.8 % White    23         8.7 % Pacific Islander             172       65.2 % Two or More Ethnicities           11          4.2 %

When we lived in Hilo, each classroom had a door to the outside and a deck with a water faucet right by the door. The kids usually wore flip-flops and you took them off, washed your feet and went into the classroom barefoot. You can see from the above photo; they’ve updated the school and each classroom does not have a door to the outside.

In 1978, the first Safeway in Hilo was opened and back then, it was not popular. Most people preferred their Mom & Pop bread stores, vegetable stores, fish & meat stores. Safeway did eventually become more popular, and today those downtown individual stores are now tourist boutiques.
Everywhere I saw louvered windows, although more and more had screens on the window. When we lived there, that was the main type of window you had.

Living in Hawaii was laid back in the past. And I discovered as we went everywhere—it is just as laid back today, with servers taking a long time to come, and sitting talking to each other rather than serve customers; hotels took a long time to answer your questions or supplies.

  

Sunday

Church

The first thing we did Sunday morning was attended Church; and yes, they had louvered windows on them!

The service was the same as years ago, and after the meeting ended, a young woman who was moving came up and the audience sang “Aloha Oe” (Farewell to Thee), with the words on the inside back cover of the hymn book. I almost cried because that’s what we always did when someone left the ward. (FYI: I’ve requested that “Aloha Oe” be sung at my funeral).

City of Refuge

One of my most favorite places we visited on the Big Island was the City of Refuge, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau,

on the Kona Coast. In the ancient Hawaiian times, there were “kapus,” forbidden rules; when a commoner casts his shadow on an Ali’i (chief), or a woman eats with a man, or someone catches a fish out of season—all these were “kapu” or forbidden. Break any of these (and more) and you face the ultimate punishment of death. However, if you could elude your pursuers on foot, get to the coast and swim to the City of Refuge, you could be resolved by a priest.

Also, during a war, the site was a sanctuary for children, elders and other noncombatants. Even defeated warriors could seek safety in the refuge, and after the battle ended, return home, whatever the outcome of the battle.

Also, next to the City of Refuge were the Royal Grounds, where Ali’i met with their advisers and priests. On the site are examples of a favorite game of the Hawaiians, played on a rock board with tiny black and white pebbles.

They also had an ancient game (konane) that was on a flat rock and had small indents on it to hold the white

and black rocks. Above you can see Athena and Diana playing the game in 1979 and a closer look at the game, today.

The Royal Grounds also had a special “chair” made of rock for the chief to sit and watch the water, and a special rock where the chief’s wife angered the king and she ran with her dog and hid under a rock. He didn’t notice her until her dog barked. It reminded me that even Hawaiian royalty had marital problems.

I was pleased that the City of Refuge hadn’t changed much during the years, as you can see from the pictures I’ve attached of then and now. The City of Refuge was a joy to walk around in. We saw “noni” (morindra citrifolia) fruit, which was a stable of Hawaiian food, but also made many medicines for them.

The hand-carved tikis represented the image of various Polynesian gods and personified the specific “mana” or power of that God. These tikis tried to please the gods and break good harvest and weather, as well as success and power during wars.

Snorkeling

I love to snorkel and fortunately had the opportunity to snorkel in some of the best places in the world.

Marlowe, Athena, Beth & Marc at Guaymas, Mexico

I had learned to snorkel on the Baja Coast of Mexico over 43 years ago in the early 1970s. Our family had lived in El Paso and driven down through the Mexico coast on vacation. One of our stops was at Guaymas, in Sonora state in northwest Mexico. We loved the beautiful beach where the movie “Catch 22” was filmed. Ed and I took turns snorkeling since we had three small children and one of us had to watch them while the other snorkeled.

The most memorable thing that happened there was that Ed saw an electric eel while out snorkeling, and decided to chase it. People kept yelling things to him in Spanish, but he didn’t understand so he just ignored it. Finally, one young lady swam out and explained to him that it was an electrical eel and very dangerous. He came back to shore.

Another interesting experience there was dinner one day. I had packed lunches for us, but a Mexican family was making home-made enchiladas over an open fire on the beach. Our oldest son, Marlowe somehow began talking to them (he knew a little Spanish from attending El Paso’s bi-lingual school. They offered to share food with us so we ate the very best enchiladas I have ever tasted, and they got to eat our bologna sandwiches. We definitely got the best end of the deal.

I remember thinking of Robert Frost’s poem as I snorkeled and saw all the wonderful sea creatures; I adapted it to my situation.

“The ocean’s lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And children resting on the beach,

And children resting on the beach.”

I really learned to snorkel when we lived on the big island of Hawaii, during the last years of the 1970s. We lived on the rainy side of the island near Hilo, but it was a short trip across the volcano road to the Kona side of the island.

Marc & Marlowe at Beach 69, Kona Hawaii

Our favorite beach was “Beach 69.” There was a telephone pole on the highway with the mile marker “69” on it, and if you turned off the road where the telephone pole was, it would lead you to a beautiful secluded cove perfect for snorkeling. Waialea beach is the official name of it and it is one of the most popular white sand beaches on the Big Island. There is a rich variety of marine life to sea, and plenty of coral around the rocky areas of the bay. There is no life guard on duty, but there are showers, covered picnic tables, and restrooms.

Diana in Kona, Hawaii 1979

My husband Ed more scuba dived, than snorkeled, diving deep to pick up items on the ocean floor. I just loved to drift watching all the varieties of fish. Once some people ran into a jellyfish which stung them, and we used our baby’s wet diaper to ease the sting.

I don’t swim well, so I always worried about my children going out too far, and once my youngest son, Marc, went out too far, but someone noticed him, and before my husband could get out to him, they had rescued him.

With four children, including a baby who was six months old when we arrived in Hawaii, Ed

Cleaning off snorkeling equipment in Hawaii

and I had to take turns snorkeling and watching the kids.

Another memorable time was when I took the children over to the beach to celebrate Pioneer’s Day (24^th of July), the day the pioneers entered the great Salt Lake valley in Utah. I thought it would be a fun excursion, and we made pancakes, but they ended up being sandy from the blowing sand. But it was still a fun time.

My last time snorkeling (to this time) was when I took my two grandchildren, Jenni, 18 years old, and James, her brother, 21 years old on a vacation to Guanacaste, Costa Rica in august 2016. We stayed at Playa del Coco beach where our resort hotel offered a snorkeling tour which we took.

My grandson, James, shows pufferfish in Costa Rica

We drove out to the big rocks in the bay and snorkeled around it. I was in my early 70s and although I wore a safety vest so I couldn’t sink, I wasn’t as strong as I remembered, but I saw some interesting fish. The guide showed us a pufferfish and a spiked pufferfish while we were out in the bay. My grandson, a much stronger swimmer than I kept finding me and checking up on me.

A Spiked pufferfish

Later the boat took us to a secluded beach where we could snorkel in shallow water and find shells. 

Snorkeling is just as fun now as it was 45 years ago. 

Moving—One of Life’s Worst Experiences

The dictionary defines moving as “to go from one place of residence to another."

 That sounds so easy, but in real life, moving from one residence to another is one of the most traumatic experiences in your life. Ask me—I’ve moved 25 times before we settled in Utah 25 years ago, and even then we’ve moved once while we’ve lived here.

Once, many years ago as a teenager, I had the bug to travel, “to be a gypsy,” and see the world. I grew out of that about the 20^th move. Actually I don’t mind it after I have moved and gotten settled into a new home; I enjoyed living in new areas of the country and learning about new cultures. I never got tired of that. It was the actual physical MOVE that drove me insane.

<Since my husband was in the military, we had the army move us in moving vans so it

wasn’t like I had to physically pack every box, and unpack every glass and plate. But the process of moving was still overwhelming.

Moving involves change and no one likes change. Usually it means going through and getting rid of stuff. There is a weight limit, so you have to look at everything and weigh in your mind whether it is worth moving if you go over weight and have to pay [blank dollars] per pound for a $5.00 item that weighs 20 pounds.

>If you can buy an item somewhere else as cheaply, then give them to Goodwill or neighbors. Everything has a material value and a sentimental value and you have to separate the two. Children’s kindergarten drawings can be dumped when the children themselves are in college.

One of my memorable moves were moving to the big island of Hawaii. All our items were in

containers and a fork lift went right through the top of one of them and destroyed everything in that area of the container. They left it open to the weather and still shipped it to Hawaii, so by the time it arrived there, everything in that container was pretty bad. That was an interesting arrival because we had to wait months for our stuff to arrive so they put us up in a hotel until it got there. Four children, including a six-month old baby living in a hotel. It was insane.

My husband got his dream when we left Hawaii; I had gone back with the kids for a family reunion, so he did the move by himself. He got rid of anything he wanted and I couldn’t say a thing. That was his favorite move, and mine also, because I wasn’t involved in the move at all—I was on holiday.

Somehow overseas moves always went wrong! When we moved to Italy, we had to store most of our furniture and take a limited amount with us to Italy. I remember when the movers were moving a lot of our heavy furniture to the van in a driving rainstorm without covering it up, I had a conniption. This was the stuff that was going into storage for three years and they were loading it and all the boxes with it wet with rain. I could see what it would look like in three years after being stored in hot, humid Alabama weather. I called and they stopped, and corrected the problem, and our stuff survived.

We had our first three children in three years so they were a handful. On moving day, we always farmed them out so they wouldn’t be in the way. But somehow, something always happened, whether it was injuries at the friends’ house, or stomach flu, or no sleep for days. Moving from Chicago, my youngest son, 18-months old had just gotten home from our friend’s house, fell off something, and needed stitches in his chin. It was a welcome relief to leave my husband in charge of the move, and take him to the emergency room. At least we didn’t have it as bad as our friends’ children breaking out in chicken pox in the middle of the move. Children always sense stress in others so they always act out and make things worse, so you just have to deal with it, but it isn’t always easy.

My worst move—the absolute worst—was moving from El Paso, Texas to Ft. Hood,  Texas in 1974 with those three little children. We had two cars, so my husband drove one car and I drove the other, with all of the children in it. (I knew how to take care of the kids, of course; he didn’t, he explained.) Our children were six, five, and four-years-old, and I got moving boxes to make desks for each of them, made them “travel kits” hooked onto the boxes for their stuff, and away we went.

Now, to understand this situation, you must know I hate driving. I am terrified of driving.

Marc, Marlowe, myself, Athena 1974

Driving on the freeway back then would give me nightmares for a week. Put me in a car with three little children and tell me to drive almost 600 miles across Texas was enough to do me in. I always used music cassettes in the car so we sang across Texas, but every time we pulled into a gas station, I’d get out and take all the children to the bathroom, get them something to eat, and then, sob on Ed’s shoulder that I couldn’t drive another foot. That I really couldn’t. I would die if I had to get back in the car. He would tell me that he’d been behind me and I’d done fine; none of the kids had gotten out of their seat belts or killed each other. I hadn’t crashed the car. I could make it to the next gas station. Finally I’d take a deep breath and climb back into the insane asylum on wheels. There were no DVDs, no TVs, no video games—just me and the kids, my cassette music and my “travel kits.” It took us two days to make it to Ft. Hood—two days and my sanity. I still have nightmares of that drive.

"Why I am reminiscing about trials during moving? Because my daughter Diana and her family just moved from Chicago to Utah with her five-year-old son, and Diana developed shingles on the way here. Stops at Insta-Care Centers, Emergency Rooms, and lots of pain meds followed. Diana had started out driving, but after the shingles got so bad, Diana couldn’t see because of the pain in her trigeminal nerve so Diana’s mother-in-law had to drive. As bad as my moves were, at least I didn’t have any move THAT bad. Diana is just trying to show me up!

Feeling Patriotic in an Anti-American Atmosphere

Being a soldier or a soldier’s wife during the Vietnam War was not easy. The war was not popular and many looked down on soldiers as easy scapegoats. No one knows why the soldiers became so unpopular, but from the war being unpopular, the soldiers soon became disliked and then called baby-killers. Before long soldiers were being advised to change into civilian clothes before flying home so they wouldn’t be targets of protests.

Was became the short-haired military men stood out so much from the usual long-haired hippies who weren’t in the military, that it was obvious that they were in the army? Even the non-hippies wore hair much longer than the military men. Everyone who watched the Vietnam War on TV saw the atrocities and they blamed the soldiers they saw nearby because they couldn’t accuse the ones they saw on TV. 

While Ed was in Vietnam the first time, I stayed home in Bountiful expecting our first child in 1967. I went to the University of Utah for one quarter, and I felt the anti-war animosity indirectly. Everyone seemed friendly until they found out my husband was serving in Vietnam. Then the hostility about the war came out. The Tet Offensive occurred early in 1968 which was a military success, but a propaganda failure. That was when the anti-war sentiment changed from just the college campuses and hippies to other Americans.  I had never felt totally “apart” from the rest of society, but after that it was obvious that I was different. I can’t explain it; I can’t describe it; but I felt it. The only time I felt accepted was when I met with the “Waiting Wives Club” a group of women whose husbands were serving in Vietnam. 

It was worse the second time Ed served in Vietnam in 1970-71 and I was alone with three children under three years. I remember the apartment complex I was in having a summer party and I was the only one not invited, because as one of the neighbors explained, “You just wouldn’t fit in.” I was in a ward of mostly older families and I felt like every sound my three little ones made in church brought a lot of censure because they were the only children there.  So I spent most Sundays in the Church hallway trying to wrestle three little ones, feeling as though we were nuisances in the ward. I’ll never forget one older lady (her son was my age), who saw me in the hall and put her arms around me. “I had six children and my husband was in the bishopric and the stake presidency. I spent many years walking these halls with little ones. My heart goes out to you.” I’ve never forgotten her kindness and compassion. 

The war was even more unpopular, and protests were much more vocal by then. The war had spread unofficially into Laos and Cambodia, and everyone kept hoping the war would end “soon,” but it didn’t look like it ever would.  I felt everyone hated the war—and the soldiers and their families who were reminders of the war.

Halfway through Ed’s year’s second tour, I was able to meet him for an “Rest and Recovery” in Hawaii--a week-long vacation from war. While we were on Waikiki Beach, “The Smothers’ Brothers,” our favorite musical group gave a free concert, especially for all the military that were there on "Rest and Recovery." We were excited to go it. 

It was my first live concert; I was so thrilled to see the Smothers’ Brothers and hear them sing. It was an open concert on the grass and we went early to get close seats. I had a really nice camera that Ed had bought while he was in Vietnam, and I used it to take good pictures of them performing. We enjoyed their performance and the music so much.

The Smothers’ Brothers were very popular, but their show had been controversial. Some of the satirical jokes on their show on race, religion, censorship and the war had been considered to be anti-government and disturbed CBS, their network. Their show was cancelled.  However on that summer day on Waikiki where their music and jokes rang out to thousands of military members and their wives and girlfriends, none of that was apparent. The Smothers Brothers kept telling the military how much they appreciated the work they were doing. They said their father had been in the military and they had been military brats until their father had been killed as a Japanese POW in World War II. 

How ironic that some performers who had been blackballed because of anti-war jokes entertained and praised the soldiers who most Americans reviled and spat upon! Young men the same age as the soldiers in their audience sang and joked to them and made the soldiers feel at home in an America that rejected them! Other performers like Bob Hope performed in Vietnam, and lifted their spirit during the war; that was important! The Smothers' Brothers performed to soldiers on R & R with their wives and made them feel proud to be soldiers; and that was just as important.

Smothers' Brothers performing on Waikiki Beach

  

It was one of the few times during the Vietnam War that I felt proud to be a military spouse; one of the few times that I sensed Ed’s service, and my support was valuable. I never forgot the concert—or the feeling the Smothers’ Brothers gave me during years when I felt America resented my husband’s service.  God Bless the Smothers’ Brothers.