Stephanie says

She invited Neil to Sunday dinner,  a bold move considering she couldn’t be absolutely sure  we’d behave ourselves,  Michael, Bruce, me and Jim.   She’d prepared her usual company meal:   exceedingly dry roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy,  green salad, various veg,  and some scrumptious home baked dessert for later.   We sat at the dining room table and served ourselves family style.     Conversation flowed smoothly,  nobody asked,  “Ah Neil, exactly what are your intentions with our mother?)     We were behaving!   One of us broke out a favored refrain,  “Mom, Neil doesn’t like your roast.”  Neil bit to our delight.  He, stammering, “that no, he really liked the roast.”     The gravy boat was dry  Mom refilled it in the kitchen  and offered  “more gravy?” to Neil.     Walking around the table she stumbled,  lost co...

  Travelling in Mexico US Hwy 18 Mex 15 - Copper Canyon Bound Tucson to Los Mochis via bus is a long ride.  Gone are the rickety busses so stuffed with passengers they’re hanging out the windows as live chickens squawk in the aisles portrayed in old western movies. This bus has air conditioning, comfortable seats, and drivers professional in crisply ironed white shirts and dark blue slacks.  A video screen plays American movies voiced-over in Spanish, the audio lingering a few beats after the lips stop.  Crossing the border proved easy.  Everybody got off the bus, lined up with their bags and punched a metal button on a pole hooked to a stop light.   We foreigners were directed to a Customs counter where we filled out a form, bought a tourist visa ($200p), then back on the bus.   Mexico Hwy 15 stretches narrowly across flat desert, oncoming traffic rushes by with a suction of wind shear.  My travelling companion ...

  Jim and I moved into Honolulu proper to a 10 th  floor apartment with a lanai overlooking city to ocean. I don’t know quite why we moved there as Jim always took care of relocating, (and I loved that about him.) So he chose the place, maybe forgetting his fear of heights.  That lanai was a source of torture for the man. It was large enough to hold a table, several chairs, a hibachi, and plants. Jim always sat in the chair nearest the sliding door.  Always.  He would not join at the table whenever our portly friend Dick Royes was over for dinner. Maybe he worried about the tensile strength of the rebar supports.   Dick’s theory on the fear of height, one of his many interesting and often outrageous ideas, was that it wasn’t so much the height that people were afraid of, but that they wanted to jump off - and feared they would.   One night I was shooting photos from the lanai during a lightning storm over the ocean when Jim not...

One sleepy Kahaluu evening Jim had turned in for an early night while I studied in the living room.  A loud explosion startled me and when I looked up from my book I saw a red-orange glow lighting up the night.  Mil’s house was ablaze.  Engulfed. The intense heat of the fire blew out the window glass. I dialed 911 while yelling for Jim.  He ran into the living room and immediately sized up the situation.  Saying, “Mil,” he was out the door and running down the common driveway.  Augie ran out to meet him and they both ran into the burning house and found Mil incapacitated in the living room, some of her clothes smoldering.  They carried her outside to safety.  Neighbors sprayed water on the houses closest to the fire with scrounged garden hoses until the fire department arrived.  Thankfully the trade winds weren’t blowing. The parameds quickly sent Mil to a burn unit, much of her body was seriously ...

  Perusing cookbooks over the years I’ve gleaned all manner of cooking tips and food information. I’m happy to share with you, dear reader, a payoff from this flawed database.  I was online searching baked good recipes when I stumbled across a Swedish Saffron Cake which got me to thinking about the sheer number of Nordic recipes using saffron that I’ve encountered.  Why was saffron so commonly used in cooking there? How did they get it?  I had in my mind that saffron was regarded as a luxury item, like Swiss chocolates and caviar.  From Wikipedia:  Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus commonly known at saffron crocus. I’d never heard that.  I phoned Melissa to share the remarkable information that saffron threads are crocus stigma.  She said, “Everybody knows that.”  Huh? Not me.  Inner gardener kicks in:  Wonder if I can grow it?” And the answer to that question? ...

  We frequented a health-food restaurant in Kailua owned and operated by a born-again christian group.   We fondly dubbed it “Bible Bread” because they baked all the very delicious bread and also because we were so witty.   Anyway, the staff seemed to be all cute girls so Michael was in his element.  One particular time, this is an example of sibling solidarity, we’re in there and at the counter was a particular girl Michael liked to chat up. He was flirting big time when she looks over at me, with an ‘and who’s this?" look.  Michael says “Tell her you're my sister.”  So I just looked right at her with a bland gaze and say, “I’m his sister."  Unconvincingly it seems.  She cut the conversation short.  Michael was not amused.  I certainly was.   I really crack myself up.

One of my profs invited students to attend a lecture on China from someone who’d just been there.  This was a big deal as trade had been re-established with China after a 25-year hiatus and Americans were now allowed travel.  Nixon went to China in 1976 on his elder statesman redemption tour and although he couldn’t dodge the taint of Watergate, he did reestablish trade with China.  Two things I remember about the lecturer’s trip:   1.     They’d noticed there were no flies buzzing around the farm animals at any of the farms they’d visited.    Remarking on that they were told that the flies were all eliminated.    By hand.    2.     Exceedingly few elementary age kids wore glasses at the schools they’d visited.    They learned eye exercises were added to school daily exercise routines some years back and it resulted in 20/20 vision for the majority. I was seated next to a woman,...

  Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure.  There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.   Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island.  He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d  nonchalantly balance in a squat to  husk a coconut wit...

  .. . Mike McGovern also worked in the office.  His partner Shoji had a noodle factory, (‘In a Shanghai Noodle Factory’ playing in my head,) in town and they lived way up in a downtown high rise.  Mike’s family owned a vacation house out Chinamans Hat Island way, north of Kahaluu. It was snugged in among papaya and mango trees, mountain apple and star fruit with a path leading to the shore where coconut palms flourished.  We went to a party there along with Uncle Lynn who happened to be in the islands.  Mike and Shoji put out a wonderful meal in the shade of the trees to likely 15 guests.  After, everybody ambled to the beach toward a dilapidated boat dock that was knee deep submerged in the incoming tide.  Lynn was strolling along the water’s edge when he spotted a coconut laying in the sand.  He picked it up and cracked it open and took a deep drink of coconut water.  Which was rotten.  Of course it ...

  Lower Stark, a few blocks west of Laurelhurst Park I’d run Sasha at that park. I was so callous with that dog’s safety in traffic, it makes me shudder now.  So, the apartment.  It was an old building even then, standing tall above the street. My apartment was one of two on the ground floor, the entry five steps up to a covered porch where I’d sit in the sun and do the Sunday Crossword.  It was a dump but with rent of $90 a month for a one bed, one bath, (complete with a claw footed bathtub,) well?  Nothing that a lot of art pieces and fabric hangings wouldn’t improve.   I lived there with my dog.  Me and the dog all alone at night was scary.  I made the mistake of reading “Helter Skelter” about the Manson murders. They broke into a house one night, killed the old sleeping dog then murdered two people.  That didn’t do much for my peaceful sleep.  I wedged a chair under the doorknob. Every night....

  Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day.  It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside.  She kept going and there was another one.  Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside.   My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach.   It took many years for that paint to fade.  

  I got a job keeping books (columnar journal method, personal computers not yet on the market,) for Sandy’s Camera, a chain of tourist shops operating in Kaanapali, Kona, and Waikiki Hilton Hotels. Owned by Sandy Colvin, an interesting guy, in his early 60s at the time, compact and wiry. I figure red hair and freckles in his youth but now he had that Grecian Formula indeterminate hair color.   The office was on Kealakekua very near Ward Warehouse, above retail shops in a 2-storey block building.  It was a gloomy suite with almost no natural light, interior paint reflectiveness dulled by a patina of cigarette smoke. We had reserved parking, a closely guarded perk. Sandy had ‘Private Parking’ stickers printed up and when someone parked in his spot, he’d plaster a sticker right over the drivers’ field of view.  That hot sun could bake could sure bake them on.   Sandy had been in the islands awhile.  On December 7, 1941 he was working ...

Mt Olomana There are big bugs in Hawaii.  No snakes - which may be why bugs exist in such plentitude. You learn to shake out any closed toed shoes just in case a centipede lurks within.  Centipedes can reach nine inches and have a venomous bite.  They move fast. I flipped on the kitchen light early one morning and a centipede fell from the ceiling fixture perilously near my bare feet.  I shrieked and jumped for a counter when here came Jim.  He grabbed a chef’s knife and chopped the thing in pieces.  My hero!       Laugh if you will but it took me awhile to identify cockroaches. I’d never seen one and they come in various colors and sizes.  Some are as big as Junebugs, you get out of the way when they come flying at you.   I spotted a cane spider in our carport, it was as big as my fist and according to island lore, can jump twenty feet, please not on me. There was a drive-...

  A local friend invited Jim and Michael to a cockfight, a new experience for the pair, so off they went.  The venue was located in a secluded area of the island and boasted a pit in the middle surrounded by wooden bleachers – which by this point – were filled with locals.  Guys.  Men.  They stuck out, being the only haoles, and were met with suspicion, this being a gambling event, and highly illegal.  Their friend had to vouch for them.         Pat brought three fighting chickens and fought two of them.  They fight down in the pit to the death. When a rooster is killed, the pit boss severs a foot and gives it to the loser’s owner. The rest of the body is given to the  winning team for a dog meat bra.     Pat’s chickens won, worth $500 each before the 1/5 cut for the mob for operations and security.     The fights were gruesome. Jim was pale and que...

We spent a considerable amount of time in and around the ocean and gradually acquired much water equipment. The first purchase has to be a mask and a snorkel.     Then when you see what you’ve been missing, (which in my case was needlefish which may be small but half the fish is jaw,) you go for the fins so you can swim very fast away from anything over a certain size.  Then came Hawaiian slings, a rubber-band version of a spear gun, and we took to the shallows to see what we could spear.     It takes gripping the rubber-bands and the shaft in one hand, then using the other to increase tension on the rubber-bands by pulling back the sling.     Aim and release.     But you are in the water which distorts size and distance in the human eye.     So good luck.     I managed a sea cucumber which might be the land equivalent of shooting a sloth.    

  Kaneohe Marine Base was about five miles north.  We got to know it a bit as it has a wicked body surfing beach.  We acquired permits to get on base and went frequently.  There’s a quick drop off with some sizable waves pounding the shore. And frequently me.  Between watching Extreme Surfing movies and being  derma brazed by wet, gritty sand, I had a recurring nightmare:  I stand at the shoreline and just now notice the incoming wave set sucked the sand dry and is turning into a wall of water coming right at me, growing taller and taller as it nears.  I have waited too long and am gonna eat some sand for sure.  

  We'd been to the Christmas Parade in Kailua, (most remembered for a Great Dane sporting tinfoil antlers in the spirit of reindeer,) and stepped into a downtown bar afterwards.   There  was a piano in a pool of light in the otherwise dim lounge, a woman at the keyboard. She talked to an audience of a few scattered people as she played, emphasizing her words with a dramatic flourish of tinkling notes.  She gave us a “hello” and a smile amid a few chords.  It was right out of a ‘Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In’ set with Lily Tomlin doing her ‘Bobbi-Jeanine’ skit at the piano.  It was hilarious.   We got a beer and stayed for the show.

  It was a lovely condo in a well-maintained complex situated in a lush tropical setting, the lanai overlooking a timber bamboo forest.  The bamboo grew six inches a day in season and one could literally watch it grow.   There was a steakhouse at the edge of the property that featured local beef and freshly caught fish as well as traditional Hawaiian dishes, and where we took guests visiting from the mainland.  It was outdoor dining, a gorgeous place to just sink back and enjoy a fine meal and a view of paradise.  So many shades of green, a fishpond, the steep peak of Puu Ma’eli’eli in the distance, the  occasional bzzzzt when a mosquito zapper fried a big bug or a gecko . 

Kaneohe Bay, Kahalu'u side circa 1978   I rented a house in Kahaluu, it was built on stilts with a car port underneath .  It was a 3-bedroom overlooking Kaneohe Bay on the Windward side.  I’m guessing it was built in the 1920s, jalousie windows in single-wall stick construction.  By my time, wood termites fed their growing colony on that single layer of wood leaving only the paint in some areas.  In the still of the night, I could hear the low-pitched grind of chewing insects.  Kind of creepy.

Honolulu late 1970s   I temped at a posh glass-faced highrise overlooking Aloha Tower and the harbor from one direction, the opposite side with mountain views.     Swank with a private elevator opening directly into the penthouse reception area. From there the interior was tricked out in a subdued maritime theme, windows all around and walls teak-clad with brass railing accents.     Seems like it was real estate investments.     They played polo on the North Shore in Mokulaea. The kind with horses.  I was there for a two-week gig womaning the reception desk.     It was a snooze of a job in luxury surroundings.