Stephanie says

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-...