After spending a couple of years exploring the mainland U.S.A. with the help of jobs in a travelling circus,and having become somewhat burned out with the whole situation, my kids and I decided to liquidate our assets and fly to the newest and most-remote of our United States. In the succeeding year we busied ourselves combing the beaches of Oahu's nothern shores for commercially viable shells (where we were often treated to performances by astoishingly good surfers riding awesome waves). Most of the collected shells became very high quality "Puka" leis, though we did make other kinds of shell jewelry and even some pieces that were of unique type:like small-scale models of large-scale properties with everything present;buildings,trees, bushes, walk and drive ways...all surfaced with shells. Beautiful shells, each seeming to be just right for it's position.
I'm a ptetty artistic guy. I've painted signs, built cabinets, put oil to canvas, put bailing wire to more different uses than it was probably intended...but my kids, Ruby, Sharon and Twila, then aged 15,12 and 11 respectively, were the key to our success. I would say Ruby was our de-facto manager. We all gathered and graded the shells. But Ruby, who was the first among us to learn of the shell market, had the best understanding of what constitutes a superlative Puka Lei. She did the final grading and all the selling of our products. Sharon and Twila could do it all and wound up doing some of everything there was to do and most of the sizing. That was the least challenging and most boring of our tasks: The picked,poked and cleaned pukas are simply passed through a series of tin cans, each having no lid at top and holes drilled in their bottoms which are progessively smaller than the holes in the preceding cans. You simply pour all the shells into the can with the largest holes, and shake them some. Shells that pass through the holes in the first can will be passed through the rest of the cans' holes, one can at a time. At finish, shells contained in a given can will all be the same size. Not much fun, but we all, especially Sharon and Twila, did sizing. We'd had some rough times in our first few months in Hawaii and while we had all expected better (at least expected to find work sooner than we did) and we were all brought down considerably by our travails, I got a great boost from the strength (mental and physical)that I saw them all exhibit, every day and in every circumstance. When we were doing shells, I'd often find myself in the middle of creative activity, happily involving us all and I'd think that, after all that they'd been through it was great to see them (us, that is) having a good one.
It got better. Before long, we realized that we could again persue the goal we had when we first thought of going to Hawaii. Which was to find a rain forest property, not yet developed,which we could lease, occupy and improve. We hoped to find an owner who would accept our improvements as full payment of the lease.The "Big Island" aka "Island of Hawaii" is the best place in the State of Hawaii to find the kind of thing we had in mind. It's way bigger than the other islands,has way fewer inhabitants and vast stretches of sub-divisions in lush rainforests, mostly the property of absentee owners. Our recent, little bit of prosperity would easily cover our move to the Big Island but we were soon to learn that finding a situation like the one we sought could be very difficult, if not impossible to achieve. In only a few weeks on the Big I we had exhausted all the leads that we had found and settled into a "wasted days and wasted nights" routine. A song containing that lyric was popular enough in that time and place, that it was heard several times each day while we paid the rent and waited for a lead to come, from out of the blue? Though it didn't appear as such at the start, our biggest break came when we managed to arrange for us to stay (rent free) in a 3 bdrm,2 bath house,in Paradise Park, for sale, vacant and located in such a remote location that vandalization was a possibility and our presence could possibly prevent such. We thought it odd when we first saw the place; We had imagined a place way out there and alone. It was only a couple of miles off the main highway and from it, six other houses were visible. One of them was directly across the street from it. The others were on the same street but about a half-mile distant from it and the one directly across the street which was, by the way, occupied. And, until we moved in, the only one of the seven which was. When I say "directly across the street" I mean that our driveways were perfectly alined with one another to effectively form a sort of mini 4-way intersection. Probably designed for a pair of families planning to spend a lot of their time at each other's place. I hope it didn't cost 'em extra, 'cause , in the few months that we "sat" that house, not one member of either family visited with any of the other family.Not once.
A quick comparison reveals why. THEY are Native Hawaiians of mixed heritage. (The Hawaiian Islands are home to more ethnicities than any other place on earth) In their early thirties, they are parents of a boy about 8 and a girl two or three years older. A large, hostile Doberman Pinscher bitch lives with them. She enjoys a house of her own (in the middle of the front yard)but is allowed in the main house. It is a custom home, perhaps constructed by it's occupants. Both upwardly mobile in career/business, she also active in local politics. WE are apparent Hippies, three males (myself in mid thirties and two VietNam vets in their mid twenties, ( travelling with us temporarily)and my three beautiful daughters. We stay rent free in a "spec" house that has yet to see it's first owner-occupant. The house has a range, refrigerator,water and power and phone connected, but is otherwise unfurnished. Karl, one of the vets in our group was accompanied by a large, white mongrel dog, which now that I think of it, was the one among us who did visit our neighbors. Or at least their pedigreed "Doby".
It was on one such visit that Karl's dog left some solid evidence of his having been there. (though I did wonder at the time if there was any chance that "Whitee" was the only dog interested in Doby. A policeman came to their house, looked at the foreign feces, exchanged a few words with our neighbors, got back in his patrol car and backed out one driveway, across the street, up our driveway and was met by Karl, his dog Whitee and I. All I can remember of that brief encounter is that the cop, very nicely informed us of our neighbor's complaint and requested our cooperation. Whitee responded by assuming the position and peeing on the cop's pantleg and I'm like O mGod, red sky at morning, boys! But the officer seemed to take it as an expression of affection and said something like "Oh, that's no problem, don't worry about it". It turned out that he was not unusual. Our own experiences during our years in Hawaii and what we heard from others, strongly suggested that one had to be a stand-up good guy ,fervently devoted to the "Protect and Serve" motto, totally level-headed with inexhaustable patience, a good sense of humor and wisdom beyond his years, to even be considered for a job as a cop in Hawaii (no matter which island). Later, I'll share some of what I,ve witnessed relevant to this subject which I found remarkable and thought-provoking.
Since our plan was to move, as soon as possible to our dream situation, we were poorly-motivated to invest any time trying to warm up ro our neighbors (as were they) espcially at that time. The Realtor whose property we occupied was just one of five such agencies now looking for the absentee-owner that would see merit in our plan so part of every day we were away, some days touching bases with those realtors, others exploring the island in search of wild fruits, in season, fruit-bearing trees and bushes to be transplanted or cloned, plants useful in construction, like several kinds of bamboo and some fruiting hardwoods that work well in furniture and some ornamental things like Money Tree and Ti plants. We had every expectation of eventually finding the right place and we wanted to be as prepared as possible when it happened. We truly had very little spare time to socialize and even less inclination. Even when we spent time at the house, our waking moments were mostly spent doing whatever processing our gathered materials might need.
One day,during the first few weeks of our stay in Paradise Park, we noticed a lady visiting our neighbors. While both entering and leaving our neighbor's place she waved to us and we waved back. She visited a few times a week and did our neighbors' yard maintenance. About a week later, as she was leaving, she backed down the neighbors driveway, continued backing straight across the street and up our driveway. We welcomed her and she introduced herself. Her name was Malou. She and her husband, Donald and their two kids lived within a couple of miles from us. She was a horticulturist and did design, construction and maintenance of Landscapes. She and Ruby (our aspiring, self-educated horticulturist-to-be) hit it off from the start. Ruby wanted to learn everything Malou knew and Malou was happy to share. We also shared our story, and our goal of living on un-improved land , trading our work on improvements for the right to occupy,etc. We, of course, asked her to let us know if she found a situation that might fit our needs. We thought her a great connection, because many of her clients(who mostly lived on Big I or some other Hawaiian island) had more properties than they actually used.
About two or three weeks after that, Malou revealed to us that when she decided that she liked us, she called her sister Meg, in Honolulu. Meg, and her husband, Bill lived in Honolulu where he worked for the Daily Advertiser. They had recently bought some propetry in the Orchid Land subdivision of Puna district, Big I. Malou told them about us and what we hoped to do. They were interested, said they'd discuss it and call back in a day or so. Malou said nothing to us about her talk with Bill and Meg until aftrer Meg called back to say "Yes, if they like the property and we can agree on specific terms, we think it might work well for both parties". So our prospect had already been sold with no effort on our part, before we even knew we had a prospect! We certainly knew we had found a great friend in Malou.
Before the shock of suddenly and unexpectedly completing the first and most important step of our plan had worn off we were deeply involved in the preliminary work of step two. We had no time to waste; When Malou gave us the good news we were on our 408th day in the State of Hawaii and our 125th day on the Big I, and while I can't think of those as days truly wasted, they were spent and now we needed to do the work that would increase our chances of success.
end of Wonder's Star and Krishna I
Since our plan was to move, as soon as possible to our dream situation, we were poorly-motivated to invest any time trying to warm up ro our neighbors (as were they) espcially at that time. The Realtor whose property we occupied was just one of five such agencies now looking for the absentee-owner that would see merit in our plan so part of every day we were away, some days touching bases with those realtors, others exploring the island in search of wild fruits, in season, fruit-bearing trees and bushes to be transplanted or cloned, plants useful in construction, like several kinds of bamboo and some fruiting hardwoods that work well in furniture and some ornamental things like Money Tree and Ti plants. We had every expectation of eventually finding the right place and we wanted to be as prepared as possible when it happened. We truly had very little spare time to socialize and even less inclination. Even when we spent time at the house, our waking moments were mostly spent doing whatever processing our gathered materials might need.
One day,during the first few weeks of our stay in Paradise Park, we noticed a lady visiting our neighbors. While both entering and leaving our neighbor's place she waved to us and we waved back. She visited a few times a week and did our neighbors' yard maintenance. About a week later, as she was leaving, she backed down the neighbors driveway, continued backing straight across the street and up our driveway. We welcomed her and she introduced herself. Her name was Malou. She and her husband, Donald and their two kids lived within a couple of miles from us. She was a horticulturist and did design, construction and maintenance of Landscapes. She and Ruby (our aspiring, self-educated horticulturist-to-be) hit it off from the start. Ruby wanted to learn everything Malou knew and Malou was happy to share. We also shared our story, and our goal of living on un-improved land , trading our work on improvements for the right to occupy,etc. We, of course, asked her to let us know if she found a situation that might fit our needs. We thought her a great connection, because many of her clients(who mostly lived on Big I or some other Hawaiian island) had more properties than they actually used.
About two or three weeks after that, Malou revealed to us that when she decided that she liked us, she called her sister Meg, in Honolulu. Meg, and her husband, Bill lived in Honolulu where he worked for the Daily Advertiser. They had recently bought some propetry in the Orchid Land subdivision of Puna district, Big I. Malou told them about us and what we hoped to do. They were interested, said they'd discuss it and call back in a day or so. Malou said nothing to us about her talk with Bill and Meg until aftrer Meg called back to say "Yes, if they like the property and we can agree on specific terms, we think it might work well for both parties". So our prospect had already been sold with no effort on our part, before we even knew we had a prospect! We certainly knew we had found a great friend in Malou.
Before the shock of suddenly and unexpectedly completing the first and most important step of our plan had worn off we were deeply involved in the preliminary work of step two. We had no time to waste; When Malou gave us the good news we were on our 408th day in the State of Hawaii and our 125th day on the Big I, and while I can't think of those as days truly wasted, they were spent and now we needed to do the work that would increase our chances of success.
end of Wonder's Star and Krishna I
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