In February of 1973, Sallie and Brian took me to LAX to fly to Honolulu. Once more I bought a one way ticket. I was sad to leave Sallie and Brian, but Hawaii was my dream, and I was overdue to get back. I met a young fellow about my age on the bus from Honolulu airport to town named Jake. He had gone to the airport to catch a flight back to the mainland, but had second thoughts about leaving Hawaii, and changed his mind. He told me where there was a rooming house for $20 a week, and that Manpower had an office on the first floor of the same building. I had a duffel bag and @ $150, and went to work the next day doing day labor. The good thing about day labor is that you meet a lot of people in a short time, as you sometimes go to a different job every day. I was a member of the laborer's union, but I wanted to feel my way around before I reported in for work.
I remember a feeling of euphoria and freedom and unlimited possibilities, the first few weeks on Oahu, as I walked around Honolulu. Hawaii is a magic place, and I was back, I had realized my dream. I had ups and downs in Hawaii, but felt at home and happy most of the time.
I did day labor for a few weeks, worked for Rich Parr Surfboards in the showroom for 2 weeks, worked 2 labor union jobs doing masonry helper work, took 6 weeks off, got a job driving for Charlie's taxi, and last drove and cooked for a catering company for one of the dinner cruise catamarans. In the summer of 1976 I met Sharon Hodel, the sister of my co-worker's (Rick Malone) girlfriend) Jan Hodel. Rick and I worked at Aikane Catering. Sharon had come to visit, we went out, and fell in love. I moved back to Sacramento, California, in August of 1976 to be with her.
I had many adventures in Hawaii, which I will tell about later.
July 13, 2010
Change
The biggest change in my life came in my mid twenties when a friend gave me a copy of Journey to Ixtlan, by Carlos Castaneda in 1973. I was trying to find myself, as many of us do at that age. There are many messages in Journey to Ixtlan, but the biggest one for me was that I didn’t have to be the person I was raised to be. The zeitgeist of the 1950s was go along to get along. I was good at going along, but it never felt completely right to me.
I graduated from high school in 1965, which coincidentally is widely considered to be the start of the hippie era. (The youth counterculture movement died out around 1975, coinciding with the end of the Viet Nam war.)
Not being comfortable with society’s values in America in the modern industrial age began with the American expatriates after World War One, AKA the Great War. The end of World War Two (The big one, according to Archie Bunker) spawned counter culture groups such as The Hell’s Angels and the Beatniks and RocknRoll, in the mid fifties. Before Rock music became established, it consisted of country, rock-a-billy, blues, and pop rock. Listen to Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, or Ricky Nelson, among others and you will see that most of their songs were rock-a-billy.
One fine day in the early to mid 1960s, we woke up and the beatniks were gone. They were not actually gone: some of them settled down and joined society, and some of them segued into the nascent hippie movement. Neal Cassady was an actual person who appeared in Jack Kerouc’s On the Road, the Beatnik Bible, and also in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, which chronicled the beginning of the hippie movement.
I was all in for being a flower child. I grew my hair long and even had a 1958 VW cargo van which I drove to California in 1967. I smoked pot and hung out mostly with street people, where I felt like I belonged.
There was a time in that period when there was a general widespread conviction among the hippies, that we were really going to change the world. The music from that time has never been equalled. There were millions of us, living our values and urging others to do so also. It was our zeitgeist, our spirit of the times.
Sadly, in my humble opinion, around 1975, the party was over. No more FM radio station DJs that did not have a station playlist. No more Wolfman Jack. No more Love Ins, aka Be Ins, Happenings.
What happened? We all grew up, had kids, and had to settle down. The system won. The ideals of youth were ground down and we were beaten into submission by the economic necessities of life. Some of us retain our values and hopes for a better world. I consider myself an unreformed hippie. 5/24/2022
Hiking In Hawaii
I started hiking in my mid twenties on Oahu in Hawaii in 1974. The Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club scheduled a hike every Sunday somewhere on the island. According to their website they still do. They would meet at the Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu at Eight AM every Sunday morning. After a few months, I became a hike leader. There was no formal trining. If you were a good hiker and a responsible person, you could lead hikes.
At the end of the very first hike I led, which was a four mile loop on the windward side of Oahu, a lady came up to me and said, and I quote, “I can’t find my daughter!” After panicking, I jogged the entire four miles (I was wearing shorts) and found the young girl at the end of the hike. She had gone off on a side trail with two of the members to explore. Other excitement included carrying out a man who had twisted his ankle at the very end of a five mile out and back hike. We made a stretcher out of panchos and branches. Experienced hikers always carried a machete when they hiked. Trails would be overgrown in six weeks (weeks, not months) if the fresh vegetation was not cut back. As was often the case, the stream in the valley was the trail. Between rain and streams, if you didn’t want to get wet, you should stay home or go to Waikiki. If you ever have to carry someone out on a stretcher, you need a minimum of six people: four to carry and two to rotate and be there to hold the stretcher as it is passed down over elevation changes in the trail. When the injured hiker recovered, he threw us a thirteen course dinner at a Chinese restaurant, with a toast at the end of every course, but that’s another story.
NHC Hike Leader David Stearns dspvbfl@gmail.com
3/16/2023
