Chapter 02
Hawaii - January 1955 to June 1956
Synopsis
We drove from Knoxville to San Francisco right after Christmas. We may have camped out some and stayed in motels. We visited Uncle Dan, Aunt Ethel, Danny, and Ann, in San Francisco. We flew to Honolulu on a four engine propellor plane, and then flew to Hilo. I'm sure Bill and Maggie greeted us at the airport, maybe Babe and Pauline too. Bill was Dad's cousin, their fathers were brothers. Bill talked Dad into moving to Hawaii. He offered him a job with American Factors, now AMFAC. Dad talked Mother into it, although she got homesick. That and too much partying were the reasons they returned to the mainland a year and a half later. They couldn't say no to a party invitation, which happened pretty frequently. Dad was going to work tired a lot. We lived in a house at 1189 Ainako Street for a short while. Rainfall there was 250" a year. The basement stayed flooded, and Mom made Dad find us a new home. I remember trading shoes with a boy named Glenn in the neighborhood. He had some Keds sneakers that I admired. I forget what I had, saddle oxfords maybe. I think Mother made me trade back. We moved to house at 171 A Halai Street, on Halai Hill. Rainfall there was only 100" a year. There was a house above us, between us and the street. Auntie Wanda Tolson lived there with her adult son, Peter. I think we were somehow related by marriage. She was Babe Chillingworth's sister. Babe was married to Pauline Wessel, who was Maggie Wessel's sister. Maggie was married to my cousin, Uncle Bill Stearns. The hill went below us several hundred feet to sugar cane fields. We could sit on the steps leading down the hill to our house and watch Kiluea when it erupted, which it did in the Spring of 1956. According to Dad, it was 25 miles away. Halai Hill, where we lived, was itself an extinct cinder cone.
This was the happiest year and a half of my life, even now. George and I would walk a mile and a half to school barefooted. We stopped at a little Japanese shop on the way and bought sour lemon peel, which I loved. I would pick up nuts and bolts from the gutter and had a small collection at the house. I often stubbed my toes, mostly the big ones. My nickname was "lava toes". We wore shorts and aloha shirts. When you got to junior high, you had to put on shoes. I was seven and George was five. He went to Union school, which was directly across the street from my school, Riverside Elementary. I don't know what the difference between the schools was, but Riverside didn't have a kindergarten. Union may have been a private school. We would look for each other at recess across the street. I was disruptive in class and spent a lot of time sitting out on the steps to the courtyard. My second grade teacher was Miss Noriega. She lived around the corner from us and down a street on Halai Hill. My third grade teacher was Auntie (Tamar R.) Wessel. I think she was full Hawaiian or close to it. She married Harry Wessel, who owned Wessel's drugstore in downtown Hilo. He was caucasian. Maggie Stearns (cousin Bill's wife) and Pauline Chillingworth (Babe's wife) were their daughters. Mrs. Wessel calmed me down and always found a reason to keep me after class. I caught on pretty quick, but I liked hanging out with her. She taught me how to sweep (I swept the classroom every day after class) and let me use a paper cutter. That was way cool, as I always felt Mother and Dad were over protective.
In June of 1956, Mother and Dad told us we were going back to Tennesse for a visit. George and I were excited to go see our old friends again and go to the mountains. Only Mother, George, and I went. At the end of the summer, Mother told us that we were staying in Tennessee, and not going back to Hawaii. George and I were devastated, me particularly. Mother said that when we left, she knew we weren't going back. She said she thought it would be easier for us to tell us later. Maybe she didn't want to hear us be upset when leaving. I lost a lot of faith in Mother and Dad for that. I felt like I had been lied to and also was sad I didn't get to say good bye to my friends in Hilo. I liked my classmates and playmates, and was in a Cub Scout pack. Plus Hawaii was ten times cooler than Tennesse, nothing against Tennessee, but Hawaii is Hawaii. I had to start wearing shoes to school and it was cold in the winter. I cried for days, George too. I still haven't gotten over it.
January 27, 2010
Expectations
My Dad got a phone call from his cousin Bill Stearns, in the fall of 1954. We were living in Knoxville, Tennessee and had just bought a new house on Jonquil Lane. Dad had returned from the war in Europe, got his degree from UT, and was working a dead end job at a heavy equipment parts store. Bill offered Dad a better job in Hilo, Hawaii, on the Big Island, with American Factors, now known as Amfac, one of the Big Five companies in the Islands. The company would also pay all our moving costs. Mother and Dad talked it over and said, “What the heck, let’s go, we don’t have that much going on here.” They were both in their early 30’s and just getting started in life.
So off we went, Mother, Dad, brother George and me. We drove across country to San Francisco. I was seven and George was four. We flew to Honolulu on a four engine propellor plane and on to Hilo on a two engine propellor plane. We arrived during Chinese New Year and went to a party with our cousins. We got to light and throw firecrackers, which amazed me, since I always felt Mother and Dad were overly cautious with George and me. The other kids were shooting off firecrackers so I think Mother and Dad felt some peer pressure. It was a lot of fun.
As you might imagine, Hawaii was a great place to be a kid. It was still a territory at the time. I mean we walked a mile to school by ourselves, barefoot, wearing shorts and Aloha shirts. We made friends and had adventures, including a school field trip to a coffee plantation and a visit to Kiluea volcano, which was active. We could see it erupting from our back porch in Hilo.
A year and a half later at the end of the school year in 1956, Mother and Dad told us we were going back to Knoxville for a visit. George and I were happy to see old friends and the mountains. At the end of the summer, Mother told us we weren’t going back to Hawaii. Dad was still there working. Mother had gotten homesick and they felt pressured to party more than they wanted to. Dad was always tired at work.
George and I were distraught. We cried for days. We really liked Hawaii. This is the thing: Mother and Dad knew we weren’t coming back, but didn’t tell us. They said they thought it would be easier on us not to know. I think they thought it would be easier on them. I lost a lot of faith in our parents then, at eight years old. I forgave them, but never got over it.
April 26, 2021
