The site of Aloha Stadium was once Halawa Housing, cane fields, small grazing pastures for cows or horses, small vegetable or watermelon farms. The dam was made by a cement wall built by the plantation to pump water for irrigating the cane fields. The water for the dam came from a stream from Red Hill. Wally, Roland, Peter and me would go swimming there mostly in the summer when it got hot.
Then one time Wally said, eh' get plenny crawfish close to shore in the California grass, we should try catch um' for eat. But Peter said, mo'betta try spear um' cause they too fast to catch um' by hand. So we made our 'spear guns. The spear was the straight part of the iron clothes hangar which we cut off, on one end we would flatten and make the point, the other end was made smooth. The gun was the wood thread spool from our mothers sewing stuff, the rubber was big rubber bands or inner tire tube rubber. Then we would tie the rubber to the wooden spool with string and that was our spear guns.
So we took our spear guns to da dam and speared crawfish and we usually got enough to make a fire to roast and eat um'. But one time the ho hana'man caught us making a fire. Man he was huhu and shouted wasa mattah you make fire bum bye the field catch fire and you guys get big trouble and nobody can go swimming in the dam no more. So from then on that ended our days of poking crawfish.
But always, never miss, on our way home we would stop at this huge common mango tree that was next to the dirt road by one of the small field that was part of a farm. This mango tree trunk was so big that you cannot get a grip to climb and it didn't have low hanging branches. So the only way to get the mango was to throw rocks at the hanging bunches and try to knock them down. So we would take turns, Wally and Roland would the rocks and Peter and me would try to catch the falling mangos and we usually got enough for all of us to eat on our walk back home.
The common mango was so sweet that all we did was bite a chunk off , eat the meat and you could see a trial of mango skins on the road back home. I wonder if there is any more common mango trees back home. Mahalo Aloha World for allowing us to share our hanabuddah stories and for an instance taking us back to our small kid time.
About Author
I was raised in Aiea filopino camp. I married one girl from Kunia. Our first home was a townhouse in Makakilo, sold that and moved to Waianae. We moved to Northern California in 1985.We have a son and daughter and six grandchildren. Big Head was my nickname.
