The 1950's and 60's sure was a fun time to be growing up in Hawaii. It was a time when music had real tunes and real words! It was a time when gang violence meant two "bulls" from different areas of Kalihi punching it out in some park bathroom and shaking hands after it was all over. I lived at 1935-A Kealakai Street which was in a district of Kalihi known as upper Lanakila or lower Alewa, depending on who you were trying to impress.
It's hard to go by the old neighborhood these days because all the trees have been cut down and all the yards have been covered with cement or small rentals. Even the streets seem smaller because instead of one family per house, you might have two or three. And instead of one car per family, you now might have five or six cars parked all over the place.
Even most of the neighborhood grocery stores are gone. There use to be one on almost every other block. Their businesses were built on trust and loyalty. These were the kinds of stores that you could charge your groceries and the old Chinese man would write the bill on a piece of butcher paper, let you sign it and stick it on a long sharp nail. At the end of the month he'd hand you all your bills and you would pay him.
I still remember signing for a loaf of bread that cost 20 cents or a 5 lb. bag of poi that sold for a dollar. And I'm talking real genuine Hawaiian thick kind poi, not the strained watered down kind they sell now. The kind of poi that if I saw it sitting on the table and still in the bag, I would run as fast as I could before my Tutu made me lomi or mix it. In those days when they said "lomi lomi the poi", they meant a full body massage. Boy did my arms ache!
There are a lot of things that made living in Hawaii in the old days special. Things that are gone and will never return. Things like the "Honey Wagon" that came by once a month to pump out your cesspool. There was also a "Mosquito Truck" who would drive through the neighborhoods, spraying thick clouds of DDT poison to control the mosquitoes and bugs.
Twice a week the "Grocery Truck" would come by for the people too old to walk down to the store. They always had fresh vegetables and fruits. I always look back to those memories with regret because when the hard working old man would be selling things on one side of his truck we would be "borrowing other things" on the other side.
Every house, in every Kalihi neighborhood, had a five gallon can hanging from a nail on a tree. This is where we all put our left overs and food scraps and once or twice a week the "Slop Man" would come by to pick it up.
Our slop man was my friend Poi's dad. Poi and his sister, Honey Girl, would wake up every morning before school, at 5 o'clock, to help their father collect the slop for their pigs. They sure were a hard working family. Of all the special little people and things that I always remembered, the "Manapua Man" was my favorite.
Every week an old Chinese man would come through our neighborhood selling manapua. He had two ten gallon tin cans filled with all kinds of different Chinese manapua. He would balance the two cans by tying them to the ends of a wooden stick that he carried over his shoulder. All up and down the streets you could hear him crying out "Manapua, Pepeau! Manapua Man!" Manapuas would cost like 25 cents for two and these were the real big kind that would really fill you up. It always amazed me how that old man could carry so much on his back and also how he got the manapua to us so piping hot. In those days every penny counted and working hard for a living was always honorable.
Other guys who came around our neighborhood was the "Ice Man" who would deliver big blocks of ice with a great big hook. My dad would whittle it down to fit in our 'Icebox' to help keep the food cold. Then there was the "Milk Man", Mr. Medeiros. He would carry crates of bottled milk from his truck. We all liked taking the cream off the top as you first opened it and also being able to keep the milk cover to play with after. We all especially loved the chocolate milk. When he came around, all the neighborhood kids would gather at his truck to help him deliver the bottles to all the nearby houses. After we were finished he would give us two or three ice cold bottles of milk to drink or tubes of brand new milk covers to play with. Mr. Medeiros wasn't only nice but he was smart. It seems that when Mr. Medeiros first started, all the kids, use to raid his truck of milk while he was walking around. It didn't take him long to realize that by putting the kids to work, it stopped them from stealing and also made his job a whole lot easier.
Besides all these beautiful people that visited our neighborhoods there are other things that have seemed to be gone. A lot of the games that we played have been replaced by videos and computers. All these games had sort of seasons where if it was 'milk cover' season than that was all we would play. It wasn't like a certain month was a certain game either. It was all by feel. Sometimes kids would bring out their marbles during baseball card season and no one would play with them. Majority always ruled as to what season it was going to be.
One of the games we enjoyed was "Tops" which had many variations of playing it . Besides seeing which top would still be spinning we had other games where you would lay your top down on the ground and everyone in the game would take turns "dozing" or hitting your top with the tips. A lot of guys would replace the regular tips with big long nails and could actually split your top in half. We also had games that we would see who could 'doze' the biggest chunk out of the asphalt.
Milk covers was also a favorite. You would stack the 'bets' of covers face up and we would take turns trying to knock them over with our 'kini'. Some kids would tape a penny between two milk covers to make their kini.
"Agates" or marbles was also a great past time. There were also variations to the game but the basic was putting all the 'bets' in a smaller circle in the middle of a bigger circle and taking turns trying to hit as many as you could out of the larger circle. Sometimes they would allow 'bombing' where you could drop a big 'bumboocha' marble on the center pile and see if any would go flying out. My dad use to work at Pearl Harbor where he brought us home these large shiny ball bearings. We would never show the ball bearings until it was agreed that 'bombing' was allowed and then Kaboom". It was also cool if you had a partner or "kumpa" as we use to call it. If your "kumpa" was a good shooter than you would be responsible for holding all the 'bets'. Sometimes the side bets would be two or three hundred marbles. My favorite kumpa was this Japanese kid named Keoki. He could shoot marbles. We had so many marbles that we use to bury hundreds of them at a time and draw up these treasure maps. I can't ever remember digging them up so I know there are a lot of marbles buried in Kalihi.
Flipping baseball cards was another of the great games. You would make side bets and while flipping them in the air you would yell out "Match no match!" If you said "Match" and the two cards landed same side up you would win. Sometimes when the winning was so big the winner would yell out "Rough Take" and throw a ton of the cards in the air for anyone to pick up and keep.
We also liked playing two hand touch football where we taped a ball of paper up for the football. We also played "Hawaiian Style" where you could throw as many forward passes as you liked and you could have as many guys on your team as you wanted to as long as both teams had the same amount. It was fun.
Anyway it was great just thinking about our "Small Kid Times" and of all the beautiful people that touched our lives and of all the fun games we played in those good old days. Go back to your old neighborhoods and say hi to all the people that are still there. Your memories are like sandcastles and sooner or later time will wash them away.
About Author
Scott Haililani Mahoney is a Kamehemeha School and University of Colorado graduate. Originally from Lanakila in Kalihi on Oahu, Scott writes small kid time stories for his father, who is also a writer. Scott now lives on Maui.
