Growing up as a kid on the north shore in Sunset Beach, my world might just as well have ended at Kahuku, where I followed my older brothers and sister, from kindergarten until I graduated in 1967, and at Niimi's store in the opposite direction from Kahuku, located not far from where we used go diving for fish and octopus.
Sometimes, we ventured beyond those "borders" to go to the movies at Haleiwa theater or Koga theater, which was just a mile or so further away.
Up the hill from our house was Orian's poultry farm, which supplied us with cracked eggs at a discount and the pungent odor of chicken manure, riding on the breezes blowing past our house.
Our big front yard meant lots of room for playing, but it wasn't too much fun when it came time for mowing. No, there was no powered mower to use and who even heard of a riding mower back then? There was no such thing! If you didn't push, our mower wouldn't cut and to a skinny kid, who wasn't much taller than the mower handle, the yard seemed twice as large.
We played football and had fights with the neighborhood kids and held what I call "mongoose races" in that front yard. Mongoose races? Actually, it was a foot race between one mongoose and all our dogs. We would catch the mongoose in traps baited with chicken heads, carry him down to the front yard and with our dogs barking and circling the trap, we would release the mongoose. Ever wonder how fast a mongoose can run? Well, let's just say, " they're fast but the dogs were usually a little bit faster".
Just about once a month, we hear the rumbling in the distance, and we'd all run down to the roadside to watch the Army tanks and trucks roll by on their way to training maneuvers back up in the hills behind our house. Then days after they would pass by again on their way back to the base. We'd go hiking and find cans of rations that the soldiers left behind. It was like a successful treasure hunt to come home with cans that had crackers, jelly, peanut butter and some kind of un-identifiable meat that tasted pretty good back then.
Just a few steps beyond the highway that passed the row of coconut trees standing at the edge of our front yard, I spent endless hours as a little boy with a bamboo fishing pole and a plastic bag of raw shrimp, walking along the shallow reef at low tide, trying to catch fish.
As a teen, it was late night diving in calm waters, and surfing when the waves were breaking. I had an old gray, heavy, balsa surfboard that I learned to surf on and finally surrendered it in favor of bellyboard riding, thanks to my good friend, Jimmy and a wise old surfer, movie maker and bellyboard designer, Val Valentine.
Those were the days...growing in the country, bare-footed and worry-free, enjoying life in the world beyond my front porch.
About Author
"I was born on the south shore and raised on the north shore.Sunset Beach, we called it home, right about halfway between SunsetBeach store and Kammie*s Market. All of us kids from the oldest to theyoungest attended Kahuku, with a few years at St. Michael*s Catholicschool mixed in. A few months past graduation and six days afterturning eighteen, I raised my right hand and swore to "defend andserve" in Uncle Sam*s Navy. Fast forward to present day and here I am,living large in the middle of the Bible Belt, Oklahoma, U.S.A. Whowould have thought that destiny*s trail would lead me here to the lastplace I would have expected to be? It*s a good life but a part of mestill longs for the simple pleasures of island living."
