Things I Enjoyed Most About Huleia.

Some of things that give me the best memories about growing up in Huleia include swimming in the reservoir, and going down to the stream that passed about a hundred feet from our house to catch a very tasty little fish called o'opu.

Also, picking mango, guava, mountain apple, orange and banana; riding my bicycle to Puhi (about a 5 mile journey); skating on the concrete docks at Nawiliwili harbor; and dancing at the annual Bon Dance festival.

Then there were the baseball and basketball games in Lihue. Mr. Rice, the plantation owner, would lend the plantation truck to the baseball team and they would go to Lihue for the games. We cheerleaders would pile in along with the players and join them for the ride.

At the game we would cheer till our voices were hoarse. We had a pretty good team then and we won many games. It was always fun and until today these memories of baseball always come back to me with fondness.

Mom's Visit to Her Cousin Chung

Mother had a cousin living in Puhi (Kauai) and her name was Mrs. Chung. When mother goes visiting, which is very seldom, father would wait for her at home, pacing back and forth out by the garage which was about 25 feet from the house up on a hill. At that time we didn't have a telephone so Mom could never call to let us know when she would be coming home. I remember those nights when Dad would pace in the garage late at night with his hurricane lantern in hand.

Cousin Chung taught Mom how to draft trousers and shirts. With that knowledge she acquired the means to support the family. She had become a tailor. Her first sewing machine was a paddle type Singer. I can still remember her sewing late into the night. The plantation camp where we lived was called Seki Camp and was in dire need of a tailor before Mom picked up the trade.

The bachelors in camp were the happiest to learn of Mom's new trade. They never had the means to get to town to buy new clothes so for them, Mom was truly a godsend. Sometime the pieces she sewed didn't quiet fit the customer. Or a customer would get sick and lose weight. Sometimes a customer would gain weight. Once in a while there would be a piece of flawed fabric and Mom wouldn't see the flaw until after the piece was nearly completed. After a while there would be all these pieces of clothing that could accumulate. Mom would have a sale or she would raffle them out.

Logs for Firewood

Every once a month or so a truckload of logs would arrive for our firewood. After it was delivered, brother John would saw them into shorter logs of about 15 to 20 inch lengths. Sometimes I would help him with this task. When that was done, mother would ask around for help. She would recruit 4 to 5 of the neighborhood bachelors to help us chop it into firewood.

Back then, we never paid for labor. Instead, mother would cook a big meal at the end of the day to feed them for all their help and hard work. The rest of the week was devoted to piling the wood up under the house to keep it dry and out of the rain. This was a job for all the sister to undertake. Sometimes during a heavy rain the water would come gushing down the sloping hillside and flood the grounds under the house. Father built a platform under the house to elevate the firewood to keep it from getting soaked.
 
 

Father and His Bonsai Plant

Once, father planted a croton plant with small green and yellow leaves. He would shape it to look like a bonsai plant with three tiers. Many times I was given the task of trimming that plant. Today there is a wild cherry plant growing in my plant box. I also keep it trimmed to look like a bonsai plant. Whenever I trim that plant I think of my father for it was he who gave me the inspiration to start my own bonsai tree. Maybe it was father who planted that seed in my plant box because it certainly wasn't I who did.
 
 

Memories by the Stream

When I think about it I guess I was never really afraid of much growing up on the plantation. We never locked our doors and crime was almost unheard of. Many times I would go down to the stream by myself to swim or catch fish. I would make little pools to sit in and cool off. I would spend my whole day there, or at least until I was hungry. I spent so much of my time there in those days that I was dark enough to pass as part Hawaiian.

When my sisters and brothers would come along I would go to the deeper side of the swimming hole. My brother taught me how to swim so I could stay afloat. My first lesson was the dog paddle. Now that I am in my seventies I still enjoy swimming in the pool. I especially love jumping off the diving board.

One of Our Biggest Treats

Miss Reid was the principal of Huleia School, which was where we went as children. She was a real angel of a woman. Every now and then she would ask my brother, John, who was her best friend, to pack up all his sisters and we would go to Lihue Theater. The trip was about seven miles from our home to Kipu. She would stuff as many of us as she could into her Ford and off we would go.

Although Mother really was the breadwinner in the household, it was Father who was the banker. Somehow however, Mother would manage to set aside some money from this secret stash that Mom would give us each a quarter to spend on the movies in Lihue. Those were truly fun days.

Father and the Money

Father had a stong box where he kept all of the family's money. As I recall, it was actually a metal toolbox. I can still recall him counting up all the money like a miser. He would use an abacus and was as fast with it as any modern day calculator. Father never trusted the banks. In those days there were a couple of banks that had gone bankrupt.

Father and His Aggressive Pretensions

One night father and mother went to bed a little early. I heard father arguing with mother about something. There were no doors between the bedrooms back then, and to go to my room I had to pass theirs. As I made my way to bed that evening I saw my father sitting on my mothers stomach, his arms flailing in the air as he attempted to beat her in his drunken stupor.

My poor mother, being the humble Korean wife that she was, simply laid there and took whatever he had the strength to deliver. My father was an alcoholic and at the time was already showing signs of deterioration. He was terribly underweight and weakened by his condition so his punches probably could not have amounted to much.

In spite of his condition however, all I could see was red at the sight of him beating on her that way. Without really thinking I grabbed him by the arms and threw him to his bed, just a few feet away from mother. Soon after that happened, while lying in my bed that evening, I could hear mother and father laughing softly in their bedroom. They must have thought it was funny for me to react that way. I was about 15 or 16 at the time.

Father Controlling His Ten Children

As a child I guess I never really appreciated my father. Although I always respected him, I also resented him for his threats and his bullishness. Whenever he felt that we needed disciplining he would take a long flexible stick and threaten to beat us with it. But looking back now I realize he never really did. He would chase us around the house with it and yell and scream at us. We would run and hide in fear. His problem with alcohol robbed him of his speed and agility so he never really was able to catch us anyway. If he ever got too carried away with it, mom would always step in to stop it.

There was also a good side to my father. I remember he would tell us bedtime stories whenever we wanted to hear them. We would gather around him and he would make up stories that fascinated us and fueled our imaginations. He was the greatest storyteller I have ever known.

Now that I am older and have raised four children of my own, I have a much deeper understanding of why my father did the things he did in raising his ten children. It has given me a greater appreciation for my father and has made me realize that it was partly because of him that my sisters and brothers are so close. That closeness of family is something that also runs strong in my children.

My Parent's Happy Moments

Whenever my mother would take a break from sewing, she and father would sit on the floor and roll their Durham tobacco. For them, this was their quality time together. They really were the best of friends and it was times like these that that friendship really shone through. They would carry on in light conversation, laughing with each other, which made mother very happy.

Father had a deep respect for mother. In spit of a crippled hand, he once make this beautiful wooden box for her to keep her tobacco in. There was a separate compartment for matches and another to keep her tobacco pouch in. There was even another one for her to flick her ashes into. father was a pretty good craftsman in spite of his physical disability. I even remember the airtight rat-proof storage box he made to store our rice and flour in.

Another of My Parents' Money Making Schemes

During the days of prohibition mom and dad started brewing okolehao (moonshine) to sell to the plantation workers. It was fairly potent brew, about 99 proof from what I recall. It was as clear as filtered water without any signs of residue.

Every now and then, Eddie Scharsch, the plantation manager, would come galloping through the yard, yelling to my mother, warning her of an impending inspection. Father would quickly run down to the still and dismantle it. He would then take it out in the bushes to hide it.

However, nobody ever came to inspect. It was later that I learned that Eddie Scharsch himself was the inspector! Over the course of the next two weeks or so mom and dad would rebuild the still and it would start all over again.

Sunday Saimin

Mother had several means of supporting the family. From Monday through Friday she would toil as a tailor. On Saturday she would take in laundry from the plantation workers. Sunday however, was saimin day. Mother would make the dough for the saimin noodles. She would roll it on our kitchen table, flatten it with a long bamboo rod, and them roll the rod across it until it was really thin. Then she would cut it into thin strips and boil it until cooked. She would serve it in a beef or a pork broth and garnish it with strips of scrambled eggs, green onions, boiled pork or beef, and a hot dipping sauce.

One day Reverend Hyn brought over a hand cranked presser, which made her noodle making much easier. After making the dough she would put it into the presser a handful at a time and crank out saimin noodles to a length of about six inches. There was a cutting blade that she would use to slice the noodles from the presser and begin the process all over again. Today I see this same process being used in the making of pasta noodles except that it's now automated.

My Daily Experiences

Whenever it rained the drinking water would turn murky. The Durham bags from mother and father's smoking tobacco really came in handy as water filters. We would tie them to the faucet to catch the baby toads and whatever large pieces of sediment that flowed through the pipes. Mother would fill a huge pot with water and let it sit for a day to let the rest of the sediment settle to the bottom. This is what we used for drinking and cooking.

We had a furo to bathe in. It was made of redwood and was about 5 feet square. It had a sheet metal bottom and sat upon a concrete foundation, which was fashioned much like a wood-burning oven. We would burn firewood in it to heat the water. To keep our feet from burning on the bare sheet metal flooring, a set of redwood slats was laid across the bottom. The furo was housed in a shed that was about 8 feet by 10 feet with a concrete floor and a bench to sit on while we scrubbed ourselves clean. For safety, it was built away from the main house to prevent any fires. We would scrub ourselves down with Ivory soap (that was all that was available at the time) then rinse ourselves off before entering the furo to soak. We called this our steam bath and it was a great way to end a day of hard work. The soaking was soothing and relaxing and made for a very sound sleep.

In those days we never had any bathroom plumbing so we had to go to the outhouse whenever nature called. It was located about 50 feet away from the main house. Whenever anyone wanted to go, especially in the middle of the night, we would always take a companion along. I was always elected. We would have to fire up a hurricane lamp or a kerosene lantern to light the way and take an umbrella if it was raining. Needless to say, it was always an elaborate and unwelcome procedure. One day, mother bought a chamber pot, which we kept under our beds. Whoever used it in the night would have to empty it in the morning. This made life a little bit easier. Then a few years later we bought a commode and had it installed in the workroom, which was adjacent to the house. Life was getting even better.

It was my brother John who ordered it from a Sears catalog. He had heard about it from his dear friend, Miss Reid, who at the time was the principal of Huleia School. Those old Sears catalogs really came in handy. Its pages were thin like tissue paper. We would crush them and wrinkle them between our hands to soften them so we could use it as toilet paper. Many thanks to Sears Roebuck! I wonder if they knew just how wonderful their catalogs really were.

To keep the flies away, a man from the plantation would come over and spray a white powder randomly throughout the property. It looked like flour but was probably boric acid or lye. Whatever it was, it sure did the trick. It helped to eliminate most of the flies.
 
 

Holiday Remembrances

Whenever May Day or Christmas came around, Miss Reid would always plan a program for the students to participate in. I remember dancing around the Maypole and all the goodies at Christmas. Back then that meant oranges, apples and candies wrapped in brown paper.

One year we painted our faces with ashes from burned paper and stuck our heads through cardboard cut outs, which were painted as old black plantation workers. We sang "Old Black Joe" which today would probably be frowned upon.
 
 

Mother's Attention

When we were children we would all compete for mother's attention by presenting her with the best fruit we could find. There were ten children in the family so competition was always tough. We would go out in the fields and the forests, try to pick the best fruit we could find, then race home, hoping to be the first with the biggest, and best that Mother Nature had to offer.

Joseph and His Mango Tree

There was a mango tree that grew next to our kitchen window. A fence ran around it creating an enclosure about 10 feet by 13 feet. This was the home of our four ducks. Knowing how ducks love water, mother had a huge pan of it within the enclosure. We sisters loved to watch them taking a bath as they splashed water all over the soil, making it soft and muddy.

One day my brother Joseph climbed the mango tree to get some fruits but slipped and fell from about 15 feet. He landed in the middle of the muddy duck pen, which probably saved his life. It did however, knock the wind out of him, as he lay there motionless for a minute. My sisters and I screamed for mother and she came running our to see what was the matter. But before she reached us Joseph slowly raised himself from the mud in pain and obviously winded, but apparently intact. My sisters and I were crying and laughing at the same time as he picked himself up and walked out of the duck pen, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. Of course he was covered in mud. I think an angel must have been looking after him that day.
 
 

Mother's Visit to Korea

When mother went to Korea to see her dying mother, we all went to see her off at the dock. This was the first time I ever saw my father show any emotion toward my mother. He hugged her, crying openly, as he laid his head on her shoulder. This was so unlike our Asian upbringing, which taught us never to bear our emotions openly.

Maybe he was afraid she would never come back. She faced many a hardship and life on the plantation was difficult raising ten children while caring for a husband who didn't do much to help. After all, mom was the Rock of Gibraltar. Our friends that came to see her off that afternoon were very surprised to see father being so openly affectionate and emotional. They thought it was wonderful to see this old Asian couple holding on to each other like parting young lovers.

Mom and Dad were inseparable that day.

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