Prologue

. . . . . . .The last sugar mill had been closed for months.  And the last of the alternating sweet and rancid smell of rotting or burning cane along the Kaumualii Highway on the southwestern edge of Lihue had long since blown out to sea before the parade, which was to mark the end of a most colorful chapter in Hawaiian history.  It was a melancholy day for most of the residents.  It was certainly not cause for celebration, at least not for the future.  But for the past it was—a glorious, legendary, monumental, and in some ways, let’s face it, ignoble past.

            As for me, I was an outsider visiting from New York City on the one hand.  But on the other, I was very much a part of the festivities.  After all, my mother had once been the mayor of this island, long before she had ever met my father.  And, while I had never lived here, it felt very much a part of me, not to mention, my great great Auntie Fay, in her nineties now, and my Uncle Mimo in his mid to late fifties, both of whom accompanied me on this historic occasion.

            As we lined the parade route, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.  For one thing, the parade was almost an hour late.  As Auntie Fay put it, “Clock no work in Hawaiian Islands.  Party start when everyone arrive.”  She said this from beneath a stupid looking hat with real flowers and fruit on it, the likes of which I had seen in pictures my mother held in her trembling hand, always with a smile on her face as she presented them.

            Rumor had it that the young girl, who was to be the queen on this, the last day of sugar crop harvest parades (even though it had been months since the last harvest), was spending extra time to make herself photogenic in view of her responsibility.  Others said she was on her period and had female pains and other concerns to address, not just the gathering of floats and bands and throngs of noisy supporters and well wishers over by the football field, near the airport, where the parade was being assembled. 

           Uncle Mimo said, “She’s a poor girl from over near Waimea and her brother’s truck broke down on the way over this morning.”

           Whatever the reason, it was worth the wait, for when we finally saw her, she looked like the Hawaiian version of Sleeping Beauty.  She was part Asian and part Caucasian with deep set, round, dark eyes, carefully and tastefully accented with thin lines mascara.  They were protruding Betty Davis type eyes, and they were equally as beautiful—blue as nearly as I could tell.  “You go figure that one out!” Auntie Fay said, as she passed on the opening float.  “Some Tom cat’s been pawing near root of that beautiful, young wahine.”

            It was a floral float with garlands of plumeria and shower tree blossoms, an arch covered with throngs of purple and deep red bougainvillea and a little make-shift waterfall that worked for about twenty yards at a stretch.  Then some men would come running out into the street, tinker with it, and it would work for another twenty yards before it broke down again.

            In comparison to New York, say the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, there was a humility to it, a simplicity, an understated beauty that could only exist in Hawaii.  Even in this, the greenest and wettest place on earth, there was a carpet of Astroturf beneath the queen’s feet.  And from the worn and frayed look of it, it wasn’t its first parade but it was a very good thing it was the last.   

           As I watched and listened to the drum and bugle corps, thinned by a coincidental competition in Honolulu this same weekend and the five or six airmen, sent from the airbase out by Kokee Park with the colors, stars and stripes, the official national presence, I couldn’t help but reflect on the Hawaiian flag I had seen at the Iolani Palace and the things I had heard about the transition first to a territory and then to a state, which the island had undergone.  I couldn’t help but wonder if the residents nowadays were any better off.  For one thing, about all of them worked at least two jobs just to make ends meet.

           Still suffering from jet lag, I drifted in and out of a stupor, call it a daydream, perhaps, when I reflected on all this represented—all of this pageantry, all of this celebration, all of this end to an historic era.  A few nights before, when I had just arrived, my Auntie Fay, who lived in a Quonset Hut with a bunch of stray cats up on the road to Waimea Canyon had assembled people from all over the state to be sure I got to hear about my heritage.  “I teach your mother Hawaiian culture and family history, when she young girl,” Auntie Fay had said.  “And now I have only few days.  I teach you, too.”

            This was generous of my great great aunt, since I was an adopted child of my mother and had lived in Hawaii—on the Big Island, not Kaua’i, for only a few years after my father died before my mother and I relocated to New York, so that I could pursue my theatrical career.  But Auntie Fay made it clear that being adopted meant just as much to her as being born into the family and, since it was obvious that Auntie Fay virtually worshipped the ground my mother walked on, especially “if it Hawaiian aina,” she vicariously showed her love for my mother by sharing our heritage with me.

            I didn’t know it at the time, but the people she had assembled in that Quonset hut were not just prominent and but legendary historical orators from throughout the islands.  One had moved away and traveled all the way from Guam to be there, another from Tahiti.  Others had flown, sailed or kayaked from Molokai, Maui, the Big Island and Lanai.  They had all come at Auntie Fay’s request at their own expense to share what they knew, so that I could one day pass this information along to my own children and their children after them.  Uncle Mimo brought along a ukulele and an evening that began with song and crested with events, observations and raucous laughter in the wee hours, ended in tears shortly before dawn.

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