Growing up me

1962

Several days ago I saw this photo on Facebook, it was one of my memories. This is The Aston Waikiki Circle Hotel on Kalakaua Ave in, you guessed it, Waikiki. The other side of the street is the ocean!

Circle Hotel today. Waikiki Beach

The Circle Hotel, which in my memory has always been “The Round Hotel”, was built in 1962. We moved to Hawai'i in 1964, two years after it was built, and stayed here. It was standing pretty much by itself then. I don’t know how long we stayed here, couldn’t have been too long.

A brief interruption. My early years must have been rather traumatic, as I can recall very little of my first 10 years of life. I guess my way of dealing with things was to not remember them! My memories begin at around 10 or 11, about the time we moved to Hawai’i. I remember driving all night from Tucson to Los Angeles, then sleeping all day in a motel while waiting for our red eye to Honolulu. In those days it was just Mother, Dad, my (then) little brother Mike, and my even littler sister Tracey. If I was 10 then Mike would’ve been 6 and Tracey 2. Anyway, we spent our first nights in The Circle Hotel.

We then moved into a little apartment in Waikiki. I briefly attended Queen Lili’uokalani Elementary School. I’m still a little fuzzy here. I have a photo of my 4th grade class in Tucson, so I must have been in the 4th grade.

I don’t remember the move (we moved a lot when I was a child!), but while still in 4th grade we moved to Kahalu'u on the Windward side of Oahu. We were in the country! Our house was on Kamehameha Hwy, known locally as Kam Hwy. There were two houses on our driveway, we were the second one back from the road. Literally across the street from the end of our driveway was the ocean. Kaneohe Bay. It was not a pretty beach - the water came all the way to the highway at high tide and at low tide it retreated a good ways out, exposing a muddy, mucky mess. The ocean in the front, a mountain behind. The other thing I remember is the frogs, or toads. I don’t know which, only that they were everywhere, big, and froze in the headlights of an oncoming car.

After a brief stay in Kahalu’u we moved to Kaneohe. Still on the Windward Side. In fact, down the road from Kahalu’u. Not surprisingly, also on Kaneohe Bay. I still remember our address: 45-513A Kapalai Rd. Yep, another two house address and driveway. This time we were the first house.

house on Kapalai Rd

This house I remember well and fondly. A three bedroom house. Before long we added Bobby (a brother born to Mother and Dad), and Dad’s children from his previous marriage: Maureen, Kathleen (who went by Kathy, then Katie), Sean (who goes by Shaun now, apparently the birth certificate spelling) and Bridget. Yeah, all ten of us in a little 3 bedroom house! It was Mike, Sean, and me in one bedroom; Maureen, Kathy, Bridget, Tracey, and the baby (Bobby) in another. Good thing that back in those days we mostly lived outside. Next door lived the Gumapacs, a Filipino family with 11 children! We played together a lot! And they had cousins in Honolulu with 19 children, who lived in two adjoining apartments!

I attended Kapunahala Elementary for 5th and 6th grades. Attended? I walked. Honestly it was less than a mile. I can still remember that walk, too. Then Samuel W. King Intermediate School for 7th and 8th grades. Walked there too. Almost 2 miles. On Kam Highway no less. Sadly, I had become a punk kid by then.

Beginning with 9th grade my Dad got me a "District Exception" so I could attend school in Kailua – so I could spend more time with ‘my kind’. Yeah, it is as embarrassing to write it as it is to read it. All my friends were going to go to James B. Castle High School in Kaneohe (which I would’ve walked to, no doubt). I remember complaining bitterly to my brother Sean, “Kailua High School is where all the haoles go.” (Haole is the word for white people. Seems I had gone ‘local.’). Sean replied, “Jeff, you are a haole.”

I learned just yesterday the name of the intermediate school I attended for 9th grade, Kalaheo Intermediate! It was fairly new - it opened in 1966, I attended 69-70. I also learned that in 1976 it became a High School. My brother Sean drove me to school. Don't remember how I got home. Then 10th and 11th grade I went to Kailua High School. I hitchhiked to and from school each day. Talk about an unfunded mandate - my Dad arranged for me to go to school in the next town, but getting there was my responsibility!

I became a rather wild teenager while at Kailua High School. My brother turned me on, I mean introduced me, to marijuana middle of my 9th grade year. I went to school stoned every day after that. It only got worse in High School. Kailua had what was called a “modular system”, with twenty 20 minute mods a day; classes were 2 or 3 mods long, with a lot of free time. I got to where I was going in the morning, then leaving school to go surfing. Sometimes I would come back for the forty five cent lunch. Sometimes I wouldn’t. I have no idea how I passed. In all honesty, we were high school hippies living in Hawai’i.

My Dad died when I was a Junior in High School. Long story. Tough times. I can still remember the landlord meeting with Mother after that, telling her he was going to do some work on the house and would be raising the rent. An increase we could not afford. We held a yard sale, sold everything we had, and moved to Nashville, TN, where my grandparents lived. Talk about culture shock!!

That summer we lived with them in a tiny two bedroom house. It couldn’t hold all of us so me and my brother slept in a camper parked in their driveway. Mom rented a house on Donna Hill Court, on a hill right across from Opryland. I attended McGavock Comprehensive High. I walked there too! And graduated.

The most significant event in my life happened while I was a Senior in High School – I became a follower of Jesus Christ. I got saved! I was born again! My life was changed forever and eternity! But that is another story.

After graduation my Mother bought a house on Hurt Street, a couple of blocks from my grandparents house. It was while living there that another significant event happened. Very shortly after I started night school at the University of Tennessee Nashville in the Fall, I was hit by a car while riding a bicycle. I was laid up for quite a while. Why would that be so significant? I had to drop out of UTN. As I was recovering I heard from my next door neighbor about the University of Tennessee at Martin. I wanted to be a forest ranger, they offered a pre-forestry degree, so come January, in a snow storm, my Mother drove me to Martin, TN. My life direction was changed at UTM – I met Mary, and felt called into the ministry! That’s a different chapter in my other story!!

It was good to think about and remember these things. Obviously, since Hawai’i is where my memory begins, there is a lot I’ve left out - both good and bad, happy and sad. Seeing that hotel sparked a lot of memories and it was fun to go through them, like looking at old photos. I will say that I have a super majority of positive memories of our time in Hawai’i, in spite of what were some really hard times. How positive are my memories? The first time I took Mary to Hawai'i, the morning of our first full day, as we were driving through Kaneohe I was overwhelmed with the feeling, "Home." And that is a whole other story!