One day while my cousins and I were sitting around, thinking about a friend of ours whom we had just lost, we started talking about growing up in Hawaii and how for some of us, life was real hard.

My cousins lived in Papakolea in a house with pukas in the floor and ceiling, a refrigerator that was really an ICEbox. A 'safe' for the buddah, shugah, and whatevahs.  The legs of the 'safe' were in sardine cans filled with water to keep the ants out kerosene stoves that smelled so nice in the early morning.

Tea  grew wild in the yard and looked like weeds.   Every morning a batch was picked, the dirt shaken off the roots, the kukus picked off and boiled in hot water.  If you ran out of tea, all you had to do was add more water throughout the day.  The next day, you did the same thing.

Eating hot rice with sugar, cream and butter... putting sugar and butter on a slice of bread or saloon pilot cracker and eating it whenever you wanted a snack ... having tables and benches instead of dining room furniture... eating palao keko (monkey bread) when food was scarce instead of boxed cereal.

Eating flat pancakes made of only flour and sugar and fried crispy eating fried eggs with shoyu mixed into hot rice ... eating  papa'a rice and pork and beans after a day of swimming  at Kapena... taking steam baths with the whole family under what seemed like a ton of blankets with everyone around a pakini filled with boiling water; the pakini being lined with Vicks vaporub or young lemon shoots from the tree in the front yard.

Being afraid to tell your parents that you were sick because you never knew what they were going to feed you from the yard like the uhualoa root, leaves from the popolo plant that have been smashed into a pulp (the berries were 'ono though but kind of small), chewing the young shoots of the guava tree, the sap from the kukui nut, and more (all of which of course made you feel better); and don't ever tell them that you had kukai pa'a or out came the castor oil bottle along with a slice of lemon to kill the taste!!

Cooking starch and then starching the clothes and hanging them on the clothesline until they were so stiff they could walk of the line by themselves; and then when dried, sprinkling them with water and putting them in the refrigerator until you were ready to iron them.  Especially the jeans. Can't Bust 'Em jeans with the side pockets for your comb.

Washing clothes with a wash board in large pakini's filled with "bluing" and later being able to afford a washer and den get your hand caught in the wringer.

Putting your pack of cigarettes in the sleeve of your t-shirt all rolled up.  Buying margarine by the block because you never had enough money to buy the whole box of four.  Buying Loves bread and by the time you got home, the bread was all smashed... or half eaten.

Eating saloon pilot crackers covered with butter and breaking it up into a bowl of hot chocolate and all of the butter floating to the top. Eating hot tea in a bowl with rice. Getting scoldings because you nevah kahi the poi bowl after eating.  Using the wax from a candle or the leaf from a banana tree when ironing to keep the iron from sticking. Eating the yellow kiawe beans instead of feeding them to the pigs. Those sticky stuckah beans that we used to rub on the carnation cream cans and walk all over the place with them stuck to our feet.

Playing sky inning and home run in the streets stopping only when a car came by. Your first driving lesson given to you by your best friend because your parents did not think that you should be driving.   We all learned to drive stick-shift because the 'hydromatics" were not out yet. The lickings you got for driving without a license....  and the cop knew your parents and thought that he was doing you a favor by telling them!!

Christmas bags you got from school every year and church that had an apple, an orange, hard candies, raisins still on  a branch and nuts. The old manapua man walking around with two buckets hanging from a stick over his shoulders shouting "manapua, pepeiau"

The mosquito trucks spraying DDT into the evening air and us like lolos chasing the truck and running through the smoke. School lunch was only a quarter for years even when our own kids started school Surfing during tidal wave warnings.....  and being a JPO in school. Playing jacks with small stones and an old tennis ball, agates with my brothers and the hapupus they used to make so that they could steal my bumbuchas.

Oh!... the good old days with so much to look forward to.   Who would have thought that we would give up all of this to come to the mainland to live. Gone are the days of our youth.  Gone are those times shared with family.

Everything today is so hi-tech that children are not learning to create as we did because we had so little.  We could not afford a television so grew up without one.  What would children do today without their computers and television?  I can only imagine.

We had so little and yet so much and never saw it until we grew up and looked back and now can see the beauty of being a Hawaiian kid growing up in Hawaii.  And you know what, we didn't even know that we were poor because everyone in our neighborhood grew up the same way. Here's to those hanabuddah days, may the memory of those times always bring us joy.

Sharon Kuuipo Paulo is originally from Nanakuli, Oahu. She moved to the mainland in 1970  She's a single parent of six grown children and a grandmother of 16 mo'opuna.  She now lives and works in Los Angeles area.   "I am very active in the Hawaiian community and belong to numerous community organizations throughout southern California.  I am a community activist."   Kuuipo loves reading  good mystery novel and writing.