Mom's Last House

My mother moved to Billings, MT five years ago after taking care of my two great aunts Gladys and Helen in Duxbury, MA for their last twenty years of life; both lived to be 96yrs old. She took very good care of them. Mom always wanted to be a nurse and between the age of 60yrs and 80yrs she had the opportunity for family home care. She tried to apply to be a nurse in the US Army at age 42 and was refused with a letter saying she was too old. In high school her report card of all A's would have gotten her into nursing school young but, she didn't have the money to attend college. And, then again she had me at age twenty.

I hated her selling the house I loved at 205 Surplus St. She inherited an antique half cape house from Aunt Gladys. It was a house I visited a few miles from the home I grew up in. It had a large yard and backroom off the garage where I had pajama parties with my high school friends. Later I made an art studio out of it. I loved that house and so did Mom. Age made her do it. She felt she had to be near one her daughters and she chose Donna who lived in Billings. So at age 81yrs she moved to a new place never having lived outside of a 30mile radius of her birth town Plymouth, MA .

We found a beautiful one level home in Briarwood for her, only a mile and a half from Donna. Most of her furniture was moved with her and she did her magic in decorating with a Western flair now incorporting her antiques with red leather couchs and grey stone fireplaces. It was a hard transition for her but a necessary one. She visited her home at the Camp in Plymouth, MA once a year in the summer with the whole family reuniting. Sitting on the porch overlooking the pond was her favorite time there last summer. As my cousin, Morton, reminded me she didn't want to leave. He is feeling guilty about that, but, she couldn't have stayed. She needed Donna and her new home to survive happily and she knew it.

I started visiting her when needed and at Thanksgiving time, I really liked her new home and the lifestyle she enjoyed with Donna and Ralph in the Prarie. Montana is really a wonderful place and a good second home for her. I am now here with my two sisters planning her funeral arrangements. When I got off the plane from Honolulu I went with Donna and Gayle to Smith's funeral home to pay a last visit to Mom. It was good, I started with the Lord's Prayer and ended with Goodbye and aloha as I walked through the doorway of the visiting room.

The news of my mother's death hit me like a lead balloon. I was having lunch with my three friends in Honolulu, when I got the call from my sister Donna who was visiting. In the parking garage I returned Donna's phone message. She asked me if I was driving, I said no, she told me she had some awful news, "Mom was dead." I asked how and she didn't answer, saying instead she and her son Peter would meet me at my house ten minutes away. I sat in my car and wailed at the news of losing my mother. I called my friend on the third floor who came downstairs and took me back upstairs to calm down.

When Sylvia embraced me I said my mother was everything to me; she was my mother and my father. She did everything she could to make my life better. I felt like a bomb had hit my soul. I felt all alone and so far away from Mom. The next day I took a flight to Billings to meet both Gayle from Texas and Donna to help with the arrangements. I was surprised to find a calmness in being in Mom's house and surrounded by her clothes and furniture.

I took a nap on her bed yesterday as we covered mine with clothing she had that is to be given away. I opted to sleep in her room so that Gayle and Ella wouldn't have to. Last night I slept in her beach coverup in her bed in her sheets. I slept well and felt okay again if just for a night.

I will miss my mother terribly, she always talked to me when I called. I don't remember her ever being too busy to talk. I bounced problems off of her and she tried to help. My mother was generous to me and I have grown in to the woman she wanted. I am a happy adult, successful in business, friends and family. What more could she ask for?

A devoted daughter. Coral

Remington Reality not Paul Brown Institute School for Beauty

Waited six weeks for my appointment, really looking forward to a day of me.

I went to have a haircut, pedicure and manicure on Wednesday. Drove downtown, parked at Alii Place and walked the walk. I've done this a dozen times.

Inside the school, the receptionist Tim was in back, stood for a while at the counter and the young girl from the school decided to help me. Looked at the list of names to do my hair and nails; didn't recognize the name. James was there and I have had a cut with him twice and a facial. A student took me to a young girl who then washed my hair in cold water and very hot water. I told her she could add pressure to her wash and she didn't nor did she wash the back of my head. Okay, it's over.

Went to have my hair cut in a bob, she then pinned my hair in two clips so I looked like my pigtails had just flown away. Next, she changed her approach to cutting an inch off my hair in the back by reconfiguring the clips. After thirty minutes and her teacher Maria swooping over for the third time talking in zeros I was loosing confidence in this whole ordeal. Maria( the teacher) asked her, " are these your best scissors?" I never heard the cut of scissors from the student. Maria did take two cuts.

Trying to figure out how to escape this girl with my hair intack, forty minutes later I said I needed to go to the ladies room. I went to Tim at the desk and confided in a low voice "I have no confidence in the girl cutting my hair," I don't know what to do. Tim said he would get a supervisor.

I saw him talking at length to a man in a bright blue shirt and short white hair whose name is Kevin. It looked like they were having an argument. It took a long time and I lost more confidence. I went up to the desk and asked what is going on, is he helping me I asked the young man sitting there, he said he didn't know?

My hair was dripping wet and the two clips stuck in my hair made me look like a cartoon character. Finally, the blue shirted man came over to me and sat down. He started talking to me very patronizing. Repeading over and over again, that I needed to understand this was a school. I felt he thought I was either deaf or dumb. He tried to get me to know him on a personal level but, I was so upset by this awkward situation I did not want to chat about his realtor experience on the mainland.

Things got worse after I put the problem in the schools hands, my haircut was finished by Tanya to perfection. She led me to my next manicure appointment where the manager of the salon Maria stopped me.

She told me I was not welcome to come back and that she had cancelled my manicure and pedicure because I had upset a student. Maria refused to hear my side of the story, told me if I wanted to talk to her, I would have to follow her around the office as I spoke. I said I would like to tell my side of the story, she refused.

I asked to speak to her superior and she said she had none. I said okay let me talk to Paul Brown, she said he had nothing to do with the school. I asked again who her supervisor was, she said well, I suppose you could talk to the President of Remington College. She didn't give me his name or phone number. Everyone had disappeared from the front desk.

Maria told me I had no right to get out of the first student's chair and it was wrong of me to not let her finish the cut. I really could not sit there longer. It was a train wreck.

I left after Tim and everyone abandoned their normal stations for "The Maria." Went to get my car and stopped to speak with the President of Remington College. He said his name was Ken, no last name given on the second request. Did not follow my story and gave me the fraternity handshake upon leaving; something like this isn't goodbye it is adios. Weird.

Ken said he would get back to me, I have waited two weeks for him to call me or write. He has not contacted me with a followup.

So now I wonder if Paul Brown whose name drew me there in the first place, and whose school I have bragged about to my friends for years has nothing to do with it as Maria said.

What happened to the instruction of this school? Is it now about learning abuse. Maria was abusive to me, and as an educator most destructive. She is teaching the student, a client is always wrong and if a difficult situation arises, kick the client out. As an instructor Maria is not instilling the confidence to her students required to do such a job. The first student was not ready for what Maria said anyone in the school could do. It was the faculty who put the student in that awkward position not me.

I learned from Maria that I should have said I was sick, left the salon and called later for an appointment with James. A request I did not know I could make but, learned from Maria, who also said I had made special requests before. Not true.

I will never go back to Remington, and I will try to tell everyone I know how horribly I was treated by Maria.

Metcalf Street, Honolulu, Hi.

Before buying this house, I went there alone, and sat across the street getting the feelings from the place. I was centering myself, before making the commitment of buying a place with the last $25,000. I had from the life insurance payoff to put down. I could put 10% down s I had to pay PMI for three years because I didn't have the 20% down which is customary for down payments. There are rules for no longer having to pay Mortgage insurance which have to do with debt ration and home value and if you have paid on time for the length of the loan.

Again, I showed Stephen and his brother the house and they were pretty silent about the whole idea. There was a lot of termite damage under the house. Actually, the termites had eaten and left already. There was an abandoned VW bus in the yard full of stuff. And, come to find out there were people with their dog living under the house that my realtor Myron had to shoo out. He also moved the car out of the front yard.

David was my contractor and he made me have the green shingles removed by hazard masked guys because it was 2% non friable asbestos. Warren who worked a the ship yard told me I did not have to remove them as long as we didn't disturb them the asbestos was no threat. However, David said his men would be nailing into it. So I paid $4000. for the removal and stayed clear from the place while it was being done. David replaced evey footing under the house and repaired some of the redwood tough and groove walls. Bathroom walls were waterproofed and new plumbing for the whole house by Roto Rooter($5000.).

The house was painted white by a woman and her crew, Stephen painted the screens and replaced tiles on the floor. We had to repaint every room inside the house as well and put in new lighting fixtures and some mahogany doors in the bedroom

Armstrong St., Honolulu, HI.

When United Airlines decided not to pay into our pension any longer and handed what money they had to the Pension Guarantee Board I retired early afraid for my 30yrs investment with the company. Everyone told me no problem you will get the same amount of money later if you stay. I was young, 60yrs, and a widow with a daughter in a private college on the mainland. Not exactly the time to retire. But it was the time, and I would have lost a lot more of my hard earned money had I stayed as my colleagues have and still can't afford to retire. I took an excelerated pension payoff and invested in four houses. Two in Manoa and two in my hometown of Duxbury, Ma. across from the ocean.

It hasn't been easy but, I found that it was my kuleana, I love houses and I like fixing them up. This Armstrong house was really ugly but, in Manoa, and I could afford it. Now after a design by Fritz and contracting by Joe, the house is beautiful and I never want to leave. It is big enough to have friends spend the night with no problem. I can walk the dogs on the wide grass sidewalks in the shade of the mature Acasia trees. The green parrots greet me with a screech at the end of the driveway. And most importantly, I feel at home here. Safe.

Armstrong St., Honolulu, HI.

After my husband died, I decided to use the life insurance money I received as a down payment to buy a house in Manoa I had tried to buy two years before when Kuhia was alive, the owner agreed to a price, my realtor wrote up the offer and the owner changed her mind because her new husband didn't agree. Kuhia said to me, I would like to see it. I told him he wouldn't like it. It looks like a shoe box according to my sister Donna. A shoe box with four bedrooms and two baths. Two years later I saw the house for sale sign on the street and went in and offered the realtor a dual agent relationship and the asking price, which now was $80,000. more than two years prior. I got the house.

My boyfriend at the time looked at the house and said he would not like to come home to this place. I offered to buy it together. He declined. Now he and I live in the house and have for many years.

My Nephew Peter's House

My nephews Peter and Mark have been visiting Hawaii since thier early teens. Peter transferred here from UMass in his sophomore year. He graduated from the TINS school at UH and was on the swim team as well.

He and my late husband used to have a lot of fun together watching Schwazenegger and Eastwood action films while Emma and I hid in my bedroom with tamer shows. We all played Star supermarket TV bingo. On vacations, we would drop Peter off at Ala Moana to surf early in the morning and I would pick him up after work to see his hands all wrinkled from being in the ocean so long. He went through the standard harassment from locals who made him wait to catch a wave.

Uncle Kuhia gave these kids presents like an electric guitar to Mark and a surfboard for Peter, no wonder they kept coming back. To be honest with you, Kuhia was the closest they could have gotten to their late maternal grandfather.

Now, Peter lives down the street in his own house with his family of two kids, a wife and a dog. When I heard he was buying a house, or I should say his wife and her father-in-law were buying a house. I went to check it out. I thought it was the house below theirs as it had a for sale sign . I was worried because I didn't like the place. I wanted Peter and his mother Donna to buy a house on Liloha Rise which had three floors which would have been a good investment. The attorney who did buy it, CPR'd it and lives there on one floor, his sister on the next and a rental on the third. Why doesn't my family listen to me?

Peter is a well known athlete and gives triathlon clinics to many people, some of whom encouraged him to become a pilot which he is. I remember when he called me and said he was going to become a pilot; I said it is in your blood. He said why, and I told him Grandpa Dick was a pilot. My father was a pilot and owned a private plane so he could spot fish in the Atlantic Ocean.

I have enjoyed Peter's babies as much as I will my own grandchildren, it is so nice to be with young children. In Hawaii it is good to have family near, as so much of locals lives are focused on family. Coming from Massachusetts, I have always felt that void.

Now his mother, my sister Donna, comes from Billings,Mt. a few times a year to visit her son, his family and me and my daughter Emma who has returned from CCA and a ship sailing around the world, where she was a ship's photographer. Emma is back and is establishing her photography business.

So I have made a Circle

I moved to Hawaii in 1966 with my husband Bob, his first job was at the University of Hawaii, Manoa for a three year contract. I had a BA in English Literature with a minor in Art History and he a Masters in English from the University of Connecticut, Storrs. We lived in Manoa at University Faculty housing on Dole street in a studio apartment. It was small but, we managed. We could afford it after looking in Waikiki which we could not afford.

We lived in a rented house in Manoa before moving to Monrovia, Liberia at the end of three years. Our house there looked like the tailfin on a Cadillac. I began a small business of dress designing; I was a tie dye queen, had the dresses embroidered and sewn by the male Liberian tailors along the main road. Most of my clients were white embassy people from the US and France.

One of my friends from United just said I had come full circle and I wondered if I had published this in error. Well, I guess it is coming. Bonnie, just got the punch line. I will be interested to find others in the loop. Remember thinking my great aunt and uncle who had travelled the furthest in the world ended up at home, in Duxbury, Ma..

Manoa is where I live now, forty years later, where I started on Oahu. My favorite place on the island to live. I love the grassy sidewalks, the old big white houses and the tall, green trees that shade all of this. I wish I didn't have to leave the neighborhood.

Great Aunt Glady's House

This is a half Cape, I've heard the story a hundred times how these houses were considered sadhouses. Because there were no children, there was no need to add on the other half of the house. Aunt Gladys had no children but she was a wonderful surrogate mother for my mom, whose mother died quite young. Aunt Gladys made a point of buying dolls and things for mom to make her happy as a child. My mother in turn oversaw Aunt Glady's care when she was in her 80's and wanted to stay in her house. Mom would cook for her and visit.

I loved Aunt Gladys, she let me use her summer living room off the garage for pajama parties. Uncle Frank used to smoke cigars and watch TV out there. When Mom inherited the house I used the back room for my art studio summer and winter. It was filled with hand painted French Provincial furniture she bought at a New York gallery auction. That furniture was shipped to California and used by Emma in her apartment for four years while in college. Two years ago it was shipped back to Duxbury and is in 408 Bay Rd cottage.

Aunt Gladys claimed her secret to longevity was not mixing her scotch with any sweet mixes. She lived to be 96yrs and is the reason I said I drank scotch when asked in college. She later denied she ever told me to wait until 5pm to have a cocktail. Aunt Gladys met her husband, Uncle Frank, in World War I in Paris where she was an US Army nurse.

Surplus Street is a great street to walk on, except for the occasional dog it is quiet and there are not many cars. My family's homestead is just across the street from Aunt Glady's, it is one of the first land grants from Plymouth Colony. Aunt Gladys grew up at the farm with her eleven siblings.

Grandpa Walter & Joyce's House

I used to ride my bike past my grandfather's house with Pam wondering if he belonged to the Yacht Club so I could go to the dances she went to; he didn't. Once George and I stayed there when Mom's house had too many visitors to overnight for the holidays.
The house used to be an old store and Joyce's uncle next door gave it to her when she came over with her four children to avoid the War in England where her husband was a British bomber pilot. He died after the war in the Pacific at age 40yrs on his way to a conference in Australia. His youngest son, Bob, would die in the same ocean at the same age off the coast of the big island while on the Holoholo ship that the University of Hawaii hired for their oceanographic trips.
Joyce liked my first husband Bob alot, and she used to make old fashions for us to drink in the living room at cocktail hour. She told us stories about her father being an Oxford donne and her making a foe par about the black hole of Calcutta when she spoke to one of his students. Joyce went to Mount Holyoke as did her daughters; Walter went to Dartmouth where he met my grandmother Cindy who was a nursing student. Cindy had daddy and Walter got a silver trophy for having the first grandchild of the class of '29. Now I have the trophy, it's hidden somewhere in a drawer as it is sterling silver.
My grandfather didn't talk much to me; I wondered if he even knew who I was. After dinner at his house, he congratulated me on my nomination to the National Honor Society. He said he knew how hard it was for our side of the family to measure up to his second wife, Joyce's family.
He used to bribe me to stop smoking but that didn't work. I stopped when I was much older and diagnosed with bladder cancer.Pam and I were in a car outside of the old brick Duxbury High school when someone offered me a cigarette. That was one of the worst choices I made in my life. Smoking that cigarette in the car in the parking lot at age 14yrs.

The Camp/Bloody Pond

This is the summer house my great grandfather John built three miles from his winter home on Long Pond and left it for my grandmother and her two children upon his death. My grandmother, Ella would leave at the first sounds of the peepers in Spring and head for the Camp in Plymouth,Ma..Our family still goes there for the summer vacations we eek out of our business lives far away from the town.
As kids, we spent the summers there with my grandmother and our Uncle Larry and Aunt Vera and their seven kids in the next house at Oaks in the PInes. Riding bikes or walking Ship Pond dirt road to pick a few pints of blueberries without spilling them at the shot of the scarecrow's gun was difficult. I think we made 24 cents a pint from that company.
We played cards(war and poker), we swam, canoed,sunbathed, picniced and chased the call of birds(mocking birds) in the pine grove for three months a year. I tried to dig a hole to China once. When Hap saw me he gave me some advice; get an education he said, no one can take that away from you. Love doesn't last he said.No words of wisdom about the hole, or I guess that was his suggestion too.
My cousin Morton lives in the camp now during the winter and leaves only when we take over and stay there with my sister Donna who now owns the place. He moves to one of the campers at his place which is an acre owned by his late father Uncle Larry. Morton is a bog man like his great grandfather John, except he doesn't own the land the bogs are on which is how the bog men got rich.

Back to Hawaii; Waipahu

I transferred back to Honolulu with United, after five years of working and going to school in New York and New Jersey. Now, engaged to Kuhia, and moved to his family home living in the servant's quarters until my house in Kalihi was vacated by my tenants. The traffic was horrific into Honolulu at six am. Sugar cane mill still smelled of sweet smog from it's smoke stack nearby and turned the houses in the neighborhood sort of a rust color. The locals called this the "country", I couldn't see anything but people and houses.
Kuhia called me to say someone had broken into his house and stolen my jewelry, I was devastated. The small box I hid very carefully was found, they dared come into the house of a big, brawling, local Hawaiian. Pearl city police located my engagement ring which I bought back from Kamaina Jewelers. My niece's boyfriend was responsible; in exchange for not prosecuting him I got back my grandfather's fraternity pin, and the aquamarine and diamond ring from great aunt gladys. Silver and gold charm bracelets along with pins, rings gone forever; all my cherished memories. I couldn't wait to get out of there, maybe that was the real plan of the relatives, they wanted the house.
Went to a neighborhood party and saw a man's face smashed with a beer bottle because of a disputed Payut card game. Home alone to stuff toilet paper in my ears while the Philippinos next door bled a pig. OMG! I shut all the louver windows, kept running around the inside of the house thinking I was somehow in Hell now. Kuhia's Weimaraner was chained to the front lanai with his dish and all he was stolen; heart breaking.

Yorktown Heights New York

There aren't many people who drove from New York 45miles on ice and snow to their job across the Tappan Zee Bridge into New Jersey. It's usually the other way around. I loved Westchester county and the 14 roomed two hundred year old Colonial house George lived in.I also fell in love with his daughter, Johanna
George and I were both going through divorces and we liked the same things. It was hard to weather the two year battle he had in court for shared custody of his daughter. We spent a lot of time in the big drafty kitchen freezing next to the smokey old, leaking wood stove. So much for the fourteen rooms, we stayed in one room most of the year on the "economy plan" of the local oil company who charged $400./mth all year for no heat.
We also spent time at his mother Dorothy's house in Pawling, NY..I brought some slides in to develop and the clerk asked me if we were fixing the place up and I had to say, no. My art studio had bats behind the pictures hanging on the wall so I moved very cautiously in there. George told me how he and his sister Susan used to catch the bats with sheets as a game; one I never wanted to try.
We would go on long walks in the 275 acre "farm"squeezed to darkness by overgrown trees. Once walked the property line with James Earl Jones who had build a brick mansion surrounded by Dobermans on George's land according to the survey he had done with 84yrs old Dorothy. I heard George say looking at the deeded land Jones had I think there is a property like that three miles down the road. Went back to Hawaii before that was resolved.
Left Johanna my tv with a lipstick message, "I love you." And I did, when I was in counseling in Honolulu it wasn't just George I missed, I missed his daughter too.

Mom and Dad's Duxbury House

The house I grew up in on Tremont St was a small Dutch Colonial with a large circular driveway and beautiful field rock walls and stairs. Our one acre yard abutted a small swamp where we skated in the winter with our neighborhood friends.
We first went to Mrs. Clark's nursery school with ritz crackers and canned orange juice for snacks. Next we went to Duxbury public school for kindergarden; the hardest things we did there was getting our snow suits and mittens and boots on to leave. We also napped on the tile floor on a thin rug; that was hard too. I was Mary in the Christmas pageant we had wearing my mother's blue silk scarf on my head.
Grade school was next, in third grade I had Miss Paulding who had been my grandfather's, my father's and my teacher. She hit kids with a pointer in the bathroom. The town gave her a party when she retired; her gift was a new Pontiac sedan from Duxbury garage to replace her 1935 Buick. Grandpa Walter owned Duxbury Garage and had the Pontiac dealership.
Growing up in this house was not easy. My two sisters and I slept in the master bedroom, the walls were not plaster board but some form of cardboard used during the war for construction. Good for drawing on but, lousy for privacy. At night, I would say my prayers as fast as possible, accept a wet kiss from my grandmother and lie awake counting the rooms in my house compared to Sherry's or Pam's or Mrs. Day's across the street. As much as I could stretch the six rooms of my house my friends always had bigger homes, they all had more money.
Thus, began my interest in buying houses. I rode my fat tired second hand American bike up the hill past Mill Pond figuring how to buy the Sander's house; it was on the market for $28,000. I was twelve.

Duxbury Grammie's House

My mother left my father in Norfolk, Va. where he was stationed in the US Navy during WWII. She went back home to her mother's because she was pregnant with me and wanted to be at home when she had me. I assume my father agreed with her decision. My father was a nautical engineer at the Navy Ship yard. He wanted to be in the action in Japan but he got as far as San Francisco and the War was over.
I was born in a September hurricane at Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, Ma. in 1944. My father had a hard time hitch hiking from Virginiathrough the windy rains of the storm but he made it. Not soon enough for my mother. I was to go home to Grammie's house on Tremont St at Island Creek in Duxbury, Ma.. My crib and room was prepared by my two grandmothers Ella and Cindy.
Later the same bassinet held my daughter 39years later and 5000 miles away.
Mom and dad bought their own house further north on Tremont Street with the four thousand dollar(down payment) inheritance my mother received from her grandpa John, a bog man in Plymouth.
My paternal grandfather, Walter, wasn't so happy about their choice of house as he had chosen a house on Cove Street for them to buy. He had a strong emotional hold on my father who was a devoted son and worked as the head mechanic at Duxbury Garage until his premature death at age 59yrs.

Leaving Friends

I really had held on to Honolulu as long as possible, I kept hoping my husband would come back and try to resolve the real problems. But, he didn't. He probably has the same problems now.
I had been laid off by United Airlines in Honolulu and that was hard. No job, no money to pay the mortgage. My friend Pixie helped by giving me a part time job at her company for the armed forces air passengers. It really helped me. This company gave me a free ride to Chicago so that I could get to my new job in New York. I had to buy that ticket. United would do nothing to help me get to their job.
I was lucky enough to have worked for Mr. Newman in Chicago where I went to the Art Institute of Chicago. His son John was going through a divorce at the same time as me. His wife was leaving with his best friend. He came to visit in Honolulu on his way home from Indonesia where he worked for the Ford Foundation. I like John, he let me stay at his apartment on Park Ave and 37th in the city. I couldn't stand the constant attempts at making it with me. Shiatsu and all of it. I bolded to a strange basement apartment near my job in Rockleigh( zoned two acres for horse country). I was terrified at this place. Didn't stay long.

The Move to New York

I was accepted at Pratt Phoenix school in Manhattan within two days of being offered a job at United Airlines in Rockleigh, New Jersey. My marriage was over, I needed to move on. Bob did try to get me to refuse the job with United and the admittance to Pratt to go to Chicago with him on a six month's trial run of our marriage. He hadn't been with me in Honolulu for a year so I could not follow him to Chicago.
Leaving Hawaii and starting over again at 34yrs was the hardest thing I have done. Pratt was good, I studied color theory and advanced water color. Only problem was that my homework time was at night, in the morning my water colors looked totally different in daylight. Lesson number one in color; north light.
At United airlines I worked from 5p-1am. Colleagues Norene, David, and Gary who lived in the same apartment building sipped wine and watched Dr Welby and Mary Tyler Moore in the middle of the night after our shift was done.
I had to be at school by 8am for class. Took a bus across the George Washington bridge and then the subway to Lexington and Park. Walked on the sidewalk to school smelling the curry wafting from the large burlap bags in open doorways. I hated New York.
Then I met George the brother of Susan from Hawaii.

Kaimanaiki Valley

The Hawaiians called things that meant alot to them by diminutive names; kaimanaiki means of little power. They feared the gods would take away any thing too nice. The valley our house is in is beautiful; it could be an amphitheater, you can hear the guy across the valley weed whacking his lawn as though he was in your yard. Kalihi valley is the oldest geological piece of Oahu.

On New Years eve is the loudest, smokiest place on the island. Guests used to think we had arranged the spactical all for them to enjoy. Believe me, it was out of our hands.

When we first moved to Kalihi we really liked the neighbors. After being there a while we learned some weren't what they appeared to be. Too many differences in class and education and many other things. The land was beautiful and still is the love of my life. I love the rocks and the trees behind the house. I even love the smell of the air. Bob was streetwise from Chicago. Me, from an upper middle class New England home not so much.

We were flower children of the 60's and thought anything was possible, we had just lived in Monrovia, Liberia happily which is a third world. Seemed like Kalihi was no different but, it was.

Living on a Mountain

Bob took a picturesque road along Punchbowl National Cemetery to work at the University of Hawaii in the green Mehari. I worked in Chicago for Pan American Airlines on Michigan Ave when agents did the round the world fares themselves and booked tours and meals on Aeroflot. Sent my checks to Bob to pay for the house and after spot painting our VW bug for sale headed to Hawaii sans job. Not approved for unemployment insurance as I had a husband.

Sulked in my blue cotton prison shirts for a while, painting the inside and outside of the house. Got a job at the Print Maker cutting color designs for silkscreening. Then an art director at Hele Mai a local tee shirt and bathing suit company. Not an easy job since I hadn't learned to draw yet.

Hawaii House I : The Hick's Home We Bought

Bob and I bought a small, redwood house on top of a very steep driveway(45degree) on a beautiful mountain. I fell in love with the land behind the house, called "watershed" here. There were 20 acres of conservation land with large Christmas Berry trees and huge volcanic boulders in the back yard. We would have to add on to the house to qualify for the mortgage so we designed an addition and made a cathedral ceiling in the living room and some lanais on each side of our new master bedroom. Mid Pac lumber dumped all the timbers in the road below( Nihi St). Day laborers carried these huge, heavy pieces of lumber up the steep driveway(about eleven men). Bob stayed in Rome. I should have but, I was so excited to finally, after ten years of renting, own a home, I came back early. Big mistake..

First House; Hawaiian Home I

After moving back to the United States from Monrovia, Liberia, my husband and I lived in Honolulu, Hi. again. We rented a place on the beach in Lanikai where they raised the rent and the traffic over the Pali was horrible. Moved on to Waimanalo, where our bedroom was next to the carport so every time the owners came and went we smelled exhaust and heard an old chevy engine start. We also heard a dying man groan while he listened to KCCN radio music. He was an old Hawaiian man. I saw an ad for a house in Kalihi Valley for $32,000.. Called my husband and he and my uncle and another friend from the English department went to take a look at this place which cost a third of the going rate then in Honolulu. They said it was okay, so I looked at it and we bought it with the help of our families and an agreement of sale with the United pilot who owned it.

Duxbury House II

Landing Road Beach on Kingston Bay is across the street from the house and a hop, skip and jump for a swim at high tide or digging for clams at low tide. I have just completed renovating the second beach house on Bay Road. These summer houses were built in 1925 and originally one piece of property, sometime in 1945 they were subdivided.