Chapter 4: Adventure Begins

[Hotel street today courtesy of Google Earth. I would be lost, totally]

In my new home I’d suddenly suffered about two weeks of epic new allergies but got over that, antibodies assumed. I tried out a new product pill called Contact, one of the very first TV advertised remedies for hay fever. It may have had a positive placebo effect or not but I lived to see another day, by far the worst hay fever attack ever.

But I should not complain. The air was so filled with beautiful flower aroma. I’d be damned if I was going to give up on paradise, however, and all these new things I had to learn while hitting the ground running.

There were BIG cock roaches and other giant bugs plus the pidgin English requiring a close ear, work, learning in order to sound local. I had to learn how to use, wear, Flip Flops, sandals, Go Aheads that hurt between your big toe and the next. Didn’t understand those but everybody removed them before going in the house, required. I needed some Aloha shirts. I had to change my driver’s license. I needed a car.

I bought a car from my brother in law’s older brother. It was a 1950 Austin sedan, the kind hot rodders loved to put Chevy V-8’s in. This was stock, actually had a mechanical sun roof you cranked open. The A40 motor was one copied around the world even for Japanese production WW2 fighter plane engines. All these things included made me proud of my funny old little black sedan that leaked engine oil. But it provided me with transportation to work for quite a while including my start at Repo Auto Center.

Just after I first arrived on Oahu I started looking for a job. I answered an ad in the Star Bulletin newspaper regarding a gas station job in downtown Honolulu. Pumping gas I had experience for.

I Looked for work and landed a job with Ken Shinn a former office manager who was staking his life savings to re open a Texaco station near Hotel Street in old Honolulu. This was the tough part of town. That would be my work before college started and before Repo Auto. The experience was one of working nights in the wild environment of Hotel Street and being quick educated in the night life of Hawaii’s locals. This was immersion, intense.

I helped open Ken Shinn’s Texaco just around the corner from Hotel Street, mere feet away in the old part of Honolulu, the tough part of town down by the harbor. I didn’t know one part of the city from the other having just arrived in Hawaii myself. I was a fresh haole without direction aside from waiting to start the Spring semester at college after quitting commercial art and enduring a long recovery from a traffic accident back in the mainland. I did have my sister and brother in law for support and guidance and they let me stay at their house until I got myself establish in this new part of the world. I was 19 years old, naive and nearly broke.

Ken was full of enthusiasm, his life savings being spent to re open the station that had failed more than once. He involved his entire family, even a nephew into the work of getting the station ready for the grand opening, balloons, free Coke, flyers with offers for a cheap lube job and so forth, the usual fare.

Ken was an office manager. He’d never run a gas station before and his knowledge of mechanics very limited.

His family was traditional Korean, the eldest son being the recipient of, lets say, all the blessings in what we haoles would refer to as a spoiled brat. The teenage kid did no work while the rest of us labored to clean up the dusty building, the entire property, to make it show ready for all the new customers about the flood the place. The kid just sat in the office and played his guitar while Ken’s giddy smile shone everywhere as he coaxed us to hurry up.

He wanted us to run to the pump island when a customer drove up; “Okay to trot but no walking,” was the command. He had a vacuum cleaner standing ready at the island plugged in and aside from the 1965 norm of offering full service, check the oil and tires, wash the windshield, also offer to vacuum the interior of the car. All of that for the going gasoline price of 39.9 cents per gallon. And as the grand opening unfolded we also had to hand them a large bottle of Coke, balloons for the kids and be happy about it. I was making $1.50 per hour.

Actually the grand opening did arrive with a lot of customers waiting and the Coke disappeared really fast. There were lube jobs a-plenty as Ken tried to figure out how to do them and I was the only person working who had gas station experience.

I knew my hood latches and I had to step in to help the others avoid that embarrassing stalling struggle as the customers peered out through windshield expecting an experienced mechanic checking their oil. That was hard to maintain if you couldn’t even find the hood latch to raise it up and hide your shame. And Ken’s eldest son sat playing his guitar only to move occasionally when Ken in a fit of anxiety asked him to “Please,” go out and fill some gas. The kid walked very slowly to the island with an air of complete disgust.

My most notable memories of Ken’s Texaco were the local cops, sidecar motorcycle mounts, and the local taxi cab drivers, women whose gender I had a terrible time understanding.

Also there was the home bound returning Vietnam soldier who obviously suffered some terrible P.T.S.D ... He started screaming obscenities at me.

I was alone closing the station just after I’d done the usual prescribed cleanup in the lube bay, squeegee kerosene all over the floor, add some Tide sprinkled on and scrub. It made the floor slicker than snot, the honest slipperiest thing.

The guy started to approach amidst his screaming and I had no idea why he was doing that. But he stepped on to the bay floor and completely went flying. My heart sank and with repeating difficulty finally he got up to skate out the door, ran off screaming more obscenities into the night.

My heart was pounding and I closed that station in record time.

I also remember the car wreck just before 10 P.M., a VW Beetle hit by another car, a hit and run. There was that huge “Blomp” funny bag popping sound and then silence as there was no other traffic. The only sound was the VW Beetle as it made a slow arc “flomping” on flat tires, funny little repeating squeak rolling around the far outskirts of that large four lane intersection. It finally came to rest in the driveway of the gas station. A hapless drunk got out of car to stagger around and my buddies the motorcycle cops were on the job.

Those cops worked the Hotel Street beat, something reserved for new rookies. They rode old Harley sidecar rigs usually packing the latest recruit in the sidecar.

My new friend, an veteran officer who drove the bike, liked to get a new guy in the sidecar and bring him up to the station for the free coffee. The fire hydrant out by the sidewalk was open for game and he would aim the sidecar at it as he swerved and leaned hard to the outside lifting the sidecar and the rookie into the air - over the hydrant. This is true, was something to see. After, coffee was offered the new guy who had probably wet himself was broke in and we all laughed.

My buddy was a big guy and he always had great stories to tell about Hotel Street and its offerings, gypsies preying on service men and giant Samoan guys who wore spring dresses and heavy makeup, among other things. Hotel Street was far gaudier than mainland “Skid Road” in my memories. It was hot tropic warm and required far less clothing.

And lastly were the taxi drivers, tough gals who bought their gas at the station. Occasionally they would come in groups and demand that I take off my glasses as they teased me about “beautiful eyes” and my blushing out shone even Ken’s giddy smile. And actually they were sweet.

They kept an eye on me like guardians making sure I was okay. Theirs was a family so unlike any clique I knew in my parochial high school days. They were tough and honest and real.

I was always very glad to close the station, working alone, wary of that part of town when I was educated about its nature. I would drive to the King Street bakery and buy a custard pie, large. I would take that big pie home so my brother in law and I could cut it and each eat our share, our half, while we watched Johnny Carson, the show exactly one week late because of the shipping time from the mainland.

Scared, I was, always scared because I was only 19, always shy but this was Hawaii with all its faults and I was loving it already. I had been initiated to the under belly first before being allowed to slowly climb up to the “Paradise” of my imagination and expectations.