I used to live in Hawaii back in the late '50's. My mom and I had arrived there in early 1958 with my NEW dad who was only an Airman 2nd Class stationed at Hickam Field back then. I was only 4 yrs old at the time, but I can remember the smell of my first bus trip from south Louisiana all the way to San Francisco. I especially remember mountains and seeing the desert for the first time as we rode through the southwestern states.
The only thing I can remember about San Francisco was how a cab had pulled up in front of the terminal with snow on top just as we arrived there. I didn't know what the white stuff was, so I walked over to it, touched it and then ate some...being pretty sure at that point that this was where snow cones came from. I got a spanking from my anxious and frustrated mom; but my dad stopped her realizing I'd never seen snow before and had no idea what it was.
[attachment 17565 hawaiiconstellation.jpg]
We flew in a brand new Pan Am Constellation. Boy, was THAT cool! There was even a bathroom! I remember my folks getting champagne before we landed. I got my first Coke! When we landed at Honolulu we all climbed down to the tarmac to walk to the terminal and ladies wearing grass curtains and colored bras came out to put flowers around our necks and give us kisses. YUCK!!! But the flowers smelled nice. They turned brown real quick, though and the petals started falling off. I was curious about the petals and found out they tasted bitter if you ate one.
Now, moms didn't go off and work much back then so we had to exist on dad's small Air Force salary. He quickly got a night job working as a waiter at the Officer's Club. So I didn't see much of him except on weekends he didn't work. Yeah, I guess we were pretty poor. But I never really noticed - even though there were lots of "signs".
My clothing consisted of rubber flip flops, torn shorts and often dirty T-shirts, when I wore a shirt. Hawaiian weather didn't require a great deal of clothing. When we first arrived we could only afford to live in some old renovated Navy barracks right next to some sugar cane fields. We were one of only a very few white families living in the whole neighboring area. Everyone else were Filipino, Japanese, Samoan, Chinese, Polynesian or combinations of those. Language was similarly mixed. But we lived in "paradise" and race, color or class was not ever an issue - at least not if you were a small child.
The island of Oahu was still a slow and sleepy island with the exception of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor proper. We lived in the middle of an agricultural community. The tiny "village" near us was mostly clapboard buildings either weathered grey or white-washed. Almost every building had corrugated metal roofs and no one had window screens or air-conditioning. But I don't ever remember it ever being too "hot". Most houses and businesses always had their doors and window shutters wide open with gigantic slow moving ceiling fans mosying their way in orbits both in and outdoors.
My mother's health went bad and was often in the hospital, sometimes for months. So there wasn't much of her around either. This was particularly true when she became pregnant. It was a rough pregnancy (with my youngest sister, Karen), or so I was told. Since my dad was working two jobs I was pretty much on my own at home during the day and was pretty much raised by neighbor ladies, older neighborhood kids and other adults of the community. This did not seem "unusual" to me at all. If I was dirty, hungry or scraped a knee someone always came up to wipe my face or nose, give me a piece of fruit or half a sandwich and seemed MORE than happy to slap some stinging Mercurochrome on my wounds and wag a warning finger at me. A quick smack on the head followed by a LOT of finger wagging seemed the general standard for child discipline and was used by all to keep the smaller members of rural Hawaiian society in line.
Any specific language, as a form of communication at least, seemed much less essential to us smaller children than it did with adults or the larger kids. The community care of its children was expected and provided by all back then. My speaking only French with some poor English thrown in was no impediment upon my arrival to the islands, either. Heck, proper English was rarely heard outdoors. Kids don't really need to "speak" to communicate. This is definitely true if playing is the main interaction. I quickly picked up enough Pidgin to communicate with the adults though. Besides, like the stray dogs all around us, a kid in Hawaii easily understood and learned to avoid an irritated store owner or farmer and gravitate toward a nurturing woman in the neighborhood, even if you'd never seen them before.
I would occasionally wander the neighborhood to get breakfast (mooching) and then on into the village in the mornings to see the bustling of businesses operating and watching the farmer or shoppers coming and going. One of my favorite places was an old barber shop. The whole front of the building opened up to the street with a small porch acting as a barrier from the dusty street.
Most porches in Hawaii didn't have chairs and were often worn quite smooth from years of rear-end polishing from visitors. The barber shop had a large overhanging porch roof with the living quarters on the second floor. In the porch ceiling was a large fan that provided just enough of a breeze to make the shade, customer's tall tales and the buzzing of insects a perfect place to take a little nap - especially if you'd just had a nice snack.
The owner of the barber shop was an old Japanese fella who'd lay out a tatami mat on the porch if I was tired. Sometimes he'd even give me a nickel if I swept up hair inside for him. I'm fairly sure that most of my efforts were no more than rearranging the debris, but I worked hard at it even if I always needed help with the dustpan. When a broom is twice your height and the pan heavier than your own arm it's pretty difficult to hit a waste basket accurately. After "earning" my pay, I'd then run off with my warm buffalo nickel to the open drug store across the street to get an orange Dreamsicle - still my favorite.
After returning to the porch I'd lick my Popsicle, chew the stick thoroughly and then suck the residue from my forearms and shirt. Such hard work, the beating sun, some cool porch shade and breeze, a background buzz of bugs and brags combined with the drifting of swing band music from who knows where would soon have me out like a light.
I wasn't the only one to succumb as I'd often wake to find my self sharing my mat with at least a dog or two by noon - more than once I would awake to find the old barber asleep in one of his chairs as well. Once I was conscious again I'd be refreshed enough to pursue my true stock in trade...playing! So with a warning wag from the barber and any other customers, I'd be off at a run to find the other kids.
Most of my time was spent playing with the slightly older kids. It sometimes seemed more like a herd than a "gang". Sometimes the girls would go off to play and sometimes we'd all play together. The favorite game of the boys was to snap off some sugar cane stalks for weapons and run throw the cane rows playing "Army". To my mind, it seemed more like hide-n-seek". But there were rules like, if you were found and "shot", you'd better lay down or you got whacked with their stalk of sugar! I learned pretty fast.
[attachment 17570 hawaiicanefield.jpg]
It was on just such a day of adventure that everyone stopped and the girls all went off to get food for themselves and their brothers. They quickly came back with sandwiches and fruit. But sharing didn't seem to be the order of the day. So I ran back to my house to find something to eat outside with the gang. After climbing up on a chair to open the ice box in our apartment, all I could find that was both edible and portable was a quart jar of French's mustard. Oh well, it was a time of "war" outside and a soldier would just have to make do. Thus, I took off with my big yellow jar and a table spoon I could just barely get in my mouth if I kept shoving real hard.
That afternoon seemed much warmer than normal even sitting down on the ground with the group in the shade of the tall sugar cane. I was pretty hungry and it didn't take terribly long to empty that whole jar into my now very round tummy...the large spoon not withstanding.
We then got back to playing but, even upon standing, I wasn't feeling so good and soon found my "lunch" making a return trip to the surface to lie in a extraordinarily wide, deep and highly contrasting yellow pool as it seeped into the dark volcanic soil around my feet. There is nothing quite so sudden and explosive as a small child losing his chow in one launch. There's also nothing so memorable as having hot mustard steam-clean your throat and nostrils. To this day, I can't tolerate the taste or even odor of mustard in ANY form!
The next thing I remember was waking up to a drowning sensation and discover water being poured onto my face by one of the older boys who'd been blessed with possessing a genuine WWII canteen his uncle had given him. Some guys just have all the luck. The other kids were more impressed by how high he could hold the canteen above my head and still manage to hit me than my condition on the ground. He would have made a superb bombardier, I'm sure.
This sort of general activity continued through the summer until school started. At that point I had to enter Kindergarten. There was a Catholic parochial school nearby that I attended. The school was white painted wood. The classroom buildings were all free-standing and were supported on 4-6 foot high pillars so the air could circulate. The roofs were dark red tile and the windows were all open to the air. Tall and full coconut palms and mango trees shaded all the buildings so that it was always cool indoors. My favorite part of school was napping. I was a rather tactile child and slipping into the denim sleep sacks resting on large tatami mats would have me out like a light. Finger painting animals I'd only seen in books was my second favorite activity. I was very good at giraffes.
To get to school I had to pass through the village, then a large park, cross the main island highway and then through a small neighborhood to reach my destination. It was the highway that was the most fascinating. The road was much wider than any other in my world and had many large and heavy vehicles and farm trucks that roared past. To get across there was a painted walkway to warn drivers to slow down and even hopefully wait for you.
[attachment 17566 hawaiihousestreet.jpg]
I almost always reached the road with several other children on their way to school, both elementary and upper grades. This was a time and culture where every older child was expected to look after any other kid younger or smaller than they were. Sometimes you had to wait for quite a while until someone actually stopped for you to cross or the road simply became momentarily clear. This gave a little guy lots of time to look around...
Of particular interest to me became the big red box on the telephone pole next to the cross walk. My reading ability was extremely limited at the age of five, but I could read the words "FIRE" and "OPEN" and "PULL" and even "DOWN". Wow! This box was practically a whole reading book on a pole! And it was "mysterious".
One morning I actually reached up toward the word "OPEN" and found my hand getting sharply rapped by a particularly large, older and rather ugly (in MY memory anyway) girl who always wore saddle shoes on her big old fat feet and double ponytails with giant pink bows in her ratty old hair. After wagging her finger and blabbing her big old fat mouth at me for-freakin'-ever it was finally clear enough to cross the road. So the lecture stopped and the digital metronome ceased it double time.
Hmmph! Who died and made HER God?
It wasn't too long after this incident that I found myself going to school later than usual and there were no other kids around to walk with. Upon reaching the big road I stood at the curb and waited forever. These were obviously not the same drivers normally encountered at an earlier hour as they seemed to have no interest whatsoever in stopping. The traffic seemed a lot thicker and scarier than usual as well. Well, I wouldn't be crossing soon. I could tell that much.
My attention began to wander, as did my eyes. They soon settled on the big red box. Ooooh...Red. And those big bright words: "OPEN", "PULL" and "DOWN". I was in a trance. Time stood still. The sun was bright. The air was clear and fresh. Birds were singing. A distant bell was clanging...really LOUD, too.
The birds became silent. I heard sirens...getting louder...MUCH louder.
All RIGHT! A fire truck! Cool!
Hey, it's slowing down...it's really slowing down... it's stopping?!!
It huffed to a halt. A big red door was opening...
"HEY, KID! Did you pull that alarm?" came a deep loud voice.
It was a FIREMAN!
It was a real BIG fireman! Hell, he was HUGE!!!
It was REAL HUGE FIREMAN with a real fire HAT!
Somewhere I heard brakes squealing in the back of my brain someplace. The real huge fireman was not smiling...nope...not smiling at all.
...and he was talking to ME!
...and he was not smiling!
I was pretty sure this was NOT like the fireman in my picture books...nope, not like the pictures at all!
The mental squealing of tires now ended in a crash.
Guilt and anxiety painted my body as bright as the big red box on the pole. I was in "trouble". I wasn't sure why, but nature's instinct for self-preservation kicked in.
My mouth opened...
"Nope," I heard my voice say.
"Are you sure?" came the booming voice under the giant fire hat, now so close that it actually provided shade to my fevered and sweating face.
"Ummm...Uh-huh," my voice squeaked while I attempted my best imitation of a bobble-head doll.
"Do you know who DID?" came the big voice.
"Ummm...Ungh-uh," came the squeaky voice; barely heard, I suppose, due to the large number of knuckles I had pressed against my teeth.
"Did you SEE anyone around here?" boomed the voice from the depths of creation dwelling under that big hat.
"Uhhh...ummm...there was some big kids (yeah, that's the ticket), but maybe they ran away," offered the smaller voice, now badly in need of some serious lubricant.
My eyes, by this time, were on jet powered swivels anxiously looking for a viable egress. Now if only I'd known just what an egress WAS! (NOTE: I was gonna look it up when I grew up, but I've decided it's probably just a female eagle so I'm not bothering.)
A large, tall, looming and very long silence ensued. I noticed that there were no more birds left on earth. I could feel the hot pavement beneath my flip flops melting beneath me. The shade hovering over me began to slowly rise and got farther away until it left my face. The godly silhouette of the giant figure to my front could barely be discerned with the blinding sun peeking just over the crown of his helmet. The heat, both physical and mental, now became intense and some REAL sweating began.
At this rather tender age, I came to understood the definition of "authority," even if I'd not yet seen or even heard the term.
An imposing arm of the god was raising. A pointing digit was extended.
Oh-oh! This was going to be the finger-wagging of all finger-wagging. I could tell!
My memory is a bit blank from this point on...but somehow I made it to school and back home that day. But that image on the curbside never left my mind. Any possible life of crime melted away in that hot sun before the intimidating presence of "authority."
I do remember that when I went to mass, after school that day, I could have sworn the halo on the Lord above the altar took the shape of fire-fighter's helmet!
I STILL get a chill when I see a fireman...
...or a call box!
.
[attachment 17567 hawaiicallbox.jpg]
.
.
The only thing I can remember about San Francisco was how a cab had pulled up in front of the terminal with snow on top just as we arrived there. I didn't know what the white stuff was, so I walked over to it, touched it and then ate some...being pretty sure at that point that this was where snow cones came from. I got a spanking from my anxious and frustrated mom; but my dad stopped her realizing I'd never seen snow before and had no idea what it was.
[attachment 17565 hawaiiconstellation.jpg]
We flew in a brand new Pan Am Constellation. Boy, was THAT cool! There was even a bathroom! I remember my folks getting champagne before we landed. I got my first Coke! When we landed at Honolulu we all climbed down to the tarmac to walk to the terminal and ladies wearing grass curtains and colored bras came out to put flowers around our necks and give us kisses. YUCK!!! But the flowers smelled nice. They turned brown real quick, though and the petals started falling off. I was curious about the petals and found out they tasted bitter if you ate one.
Now, moms didn't go off and work much back then so we had to exist on dad's small Air Force salary. He quickly got a night job working as a waiter at the Officer's Club. So I didn't see much of him except on weekends he didn't work. Yeah, I guess we were pretty poor. But I never really noticed - even though there were lots of "signs".
My clothing consisted of rubber flip flops, torn shorts and often dirty T-shirts, when I wore a shirt. Hawaiian weather didn't require a great deal of clothing. When we first arrived we could only afford to live in some old renovated Navy barracks right next to some sugar cane fields. We were one of only a very few white families living in the whole neighboring area. Everyone else were Filipino, Japanese, Samoan, Chinese, Polynesian or combinations of those. Language was similarly mixed. But we lived in "paradise" and race, color or class was not ever an issue - at least not if you were a small child.
The island of Oahu was still a slow and sleepy island with the exception of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor proper. We lived in the middle of an agricultural community. The tiny "village" near us was mostly clapboard buildings either weathered grey or white-washed. Almost every building had corrugated metal roofs and no one had window screens or air-conditioning. But I don't ever remember it ever being too "hot". Most houses and businesses always had their doors and window shutters wide open with gigantic slow moving ceiling fans mosying their way in orbits both in and outdoors.
My mother's health went bad and was often in the hospital, sometimes for months. So there wasn't much of her around either. This was particularly true when she became pregnant. It was a rough pregnancy (with my youngest sister, Karen), or so I was told. Since my dad was working two jobs I was pretty much on my own at home during the day and was pretty much raised by neighbor ladies, older neighborhood kids and other adults of the community. This did not seem "unusual" to me at all. If I was dirty, hungry or scraped a knee someone always came up to wipe my face or nose, give me a piece of fruit or half a sandwich and seemed MORE than happy to slap some stinging Mercurochrome on my wounds and wag a warning finger at me. A quick smack on the head followed by a LOT of finger wagging seemed the general standard for child discipline and was used by all to keep the smaller members of rural Hawaiian society in line.
Any specific language, as a form of communication at least, seemed much less essential to us smaller children than it did with adults or the larger kids. The community care of its children was expected and provided by all back then. My speaking only French with some poor English thrown in was no impediment upon my arrival to the islands, either. Heck, proper English was rarely heard outdoors. Kids don't really need to "speak" to communicate. This is definitely true if playing is the main interaction. I quickly picked up enough Pidgin to communicate with the adults though. Besides, like the stray dogs all around us, a kid in Hawaii easily understood and learned to avoid an irritated store owner or farmer and gravitate toward a nurturing woman in the neighborhood, even if you'd never seen them before.
I would occasionally wander the neighborhood to get breakfast (mooching) and then on into the village in the mornings to see the bustling of businesses operating and watching the farmer or shoppers coming and going. One of my favorite places was an old barber shop. The whole front of the building opened up to the street with a small porch acting as a barrier from the dusty street.
Most porches in Hawaii didn't have chairs and were often worn quite smooth from years of rear-end polishing from visitors. The barber shop had a large overhanging porch roof with the living quarters on the second floor. In the porch ceiling was a large fan that provided just enough of a breeze to make the shade, customer's tall tales and the buzzing of insects a perfect place to take a little nap - especially if you'd just had a nice snack.
The owner of the barber shop was an old Japanese fella who'd lay out a tatami mat on the porch if I was tired. Sometimes he'd even give me a nickel if I swept up hair inside for him. I'm fairly sure that most of my efforts were no more than rearranging the debris, but I worked hard at it even if I always needed help with the dustpan. When a broom is twice your height and the pan heavier than your own arm it's pretty difficult to hit a waste basket accurately. After "earning" my pay, I'd then run off with my warm buffalo nickel to the open drug store across the street to get an orange Dreamsicle - still my favorite.
After returning to the porch I'd lick my Popsicle, chew the stick thoroughly and then suck the residue from my forearms and shirt. Such hard work, the beating sun, some cool porch shade and breeze, a background buzz of bugs and brags combined with the drifting of swing band music from who knows where would soon have me out like a light.
I wasn't the only one to succumb as I'd often wake to find my self sharing my mat with at least a dog or two by noon - more than once I would awake to find the old barber asleep in one of his chairs as well. Once I was conscious again I'd be refreshed enough to pursue my true stock in trade...playing! So with a warning wag from the barber and any other customers, I'd be off at a run to find the other kids.
Most of my time was spent playing with the slightly older kids. It sometimes seemed more like a herd than a "gang". Sometimes the girls would go off to play and sometimes we'd all play together. The favorite game of the boys was to snap off some sugar cane stalks for weapons and run throw the cane rows playing "Army". To my mind, it seemed more like hide-n-seek". But there were rules like, if you were found and "shot", you'd better lay down or you got whacked with their stalk of sugar! I learned pretty fast.
[attachment 17570 hawaiicanefield.jpg]
It was on just such a day of adventure that everyone stopped and the girls all went off to get food for themselves and their brothers. They quickly came back with sandwiches and fruit. But sharing didn't seem to be the order of the day. So I ran back to my house to find something to eat outside with the gang. After climbing up on a chair to open the ice box in our apartment, all I could find that was both edible and portable was a quart jar of French's mustard. Oh well, it was a time of "war" outside and a soldier would just have to make do. Thus, I took off with my big yellow jar and a table spoon I could just barely get in my mouth if I kept shoving real hard.
That afternoon seemed much warmer than normal even sitting down on the ground with the group in the shade of the tall sugar cane. I was pretty hungry and it didn't take terribly long to empty that whole jar into my now very round tummy...the large spoon not withstanding.
We then got back to playing but, even upon standing, I wasn't feeling so good and soon found my "lunch" making a return trip to the surface to lie in a extraordinarily wide, deep and highly contrasting yellow pool as it seeped into the dark volcanic soil around my feet. There is nothing quite so sudden and explosive as a small child losing his chow in one launch. There's also nothing so memorable as having hot mustard steam-clean your throat and nostrils. To this day, I can't tolerate the taste or even odor of mustard in ANY form!
The next thing I remember was waking up to a drowning sensation and discover water being poured onto my face by one of the older boys who'd been blessed with possessing a genuine WWII canteen his uncle had given him. Some guys just have all the luck. The other kids were more impressed by how high he could hold the canteen above my head and still manage to hit me than my condition on the ground. He would have made a superb bombardier, I'm sure.
This sort of general activity continued through the summer until school started. At that point I had to enter Kindergarten. There was a Catholic parochial school nearby that I attended. The school was white painted wood. The classroom buildings were all free-standing and were supported on 4-6 foot high pillars so the air could circulate. The roofs were dark red tile and the windows were all open to the air. Tall and full coconut palms and mango trees shaded all the buildings so that it was always cool indoors. My favorite part of school was napping. I was a rather tactile child and slipping into the denim sleep sacks resting on large tatami mats would have me out like a light. Finger painting animals I'd only seen in books was my second favorite activity. I was very good at giraffes.
To get to school I had to pass through the village, then a large park, cross the main island highway and then through a small neighborhood to reach my destination. It was the highway that was the most fascinating. The road was much wider than any other in my world and had many large and heavy vehicles and farm trucks that roared past. To get across there was a painted walkway to warn drivers to slow down and even hopefully wait for you.
[attachment 17566 hawaiihousestreet.jpg]
I almost always reached the road with several other children on their way to school, both elementary and upper grades. This was a time and culture where every older child was expected to look after any other kid younger or smaller than they were. Sometimes you had to wait for quite a while until someone actually stopped for you to cross or the road simply became momentarily clear. This gave a little guy lots of time to look around...
Of particular interest to me became the big red box on the telephone pole next to the cross walk. My reading ability was extremely limited at the age of five, but I could read the words "FIRE" and "OPEN" and "PULL" and even "DOWN". Wow! This box was practically a whole reading book on a pole! And it was "mysterious".
One morning I actually reached up toward the word "OPEN" and found my hand getting sharply rapped by a particularly large, older and rather ugly (in MY memory anyway) girl who always wore saddle shoes on her big old fat feet and double ponytails with giant pink bows in her ratty old hair. After wagging her finger and blabbing her big old fat mouth at me for-freakin'-ever it was finally clear enough to cross the road. So the lecture stopped and the digital metronome ceased it double time.
Hmmph! Who died and made HER God?
It wasn't too long after this incident that I found myself going to school later than usual and there were no other kids around to walk with. Upon reaching the big road I stood at the curb and waited forever. These were obviously not the same drivers normally encountered at an earlier hour as they seemed to have no interest whatsoever in stopping. The traffic seemed a lot thicker and scarier than usual as well. Well, I wouldn't be crossing soon. I could tell that much.
My attention began to wander, as did my eyes. They soon settled on the big red box. Ooooh...Red. And those big bright words: "OPEN", "PULL" and "DOWN". I was in a trance. Time stood still. The sun was bright. The air was clear and fresh. Birds were singing. A distant bell was clanging...really LOUD, too.
The birds became silent. I heard sirens...getting louder...MUCH louder.
All RIGHT! A fire truck! Cool!
Hey, it's slowing down...it's really slowing down... it's stopping?!!
It huffed to a halt. A big red door was opening...
"HEY, KID! Did you pull that alarm?" came a deep loud voice.
It was a FIREMAN!
It was a real BIG fireman! Hell, he was HUGE!!!
It was REAL HUGE FIREMAN with a real fire HAT!
Somewhere I heard brakes squealing in the back of my brain someplace. The real huge fireman was not smiling...nope...not smiling at all.
...and he was talking to ME!
...and he was not smiling!
I was pretty sure this was NOT like the fireman in my picture books...nope, not like the pictures at all!
The mental squealing of tires now ended in a crash.
Guilt and anxiety painted my body as bright as the big red box on the pole. I was in "trouble". I wasn't sure why, but nature's instinct for self-preservation kicked in.
My mouth opened...
"Nope," I heard my voice say.
"Are you sure?" came the booming voice under the giant fire hat, now so close that it actually provided shade to my fevered and sweating face.
"Ummm...Uh-huh," my voice squeaked while I attempted my best imitation of a bobble-head doll.
"Do you know who DID?" came the big voice.
"Ummm...Ungh-uh," came the squeaky voice; barely heard, I suppose, due to the large number of knuckles I had pressed against my teeth.
"Did you SEE anyone around here?" boomed the voice from the depths of creation dwelling under that big hat.
"Uhhh...ummm...there was some big kids (yeah, that's the ticket), but maybe they ran away," offered the smaller voice, now badly in need of some serious lubricant.
My eyes, by this time, were on jet powered swivels anxiously looking for a viable egress. Now if only I'd known just what an egress WAS! (NOTE: I was gonna look it up when I grew up, but I've decided it's probably just a female eagle so I'm not bothering.)
A large, tall, looming and very long silence ensued. I noticed that there were no more birds left on earth. I could feel the hot pavement beneath my flip flops melting beneath me. The shade hovering over me began to slowly rise and got farther away until it left my face. The godly silhouette of the giant figure to my front could barely be discerned with the blinding sun peeking just over the crown of his helmet. The heat, both physical and mental, now became intense and some REAL sweating began.
At this rather tender age, I came to understood the definition of "authority," even if I'd not yet seen or even heard the term.
An imposing arm of the god was raising. A pointing digit was extended.
Oh-oh! This was going to be the finger-wagging of all finger-wagging. I could tell!
My memory is a bit blank from this point on...but somehow I made it to school and back home that day. But that image on the curbside never left my mind. Any possible life of crime melted away in that hot sun before the intimidating presence of "authority."
I do remember that when I went to mass, after school that day, I could have sworn the halo on the Lord above the altar took the shape of fire-fighter's helmet!
I STILL get a chill when I see a fireman...
...or a call box!
.
[attachment 17567 hawaiicallbox.jpg]
.
.
My Grandfather used a call box in the Detroit Polce, the key went to my Dad who was also a Detroit cop, and now I wear it, even though there are no more call boxes! I get a lot of comments about it from other cops, I guess it's a collectors item!