HAWAII in the early 1960s

These images are from a 1963 California textbook entitled Hawaii: The Aloha State by Helen Bauer. I found it in a thrift store many years ago along with a second Hawaii textbook also published by California. I wish I had the books I used in the 4th grade in Hawaii when we studied state history.

This first shot shows a Matson liner at the Aloha Tower.


Click on image to see it larger.

This second shot is the Waikiki I remember from childhood. The domed building in the foreground was the Kaiser Dome, part of the Hawaiian Village resort. Heading towards Diamond Head you see an open expanse of beach with rafts out in the water. This is Fort DeRussy. At the time it was a private military beach where we went for picnics and a day of swimming without all the tourists.

The Ala Wai can be seen on the left. I used to walk along the canal on my way to and from school at Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Though I have bad memories of my class and horrific teachers, the grounds of the school were beautiful. I keep hoping to find some photos of the school as it was in the 1950s, but have never found anything.


Click on image to see it larger.

The image below is from Kamaaina56's Flickr site. He has posted hundreds of old images of the Hawaii we both remember as kids. I do believe there is a hint of the Thomas Jefferson Elementary in this shot on the right behind the trees.



Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: Kamaaina56)

COOL SAILING in 1966

A commercial came on tv last night for some cruise line that has a HUGE ship that has a gaping hole in the fantail area with cabins facing across this expanse like some apartment complex. I looked at it and immediately thought that it looked like a Borg ship. Thousands upon thousands of people on board. The hive. Everyone being directed to activities. People surrounded by other people, but unaware of their existence. Blinded by vacation.

Then there's the old Matson Lines.


Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: Here's Hawaii, 1966)



To get a feeling of what it was like to travel on a Matson Liner there is a wonderful book called To Honolulu in Five Days. Full of images of ephemera, it tells the story of your trip to heaven and what it was like once you got there.

MATSON ad, October 1936

There's nothing particularly Polynesian about this ad, and yet that was what they were hoping to sell you. This ad could have just as easily been for Miami. So why weren't the people of Polynesia featured in ads? I don't think I need to delve into the answer for this. I think most people can figure it out. It's a shame, because I'm guessing that when a lot of passengers disembarked from their ship at the Aloha Tower their senses were soon overwhelmed by Hawaii that they dreaded ever returning to their world of browns and grays. Who would want to leave a place full of color and flowers that bloom all year long?


Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: The American Magazine, October, 1936)

You can actually buy a sign of this image, sans type, from a company that is licensed to reproduce vintage Matson Liner ephemera. They also have many of the beautiful illustrations Matson commissioned for murals and ephemera. I wish they offered posters instead of signs.


To get a feeling of what it was like to travel on a Matson Liner there is a wonderful book called To Honolulu in Five Days. Full of images of ephemera, it tells the story of your trip to heaven and what it was like once you got there.

MATSON ad, May 1937

For anyone who has followed this odd corner of the universe for any length of time you'll know my love for the Matson Lines and Hawaii back in the 1950s and '60s. If you aren't aware of this and want to bore yourself for a little while just click on some of the label links below.

This ad was the front inside cover of The American Magazine, May, 1937. Obviously there were still enough people who had spendable cash to take trips during the depression. You had to be very well off to go on one of these cruises, or at least been saving your pennies for a long time.


Click on image to see it larger.

I'm always searching for images from the Hawaii I remember. The Hawaii of today is a foreign land. The landmarks, even a couple of my homes, are long gone. But, I know there are others out there who remember these times; military kids who were uprooted from the Mainland and suddenly dropped into paradise. In my searches online I found the Flickr site of Kamaaina56. Hundreds of images of long ago vistas and buildings. I sat for hours looking at them, memories flooding back to a time that I still long for. I miss the magic of the place. It was indeed the most incredible place to be a child.

Stop on over to Tattered and Lost Photographs to see a mystery photo of a hotel in paradise. My problem is which paradise?

Time to RUN AWAY FROM HOME: Part 5

Okay, I'm going out on a high note here. I'm going first class on a Matson Liner back in time to Hawaii. Join me if you wish. It's a heavenly trip!

Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: National Geographic, November 1954)

To see more about cruising aboard a Matson Liner click here.

And don't forget to not follow my newest and most boring blog, Tattered and Lost: Traveling with Charlie. The site where nothing exciting will ever happen. I'm not kidding.

Estey Organ Co. ADVERTISING PAPER DOLLS

These two dolls advertised the Estey Organ Company. I imagine they were printed around 1900, give or take 5 years either direction.

These same dolls were also used by the McLaughlin Coffee Company and others. That would be an interesting item to collect; all of the dolls from the different manufacturers.

Sadly there's never any artist information given about these old advertising paper dolls.

Click here to see other dolls in the series that Estey sold. Click here to see more at the Estey Organ site and hear an actual organ being played.

The Estey Organ Company was founded by Jacob Estey when he bought out a Brattleboro, Vermont manufacturing business in 1852. The company went on to become the largest manufacturer of organs in the United States. The original company had been founded in 1846. It employed more than 500 people and its high-quality items were sold as far away as Africa, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Around 500,000 to 520,000 reed organs, or 'pump organs' as some term them, were built between 1846 and 1955. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Click here to read about the Estey Organ Company Museum.

To see a couple of real dolls with their dolls visit Tattered and Lost Photographs.

UPDATE: From reader WJY:

Your dolls were probably made between August 1898, the end of fighting of the Spanish American War, and December 1898, when the Treaty of Paris was signed, which resulted in the annexation of Guam, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, ended the occupation of Cuba, and recognized Cuban independence.

OUTRIGGER CAMERA & GIFT SHOP in 1970

I've written on my vernacular photography site about tourist photos. You know the kind I'm talking about. You're on a ride, or a ship, or just somewhere with a group and they take a shot of you standing or sitting with the group or your loved ones. After the ride is over you can buy a copy or two of the photo. Or you're walking down the street and a photographer steps out, takes your photo, then hands you a card letting you know where you can get a copy.

Click on either image to see it larger.

This particular card was handed to my family after getting off a plane in Honolulu. They put leis around our necks and handed probably my mother this card. My family did not go to look at the photos or buy them. The only time I remember my folks buying such photos was on our cruise aboard the Matsonia to Hawaii. The shots were taken as we sailed in the fog under the Golden Gate Bridge bundled up in our East Coast woolens. Not even slightly tropical.

I do like the line "There is no charge unless you like it." So I'm wondering if you went in and said, "I think it's a horrible photo. I don't like it, but I'd like to get 10 copies." Would they have charged you if you stressed how much you didn't LIKE it? I'm thinking yes.

I imagine the Outrigger Camera & Gift Shop is long gone. Perhaps the "no charge" line put them out of business.

Wonder what my photo looked like on roll 39?

STERLING MOSSMAN, the Hula Cop at the BAREFOOT BAR

I remember hearing my folks talk about going to the Barefoot Bar in Waikiki to see Sterling Mossman. I have no memory of him other than this card.

"Hula Cop Hop" - Sterling Mossman

Sterling Mossman, a man as versatile as he was talented, literally led a double life. A detective with the Honolulu Police Department during the day, after dark he was one of Hawaii?s most popular entertainers. His diversified careers earned him the nickname “Hula Cop”. Holding forth from the stage of the famous Barefoot Bar at Queen's Surf in Honolulu with a unique potpourri of beautifully performed songs, rollicking comedy and some sharply honed but good-natured needling of the Barefoot Bar regulars and the tourists alike, Sterling Mossman became one of Hawaii?s most popular entertainment attractions. Sterling Kilohana Mossman lived from February 3, 1920 to February of 1986. (SOURCE: Territorial Airwaves)

Click here to go to Territorial Airwaves to hear Sterling Mossman sing Hula Cop Hop. If you have memories of Hawaii in the late 1950s to late '60s this should make you smile. And here's another brief post about Mossman.

To read about the lovely dancer on this card, Varoa Tiki, click here.

And to see images of the Queen's Surf Hotel click here. Click here to read an interesting letter from 1947 extolling the quality of the hotel for meetings and tourists.

ARTHUR LYMAN...sounds of my childhood

There was a background music for growing up in Hawaii in the late 1950s and early '60s: Exotica. Of course I didn't know at the time it had such an exotic name, it was just the music I heard all the time. It was the music that had me dancing in the living room. It was the music I used to teach my best friend how to dance. No Arthur Murray dance lessons for us; it had to be Arthur Lyman. Think seven year old Isadora Duncan's in the jungles of our imagination.

Click on any image to see it larger.

From left to right: Allen Soares, John Kramer, Arthur Lyman, Harold Chang

Arthur Lyman was born on the island of Kauai in the U.S. territory of Hawaii, on 2 February 1934. He was the youngest of eight children of a Hawaiian mother and a father of Hawaiian, French, Belgian and Chinese extraction. When Arthur's father, a land surveyor, lost his eyesight in an accident on Kauai, the family moved to the island of Oahu and settled in Makiki, a section of Honolulu. Arthur's father was very strict with him, each day after school locking him in a room with orders to play along to a stack of Benny Goodman records "to learn what good music is." "I had a little toy marimba," Lyman later recalled, "a sort of bass xylophone, and from those old 78 rpm disks I learned every note Lionel Hampton recorded with the Goodman group." He became adept at the 4-mallet style of playing which offers a greater range of chord-forming options. He became good enough to turn professional at age 14 when he joined a group called the Gadabouts, playing vibes in the cool-jazz style then in vogue. "I was working at Leroy's, a little nightclub down by Kakaako. I was making about $60 a week, working Monday to Saturday, from 9 to 2 in the morning, and then I'd go to school. So it was kind of tough."

Exotica Music
After graduating from McKinley High School in 1951, he put music on hold to work as a desk clerk at the Halekulani hotel. It was there in 1954 that he met pianist Martin Denny, who, after hearing him play, offered the 21-year old a spot in his band. Initially wary, Lyman was persuaded by the numbers: he was making $280 a month as a clerk, and Denny promised more than $100 a week. Denny had been brought to Hawaii in January on contract by Don the Beachcomber, and stayed in Hawaii to play nightly in the Shell Bar at the Hawaiian Village. Other members of his band were Augie Colon on percussion and John Kramer on string bass. Denny, who had traveled widely, had collected numerous exotic instruments from all over the world and liked to use them to spice up his jazz arrangements of popular songs. The stage of the Shell Bar was very exotic, with a little pool of water right outside the bandstand, and rocks and palm trees growing around. One night Lyman had had "a little to drink," and when they began playing the theme from Vera Cruz, Lyman tried a few bird calls. "The next thing you know, the audience started to answer me back with all kinds of weird cries. It was great." These bird calls became a trademark of Lyman's sound.

When Denny's "Quiet Village" was released on record in 1957 it became a smash hit, igniting a national mania for all things Hawaiian, including tiki idols, exotic drinks, aloha shirts, luaus, straw hats and Polynesian-themed restaurants like Trader Vic's.

That same year, Lyman split off from Denny to form his own group, continuing in much the same style but even more flamboyant. For the rest of their careers they remained friendly rivals, even appearing together (with many of their former bandmates) on Denny's 1990 CD Exotica '90. Although the Polynesian craze faded as music trends changed, Lyman's combo continued to play to tourists nearly every Friday and Saturday night at the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel in Honolulu throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He also performed for years at Don the Beachcomber's Polynesian Village, The Shell Bar, the Waialae Country Club and the Canoe House at the Ilikai Hotel at Waikiki, the Bali Hai in Southern California and at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. During the peak of his popularity Lyman recorded more than 30 albums and almost 400 singles, earning three gold albums. Taboo peaked at number 6 on Billboard's album chart and stayed on the chart for over a year, eventually selling more than two million copies. The title song peaked at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1959. Lyman's biggest pop single was "Yellow Bird," originally a Haitian song, which peaked at #4 in July 1961. His last charting single was "Love For Sale" (reaching number 43 in March 1963), but his music enjoyed a new burst of popularity in the 1990s with the lounge music revival and CD reissues.

Lyman died from thoracic cancer in February 2002.

Recording Details
Most of Lyman's albums were recorded in the aluminum Kaiser geodesic dome auditorium on the grounds of the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. This space provided unparalleled acoustics and a natural 3-second reverberation. His recordings also benefited from being recorded on a one-of-kind Ampex 3-track 1/2" tape recorder designed and built by engineer Richard Vaughn. All of Lyman's albums were recorded live, without overdubbing. He recorded after midnight, to avoid the sounds of traffic and tourists, and occasionally you can hear the aluminum dome creaking as it settles in the cool night air. The quality of these recordings became even more evident with the advent of CD reissues, when the digital mastering engineer found he didn't have to do anything to them but transfer the original 3-track stereo masters to digital. The recordings remain state-of-the-art nearly 50 years later. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

On a trip back to Oahu, after once again living on the Mainland, we went with friends to a lounge where the Arthur Lyman group was appearing. One of their good friends was Arthur's percussionist, Harold Chang. In between sets Harold came over and sat down at our table, Arthur dropped by too. I kept thinking how cool it all was. I was actually meeting Arthur Lyman and the man who did the percussion and bird calls. If only my friend had been there we'd have been dancing on the tables. It wouldn't have been pretty, but it would have been lively.

The Kaiser Dome at the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel also has special meaning to me. I performed (badly) on the stage twice. One show was with my ballet troupe. We performed Sleepy Beauty. I was the purple fairy and the fairy before me stole my lines leaving me standing at the microphone speechless. I was so popular I was brought back years later to appear in a Hawaiian variety show. I performed several numbers with my hula troupe. I then retired from the stage except for one truly horrendous performance as a mother in a Christmas play in the 7th grade.

Another piece of info about the Hawaiian Village is that it was where the headquarters for the detective agency was located on the tv show "Hawaiian Eye." I was a big fan of "Hawaiian Eye" and had a crush on Poncie Ponce. I had my Poncie hat and record and was a happy keiki. A few years ago I found out a friend's dad played poker with Poncie each week. As a surprise she called me one time and told me there was someone who wanted to speak to me; she put Poncie on the phone. Oh I was all giggles and 10 years old again. She sent me a signed photo from Poncie. It's a keeper!

Now everybody, kick your shoes off and go native!

LET'S GO FIRST CLASS across America: Part 10...THE END

Well folks, this is it for the first class travel. We've now crossed to new territory, which this was sitting on when this card was made. Hawaii was a territory of the United States, a serious offense if there ever was one fueled by greed.

Click on either image to see them larger.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened to guests on February 1, 1927. The hotel was built by Captain William Matson of Matson Liner fame. It was built specifically to house and entertain those who sailed to Hawaii for vacations on his ships.

With the success of the early efforts by Matson Navigation Company to provide steamer travel to America's wealthiest families en route to Hawaii, Captain William Matson proposed the development of a hotel in Honolulu for his passengers. This was in hope of profiting from what Matson believed could be the most lucrative endeavor his company could enter into. Matson purchased the Moana mansion, fronting the Ainahau royal estate. Christening it the Moana Hotel, it opened in 1901 as the first hotel in Waikiki. With its overwhelming success, Matson planned and built the Royal Hawaiian Hotel which opened in 1927.

During World War II, the Royal was closed to tourists and instead served as a place of rest and relaxation for U.S. submariners. While the Royal Hawaiian's lush tropical garden was (and still is) tranquil and poetic, on the beaches fronting the Pink Palace (sometimes referred to as the Pink Lady) one saw reminders of the war with rolls and rolls of barbed wire planted in the sand. The hotel was sold, along with the rest of Matson's hotels in Hawaii, to the Sheraton Corporation in 1959.

During the 1960's, the Pink Palace was home to "Concert by the Sea" which broadcast daily through Armed Forces Radio Network (AFN). Soldiers would listen to sounds of home all across Vietnam, and then on R&R would come to Waikiki to visit the Pink Palace in person. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

This card was sent by my mother to her folks when we stopped over on Oahu on our way to live on Midway Island for a year in 1953. Somewhere I have a slide of my wee self standing on a step at the Royal Hawaiian.

If you've read my blogs for a few years you'll know that I met my best friend on a Matson Liner, the Matsonia, when our families were both transferred from the East Coast to Hawaii in 1959. Click here to read an old post about the Matson Liners.

For the first few months after arriving on Oahu in '59 we lived just a few blocks from the Royal in a hotel called the Islander until we got military housing. The Islander was a dump, but the military paid for it so you kept your mouth shut.

We used to walk to the International Marketplace in the evening for the shows and then walk along Kalākaua Avenue looking in shops and maybe stopping in to the Jolly Rogers for a piece of coconut cream pie and a root beer float.

The gardens at the Royal abutted the avenue and were beautiful, tropical, magical. There was a man who used to walk along the avenue with a parrot on his shoulder which impressed the heck out of me. If you were really lucky Duke Kahanamoku would walk by. A stunning man. If you don't know who Duke was I recommend you do a little side reading about him here.

When we moved to Oahu the Royal was one of the largest buildings in Waikiki. It was stunning and special. Then the jets started flying into the islands and things began to change. Developers moved in and by 1966 it looked like this in Waikiki. I've added a slight blush so you can find the Royal.

Photo: from Here's Hawaii by Tongg Publishing Company, Ltd.

Today...

Photo: Gerald Farinas

I hope you've enjoyed this odd little journey, first class and not so first class, around the United States of yore. There will be more travel adventures to come.

Only FOUR-AND-A-HALF DAYS

Leave San Francisco aboard ship and in 4-1/2 days you'd be coming around the bend of Diamond Head towards the harbor in Honolulu. I've said before it was a wonderful way to travel and an incredible place for two little girls to play. Running up and down the passageways, by the gift shop, across the wooden decks, out to the fantail to eat lunch. Glorious time. 

(Source: Paradise of the Pacific 1960, No. 11, Vol. 71)  Click on image to see it larger.

Once you arrived on the island that was not your last encounter with the ships. As military families you always had friends coming and going so you often went back down to the Aloha Tower to see ships arrive or set sail. This meant you got to be part of the big party that took place on the docks. A small Hawaiian band would play, there were dancers, and best of all there were streamers. Those onboard would stand at the railing looking down on us and fling long streamers from the ship to the dock. Thousands of different colored tendrils were soon stretching across the expanse. My friend and I loved grabbing as many streamers as we could to make into a huge pile of paper to hide in. There was also always a man with a wide broom sweeping the paper into large piles making our "job" a lot easier. It was all giggles, colors, and noise. Grand times.

Here is someone's home movie of the Lurline as it arrives in Honolulu.

And this, though it has really dreadful music, also shows the fun of sailing on a Matson Liner. Why they chose this music, well who knows what they were thinking, It's an old travel film made back on the Mainland far away from the land of strumming ukuleles. Personally I don't remember any "race horses" when we were onboard, but I might be wrong. I think by the late 50s they'd done away with that. This was just a film to be shown to potential travelers. We weren't given a choice so we never saw any travel films. We were told "You're going to Hawaii." Well actually my father was given a choice. It was Oahu or Kodiak, Alaska. My mother said "NO!" to Alaska. Good thing.

ALOHA 'OE!

50 years ago today Hawaii became a state. I was lucky enough to be there for the event. At the time I wasn't aware of the real history of the islands and how statehood was not something welcomed by many of the Hawaiians themselves. How the US Government, the missionaries, and the wealthy white landowners had taken control away from Queen Liliʻuokalani and the native people. It was all part of American expansion. It's not a pretty history for such a beautiful place. But if this history had not occurred I probably would have never lived there. I wouldn't give up my years there for anything. Hawaii was a magical place for a child.

Click on image to see coin larger.

I still remember when I moved back to the Mainland in the middle of the winter I arrived to my new school tan with no warm clothes to wear. For years I'd worn nothing heavier than a sweater if it got cool, which meant mid-70s. I was treated as an oddity by the other children because as far as they were concerned I had dropped out of the sky from a foreign place. Sometimes I still think people in this country forget that Hawaii is the 50th state, not a foreign country. I even heard so called television journalists berating the President when he took a vacation to the islands in the middle of last years election, saying he shouldn't be leaving the country to visit someplace so exotic. I just shook my head at their stupidity.

So here's to Hawaii and all of her people. Raise a toast to the Queen and wonder what the Islands would have been like if there were still a monarchy.

(Source: Paradise of the Pacific 1960, No. 11, Vol. 71) Click on image to see it larger. 

It's the tiki tiki tiki tiki TIKI ROOM

The year after I moved back from Hawaii my family went to Disneyland where we met up with my best friend and her family who had also recently moved back to the Mainland. There is only one photo, that we know of, showing us standing in front of the Matterhorn.

There are two things that are hardwired into my brain from that day. The first is seeing Jimmy Dodd and Roy from the Mickey Mouse Club signing autographs in a room that also contained a lot of sets from the movie "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." It was all a strange mix. One side of the room was dark and mysterious with the sets while the other side had Jimmy and Roy sitting at a table in front of I believe the Mouseketeer house all brightly lit. Sort of the yin and yang of Disney I guess. I so wanted an autograph, but was too shy to walk up to the table. Jimmy Dodd died the next year in Hawaii.

The second thing I vividly remember is the Tiki Room. It was "An entirely new concept in entertainment" according to the brochure. It certainly was! I don't think Disney had used animatronics at the park before this. And it was perfect for two families who had just lived amongst the lush jungles, bird calls, and tikis of Hawaii. We enjoyed it on a level I'm sure the other patrons didn't. I remember feeling a bit at home for the first time since leaving Oahu, even if what I was surrounded by was unreal. It was watered down touristy Hawaii which we generally only saw when we went down to Waikiki. But ohhhhhh talking tikis! How good could that be?

My best friend and I first became enamored of tikis aboard the Matsonia on the way to Hawaii. They were exotic and funny, maybe even a little bit scary. There were tiki statues in the lobby where we'd sit next to them playing with our favorite dolls. Tikis are still important to us beyond the pseudo hipster-ness with which they are thought of today. I have a tiki god standing near my front door that was carved by a prisoner on the Big Island of Hawaii in probably 1960 or '61 that my folks bought while on R and R at Kilauea. 

But then back to the Tiki Room. I found this brochure dating from that summer in '63. The Tiki Room was new, exciting, and very colorful. And all you did was sit. Sit and look up. Of course most of the stuff you do at Disneyland requires nothing more than sitting (and standing in lines), but this took sitting to a whole new level. You didn't sit in something pretending to be something other than what it was, a motorized chair. No, you sat in a chair. Just chairs lined up. And the "guides" were dressed in, for us, familiar Hawaiian attire. The sort of clothes we had worn all the time. 

This brochure has survived 46 years because it's been stashed away inside a Disney book my folks bought me that day. So take a look at the brochure, clicking on each image to see it larger. Then take a look at the fun videos I found.

This shows the front and the back of the brochure.

Opening up from the first fold.

And finally completely unfolded, the brochure inside.

This video is a fun bit of information telling you how the Tiki Room came to be.

Here's another fun video showing what goes on behind the scenes in the Tiki Room.

And here's a nice video of just the theme song.

Then take a look at this video of what appears to be the full Tiki Room experience, including the "pre-show" as you stood in line.

And as far as the puppeteer advertised on the back of the brochure, André Tahon, you can click here to read about him in French and English.

The DOLE PINEAPPLE

Was it with the Brownie Troop? Is that how we went to the Dole plant? Or did I go with my parents? I'm betting it was with the Brownie Troop. What I do remember were women in hair nets busily moving those pineapples along the assembly line. But what they put in the can could never compare with what we bought out of the field on one of those trips around the island in the '56 Chevy BelAir convertible. But then either way pineapple was not your friend. But ohhhhh when the juice ran down your arm and you were left all sticky for hours. Good times. Good times.

Alas the tower is gone. Read here to find out about it. Really is a shame.

THE PINK PALACE with the white carp

The original is long since gone, but not in the memory of two little girls. It was a pink palace in Waikiki with a big fish pond inside. We were especially taken with a beautiful white carp that swam around the island in the center of the pond. We named "him" Whitey and our memories of that fish still remain. Our families dined on all sorts of tasty delights. I remember loving the bread that seemed nearly raw served with the duck. Poor duck. Poor carp.

Lau Yee Chai was torn down a year or so after we visited. I don't know what they put up in its place. I do see by doing an online search that there is another Lau Yee Chai in Waikiki, but it can never compare to the original. It can never have the magic. The original was like being in a palace. Pure fantasy for those two little girls.

This menu is actually from 1945, not from when we visited in 1959. My dad visited the restaurant during World War II. Somehow this thing has survived all these years in near mint condition.

The pidgin English is a bit bizarre. Okay, it's over-the-top. I'm guessing P.Y. Chong had to pretend to be something he wasn't in order to make a living, but then I remember my folks saying how expensive the food was so I imagine financially he was doing pretty well. He played the game and won.

There are 4 more pages of this that I haven't scanned.

Click on the images to see them larger.

Update: Turns out the Lau Yee Chai we went to was not the original. My father informed me that the one he went to in 1945 was located near the mouth of the Ala Wai where the Ilikai stands. It was in a swamp with the building up on stilts. I've never seen a photo of this. Hope to find one someday.

Update 11.21.10: Today I received the following comment from P. Y. Chong's grandson. The net can be such an amazing place. Thanks for contacting me.

The stories of PY Chong and his resturant are very interesting. The resturant was sold many years ago at auction. The menus are an excellent snapshot of that era in hawaii history. I am glad so many people got to eat there and experience it, since it was something I can only read about. Thank you for sharing your memories. I am PY Chong's grandson.

50 YEARS AGO today

It was 50 years ago today that my family boarded the SS Matsonia in San Francisco to sail to our new home in Hawaii. Hawaii was still a US territory, not a state. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on a very cold January day, bundled in the warm clothes we'd brought from the East Coast. Within days we were in paradise covered in flower leis.

I'll never know who aboard that ship decided to seat two military families with two little girls at the same dining table, but I'm forever grateful. Those little girls became best friends for life, the sisters neither of us had. Today out of the 6 members of those two families only 3 survive.

I can't begin to describe what an adventure it was for two little girls on that ship. We still talk of the fun we had. We were instant friends.

We ate on the deck next to the pool, stole swizzle sticks out of people's drinks, sat beneath Tiki statues playing with our dolls, ran up and down from one end to another exploring the ship. The temperature changed from the wintery cold to tropical warmth and soon we were in shorts with our heavy coats packed away. We danced the Hukilau and were awarded with our own new Hawaiian names. It was magic. Though the ship is long gone, that beautiful ship, the friendship is still strong.

To learn more about what it was like to sail on a classic beautiful ocean liner before they became little more than giant garish shopping malls take a look at the book To Honolulu in Five Days: Cruising Aboard Matson's S.S. Lurline by Lynn Blocker Krantz, Nick Krantz, and Mary Thiele Fobian. I have placed a link to the book in the Amazon column on the left

Click on images to see them larger.