CBR: Okay. Yep. No problem.

SK: So if you don’t mind.

CH: Any questions before we go?

CBR: No.

CH: Okay. Go ahead [Sella].

SK: Perfect. So, if you don’t mind, since we got our, our introductions out of the way, we would love to hear more about you. Could you tell us your name, when, where you were born, where you grew up and, you know, just a little, all those little things like where’d you go to school and all that.

CBR: Okay, so my name is Candace. My maiden name is Baldes. B as in boy, A, L, D, E, S. They get it confused because there’s a lot of Valdezes out there. I’m, I’m the original Baldes. My married name is Ramos. I grew up actually right next to Dietrix. You guys call him by his Hawaiian name. I knew him as Dietrix. So we were adjoining neighbors. My parents were the second homeowners in Honokai Hale. So it was Dietrix’s house, and then I believe my dad dem’s house came next, where I grew up. I grew up there in the 70s. I was born in January 1973. I was the youngest of four children. So, there’s three brothers. I lost a brother at birth and then I had two older brothers, and then just me.

I went to, let’s see, Mauka Lani Elementary, Makakilo Elementary, and then I went to Ilima Intermediate, and I graduated from Campbell High School back in 1991. Growing up in Honokai Hale– I just recently visited. We scattered my oldest brother’s ashes. A couple of weeks ago, we were back home. I moved away in 1998, after losing my mom. I decided, you know, there was so much memories there. Even after I got married, moved away, had my own — I had two kids by then. There was just so many memories of Honokai Hale growing up. My mom, Dietrix will refer to her, my mom as being the nurse. So, my mom was an RN. What hospital did she work for? I want to say Straub. She worked for Straub. She worked for the Rehab of the Pacific. My father was a head mechanic at HPD, at the main location. So he was over the motorcycles. So growing up there, I mean, it was so laid back. Everybody was like family. You know, we- if you needed something, it was like our little town.

We had the manapua truck that used to come through and would sell food and cigarettes and anything you needed. We didn’t even have to go to the store as kids. We would find things to do to entertain ourselves. It wasn’t video games. What it would be, playing football from telephone pole to telephone pole. Running barefoot up and down the streets, slippers in your hand. And we used to think if you put your slippers on your hand and you ran, you could run faster.

SK: Faster. Yeah. Yeah.

CBR: So that’s what we thought. And, you know, growing up, we would have, you know, rotten mango fights, mud ball fights. So, we would find things to do growing up as kids to entertain ourselves. And like I said, going back home, and I took my children this time. So, all my kids, my kids are now 35, 29, 22, and 19. So being able to take them back home as adults, and show them, like, where I grew up. And to talk with Dietrix and his family and, you know, reminisce about memories of things that we used to do as kids. And it kind of brought me back now living in Las Vegas. I’ve been in Las Vegas for like 23 years now. It makes me miss home a lot because Honokai Hale was family. We all knew each other, every car that passed down the street, we knew who it was, you know, they would honk and wave. Whereas here in the mainland, you don’t get that. We’re like, exclusive. You come in your garage, you close your garage, you come in your house. You really don’t see your neighbors. And I miss that feeling. I miss that feeling of being home and, you know, being able to interact with my neighbors. I mean, we were joking the other day. We said, remember when we used to open the patio? So our porch overlooked Dietrix dem like patio, which they converted, they converted into like a bedroom. So I used to yell, out the patio, DeAndra, which is Dietrix’s younger sister, do you have a cup of sugar [did she say sugar or maybe sugah? Idk, just asking] that I can borrow? And she would, she would say, yeah, okay. Come outside. Okay. So I come outside with my cup and she’d give me a cup of sugar. And then a little while later, she would be yelling, Candace, you get bread I can borrow. So, we would be sharing ingredients back and forth. So, I mean, that’s the kind of good memories that we had, like growing up. You know, getting in trouble. And, and like I said, too, I said, I told my, um, my husband, I said, you know, it’s a good thing growing up. There wasn’t video cameras like they have now, because we would be in big, big trouble. We would mud ball fight. I mean, our houses would be covered with mud and we knew what time the parents are coming home. So, we would have to shoot down the house to get rid of all the mud. And, of course my dad would be the first one coming home. And my dad was the strictest because they used to make fun. He was stern, but in his own way. So they kind of knew growing up, not to pass, you know, cross paths with Mr. Baldes [did she say mister or mistah?]. Mr. Baldes was the straight one. He didn’t play no games, you know. He worked for the police station. They thought he was straight as an arrow. No, I know he wasn’t, but. So he would come driving home in his little truck and, you know, all the kids would be waving to him, and you know, he’d give his little wave like that, you know, like, but not make eye contact with em. So they kind of knew growing up now, you know, he’s a little more laid back. But I think I knew why he was that way. He just wanted us to go straight in life. But yeah.

SK: So I don’t know if you mentioned or if I missed it, but you said you live in Vegas now. What led you to move?

CBR: So the cost, cost of Hawaiʻi, after I got married. So, before I got married, I had a son like in high school and then I met my husband. We got married and then I had another son. And I told him, I said, you know, Hawaiʻi is just becoming so expensive. If we want to have a bigger family, we have to make change. And so everybody was moving to Vegas. You know, it was the ninth island. And so I, you know, we talked about it and we moved like right after I lost my mom. So, it was kind of an easier decision. And my dad had our house up for sale. So I know eventually he was getting ready to leave. And I said, okay, you know what, let’s, if we want to have more children, expand our family, let’s try Vegas. This is where all the Hawaiʻi people are going, let’s go to Vegas and see. You know, if we don’t like it, we can come back, but at least we tried.

CH: And it worked out like,

CBR: Yeah, it worked out so, and then we had to, so we moved to Vegas and then I had two more kids. I have three boys and a girl. 

CH: Just like your family!

CBR: Yeah. So that’s pretty much what took us away was the cost of living, you know, living paycheck to paycheck. Like I said, you know, I work for Albertsons, which is part of Safeway. So when I went back home, I was trying to do some research to find out, hey, what, what’s the pay now? You know, what would I make if I was to transfer into Safeway? It’s weird because I would actually make less money going home, than I make here in Vegas. But I mean, the kids are grown now, and I’m really, really thinking about going home. I’m missing it more and more every time I visit.

CH: Would you want to return to Honokai Hale, or would there be another part of Hawaiʻi that you would want to live at?

CBR: So Honokai Hale right now, I don’t know. I mean, it’s become so overpopulated, you know. Before, living there, we could, like I said, we could play on the street. We could play football, not worry about cars. I mean, literally going in there, you know, I showed my kids where I grew up and we hung out with Dietrix for a couple of hours and I’m like, it’s just so crowded now. And there’s not a lot of original owners that are still there. But most definitely I would go back to Honokai Hale, and hopefully it’s the same as it was growing up.

SK: So did your father end up selling the house or do you still have, does he still live there or he lives in Honokai Hale still?

CBR: I actually don’t have anybody in Honokai Hale anymore. So, he sold right after we left about six months later. He finally he decided, you know what he was holding off on a good price. And after we all left, he decided, you know what, he’s just going to let it go and pick up and move to Vegas. So my dad’s here in Vegas with us now also.

SK: So just curious too, like when you went to go visit with your kids, especially if your kids have never been to like seen where you grew up, how did you describe where Honokai is or how did you, you know, describe the community to them?

CR: If you driving towards Nanakuli on the left-hand side, if you blink, you might pass it. You might pass it if you blink. And even like now in living in Las Vegas, people would ask me, where did you grow up? And I’m like, Honokai Hale. Where is that? If you’re going towards Nanakuli, just don’t blink because you may pass it. And it was before Ko Olina so a lot of people didn’t know that that was our little community.

SK: Yeah. So, I guess, because you also mentioned too that your, you said your family was the second house in Honokai Hale.

CR: Yes.

SK: How did you, if you, if you know about how your parents found that house or how they, you know, ended up moving there, I would love to hear more about that too, of like, how did you know this community was there?

CBR: And it’s weird because you know what, my dad and my mom come from Kalihi. So, how’d they end up on that side? I don’t really know. You know what? That’s a good question. I need to ask him. I don’t know how they ended up there. I know, I want to say he paid like $80,000 for the house. And I think back then that was like super, super expensive.

SK: Yeah. Oh, so yeah, kind of going down the list. I know Christina shared with you the questions as well. We talked a lot about your early memories, but I would love to hear more about all the lovely things such as how is celebrating the holidays, especially with the community. I know you mentioned how close and you are with everybody there. How was that time?

CBR: Oh, it was fun. We had a lot of good memories. We had Christmas parades. We would do things up at the park, which we didn’t growing up. There wasn’t like a little rec center that there is now. It was just a park. So, we would have, I remember one year we did a slippery pig run. So they oiled up the baby pig and they let the baby pig go in the park and you had to run and try and catch the pig. So, I mean, that’s the kind of stuff we used to do. They used to have softball tournaments, you know, with the fathers and the moms and kids would be on the sidelines cheering. Growing up, we had our own little baseball team and, and you know, at first it was looked down because girls wanted to play baseball and Mr. Gabriel used to be our coach and he took the girls under his wings and put us on his baseball team. So, Honokai Hale had a lot of girls playing on their boys’ baseball team, thanks to Mr. Gabriel. He fought for us to be on an all-boys baseball team.

CH: Was that like a league, like official?

CBR: Yeah, it was. It was a official little league team and we came out of Honokai Hale and we had girls on there. Yeah, I mean they did treat us, they did treat us a little different being that we were girls, you know, they put us on the outfield and stuff. Yeah, but we had a lot of great memories, a lot of Christmas parades. You know, the parade would come through and they’d throw candy at us and, you know. Getting together celebrating the New Year’s. New Year’s was really, really big in Hawaiʻi and it still is.

And I keep, I keep telling my kids one year we have to go back for New Year’s. I go, cause if they do it, they turn up like no other. You talk about, I don’t know how they get the fireworks there, but we have fireworks and they’re like, no way, mom, no way. And I’m like, yeah. You know, I mean, it’s so bad that sometimes you can’t even see the car in front of you. The smoke is that thick. I remember just, you know, having parties like little block parties. You’d go from house to house and, you know, eat everybody’s food and, and wherever you fell asleep, you fell asleep. You were safe. You knew you were safe. And then, I mean, I remember trick or treating because we were there during Halloween when we last visited and the kids were coming around trick or treating and whatnot.

And we were laughing. We said, remember we used to go out, we used to go out with our pillowcases. Before the sun even went down, we’d hit all the houses and we’d come back home and we’d dump out our pillowcase, and we’d change color pillowcases so we thought they wouldn’t know. Because you know, you had a different pillowcase now, and we’d go back around and we knew what houses had like ice cakes. Like Miss Castro [Mrs. Castro on Paʻakai Street] used to give out ice cakes, Miss Seno [Mrs. Seno on Paʻala Loop] would give out popcorn. So we knew like what houses to go to. So that made it really fun. And I mean, even after I got married, I would still take my two boys to Honokai Hale to trick or treat because I knew it was safe. I knew the people that I was getting candy from and, you know, they were going to have a good time. So, yeah, a lot of, lot of good growing up memories.

CH: Where did you live before? You, so you grew up there. I guess you were born in town, in Kalihi?

CBR: No, I was, I was born in Honokai Hale. So I, after my mom had me, that was my first home, was Honokai Hale. It was my oldest brother that was born, I think he was born in town somewhere before. So he was the only one that was born when my mom purchased, when they purchased the house.

CH: And then you moved out of your parents’ home. Into another part of the island, or where did you move to?

CBR: So after I got married, I went to, we moved to Makakilo. And then we moved to Ewa, and then from Ewa, we moved to Vegas.

CH: Sella you know what ice cake is?

SK: Ice cake?

CBR: You’ve never had an ice cake?

SK: I don’t think, is it like an ice cream cake? I don’t know. Or is it, no, no, no, no. Is it the kine like shave ice, like compacted with the, with the stick kine? I don’t know.

CBR: Oh, we never had it with the stick. We would have it, they would make it in a cup, you know, with the malolo syrup. Have you had malolo syrup?

SK: I’ve heard of it, but I never had it.

CBR: Okay, so they would make a juice with the malolo syrup, but they would make it a little sweeter and they would freeze it. And then you would rub your cup together to loosen it up and you flip it up and you flip it over. And you could put li- , they would put, you know, certain people would have li hing mui in theirs and they would do different things with it.

SK: Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ve got to have had it before, but I cannot remember. [talks about fireworks in Mililani]. Oh, just to shift gears into the rest of the questions that we have. So, as we kind of mentioned too, like, Honokai Hale is a little bit, you know, isolated. If you blink, you’re gonna miss em. Especially too, when your family moved there, you said you guys were the second house there. Speaking of like, if you can remember anything, like, trying to go to the store, if you guys are religious, going to church, going to work, how was that process? Like, did you have to move, like, as far as you can away from Honokai Hale, and make a journey out of there to get to those places, or?

CBR: So, growing up, our nearest store would have been either in Nanakuli or Waipahu. So, last minute stuff, if like you needed a gallon of milk or whatever, our closest store was Makakilo Pantry. So, the church wasn’t too far. Our parish was St. Rita’s in Nanakuli. That was the closest church we had to us. But yeah, as far as like grocery shopping, I remember my mom would pack us up and we would go either to like Times Supermarket in Waipahu or Nanakuli. I want to say Nanakuli Super is the grocery store that we would have to go to. But we never, we didn’t have no access to fast food. We didn’t have no Uber. And if you missed that school bus, you had to walk to the top of the road to catch that bus. So, and I remember I was joking with my kids. I said we should go stop at the bus stop because I bet you my name’s like slathered all over it and they’re like, what you mean mom? I go. Yeah, we used to graffiti with nails. So we would etch our names like every bus stop. We went to we would like etch our names in the wood. And I’m looking at that bus stop and I’m like, that bus stop does not look like it’s been redone. It’s still the same bus stop. Maybe the same bus. And it’s weird because I know they broke down a house and made like a driveway into the park now. Before you would have to get off on the, you know, where, where you come out of Honokai Hale, you would have to make that immediate right to get back into the park. And it was just all rocks. It wasn’t paved or anything.

SK: Oh, interesting. To shift gears a little bit more too to the other side of the question other than like, you know, how you got around to different stores and other places like that. What do you remember about the countryside, especially? I’m assuming you guys were there before it was like fully developed. If you remember anything about like, you know, the surrounding land and sea and especially since you guys just came back, how different it must have been coming back to that as well.

CBR: So growing up, um, looking out our porch, you could see, I don’t even remember what the beach, what they called it. But I know that my brother and Dietrix actually entered Brown Bags to Stardom and they wrote a song about that, that beach area. So, there was nothing. It was sugar cane fields, and then you could see the beach. I mean, sugarcane fields for miles. And I remember they would harvest the sugarcane. So they would burn it, and it would cause all these mice to come to up towards Honokai Hale, and we’d be infested with mice. But I mean, it was fun cause we would like spend nights–oh, there’s a mouse right there! There’s a baby mouse. Did you see it? And we’d be chasing the mice around the house. So, there was nothing developed back there. It was just all country, all open. And I remember growing up in the summer as we got older. You know, we were like, hey, let’s go to the beach, but everybody’s like, well, we can’t go on the road because we’re going to get in trouble. If we get caught up on that on Farrington Highway, you know, going down to the beach, we’re going to get in trouble. So, okay, let’s go through the cane fields and we’ll walk all the way down. Oh, you know what it was called? It was called West Beach. That’s what it was called. Let’s go down to West Beach. But I mean, it would take us like 45 minutes to get down to the beach. Enough time to jump into the water, get cooled off and then head back home before our parents got home because we’d probably be in trouble if we were caught swimming down there. So it was our own private beach before anybody ever seen it.

CH: Why would you get in trouble? Cause you, cause it was dangerous or?

CBR: Yeah, we shouldn’t be swimming by ourselves.

CH: Yeah. And how old were you? How old were you about when you did that?

CBR: So my brothers are seven years older than me. So I must have been about six, seven years old. And you know, hanging along with the older brothers and, and the older crew and going down to the beach. So we were like the littler ones. I was actually one of the younger ones growing up in Honokai Hale. You know, from the original owners, I was like one of the younger kids.

CH: I’m guessing your brothers, you know, used their own judgment to do stuff and they, they didn’t really think about what a six-year-old girl should be doing (laughs).

CBR: Right. Yeah. It was all about, we gonna take you with us, but you better not tell. You better not tell. And then we think, but how are we gonna go home and take a shower and get all this salt off of us before somebody finds out? You know, what are we going to do with our wet clothes? Oh, but we be dry by the time we get home. And then there used to be another, where they used to catch the water, I guess to water the cane fields. It was like a trough. And we used to swim in that. And I know that was dangerous because they used to try and go — there used to be like a tunnel, not a tunnel, like a walkway, but it was like a pipe that went through the walkway. And they used to try and swim through it. But you have to make sure there wasn’t rock stuck because if there was a rock stuck, there was no way you were coming back. So, somebody would have to be in there. So if you went through, somebody would have to be there to be able to grab your foot if it was stuck, you know, if the rocks were blocking it. So, we had like many things like to grow up and swim in. We had Cages, which was across the side of the freeway. That was another like pond, I guess, or a reservoir that they used to use for the water for the sugar cane. And we used to go up over there and swim. So, we had our own little watering holes, but like I said, we probably would have been in trouble if our parents knew what we were doing, but I mean, it was innocent fun.

CH: Did the people, did the people who operated the cane fields, like if they saw you, were they like, oh, it’s fine. Just go through, or what?

CBR: No, they would chase us! We used to be swimming, and somebody had to be on the lookout for it and then we would yell, sugar cane man coming, sugar cane man coming! And everybody would get out and we’d run and they’d be chasing us with their trucks. But we knew how to get out to be able to get into our community before they caught us.

CH: Oh boy. But they never came and like knocked on your parents’ door. Don’t worry about like those kids, you know?

CBR: Nope. They never caught us. They never knew who we were, so we had fun. We had fun growing up there back in the country before, you know, they started developing all this and we didn’t have traffic. Traffic going towards, you know, Honokai Hale was extinct. When we were there, it took us like 45 minutes from like Kapolei to Honokai Hale to that traffic light. like in the afternoon. And I’m like, where are these people coming from? So it’s like super developed now, really, and I didn’t even realize there’s a harbor now back there.There was no harbor when we left. When I moved away, the only thing that was there was Ihilani. That was the only development that had come up right before we left. And now there’s like condos and all kinds of stuff back there.

CH: Ihilani is a housing area?

CBR: No, the hotel.

CH: Oh, is it Aulani?

CBR: No, it’s Ihilani. Ihilani is the first one. Because I think Aulani is like the Disney resort now. I think that might have been the second or third one.

CH: Gotcha. Are you still going, Sella?

SK: I think I can move it over to you since we kind of talked about the landscaping and stuff. We can move on to your questions.

CH: Okay. So my questions are about West Beach, mostly. And, I wonder, you, you mentioned West Beach. There’s also Kahe, Tracks, and the Campbell shoreline, the industrial area; what do you remember about those places? How would you describe them growing up?

CBR: Ooh, Campbell! Campbell, I remember partying over there at under age (laughs). At the Harbor, we would, we would hang out there on the weekends and party, you know. As we got older, not as younger kids as we got older into our later teenage years, that’s where we used to hang out. We used to hang out Kahe, and, you know, sit out there with the music blasting in trucks and, you know, just hang out and talk story. And campfires, camping, and fishing..

CH: Was it, was it people your age, uh, you know, and the range was probably, you know, younger and older, but mostly from Honokai Hale or did you guys mix in with other-?

CBR: I’m sure there were other communities of kids. We would mix in a lot with, uh, Makakilo. A lot of Makakilo people would hang out there. Yeah, but mostly, mostly Honokai Hale.

CH: And what about like the animals and, and fish? Like, what do you remember? What was your, you know, memory of fish, birds, or any other animals in that area?

CBR: Memories of fish. Oh, you’re going back a while now (laughs). Memories of fish. You know what? Mine was more, I mean, we would go camping and watch the older, you know, fathers and what, fish. And I don’t really think the girls were really into the fishes. I remember, I remember a lot about like surfing. You know, my brothers would surf. They would drop, or jump off Kahe.There’s like a little thing where they used to jump off of. And it’s funny that you say Kahe, because we scattered my brother’s ashes out there. And so we, you know, we hung around, we had bentos, and you know, my boys were drinking with my husband and Dietrix. And Dietrix came back and he showed my boys, he said, hey, you know, this is where your uncles, we used to, you know, during the summertime, we’d come out here. And, you know, they would jump off of this cliff and this and that. And so my one son, you know, he’s a real daredevil. He’s like, you know what, I’m gonna do one for uncle. And so Dietrix was able to show him, okay, this is what you got to do. You have to time the wave. When the wave comes in, that’s when you jump. And then when the wave goes back out, don’t grab onto the reef. You gotta wait till the wave pushes you back in to grab on, or else you’re gonna get cut. So he was sitting there teaching my boys like what they used to do as kids. You know, growing up, because I wouldn’t jump. I wouldn’t jump off that, you know, I’d watch, but I wouldn’t jump. I wasn’t that brave (laughs).

CH: Oh, you weren’t, you didn’t surf?

CBR: No, I didn’t surf. I didn’t.

CH: Did you spend much time in the ocean?

CBR: Yeah, yeah. I love to swim in the ocean. I mean, I used to boogie, you know, play with the boogie board along the shore, you know, run, jump on the boogie board and whatnot, but not really surfing. My brothers were actually into surfing. My second brother, Dietrix’s older brother, used to take him under his wing and teach him how to surf. And he became really good at surfing before he moved away from the islands, too.

CH: What’s his, what’s his name?

CBR: Brent.

CH: Brent, okay. And any other animal life that is significant in your memory?

CBR: The mongoose. The mongooses! And the myna birds. A lot of people don’t. I mean, in Vegas I don’t see myna birds, so I don’t know if they’re exclusive to Hawaiʻi.

CH: Yeah, I think so.

CBR: They are. And I, I tell people about myna birds and they’re like, what are you talking about? And I’m like, yeah, we used to have this bird in Hawaiʻi. It’s called the myna bird. And they’re like, never heard of it.

CH: I think they’re originally from India and somehow they got here, like a lot of things.

CBR: And we were hanging out down Ko Olina. So, my kids have never seen a mongoose. And I told them, I’m like — I want to say they brought it in to ward off something.

CH: The rats.

CBR: The rats. So, we’re sitting at Ko Olina at one of the lagoons and we see one of them come out of the bushes. And my daughter goes, oh my god, it’s a rat, it’s a rat. I said, it’s not a rat, it’s a mongoose. She’s like, what are you talking about a mongoose? She goes, it looks like a rat. And then another one came on and she goes, no, it’s not a rat. It’s a ferret. And I’m like, it’s not a ferret. It’s a mongoose. So they don’t know what that is.

CH: Did your family get any food from the land? Like, did you guys fish or hunt or other things? Did you raise any animals like chickens or anything?

CBR: So my brother was a really big chicken guy. He actually, he used to do chicken fighting. Yeah, so I remember going to chicken fights. We used to have those in the back in the sugarcane fields once the sugarcane field was gone. Hunting, not so much hunting. Fishing?

CH: I wonder if the community shared [food], you know, like somebody’s neighbor.

CBR: Yeah, the neighbors would go fishing. A lot of the neighbors would have fishing boats, and they’d go out and come back with aku, ahi. And you know, they’d be just giving it away because they had so much. You know, they’d sell it to other people. But like, as far as the community, they would just share it with everybody. So we’d have fresh fish coming off of the boat. You know, I remember that.

CH: Nice. What do you think about how the coastline or the beaches have changed over your lifetime? Like, what do you notice about them or remember from them?

CBR: I remember just being able to go out on the beach and feel safe. So now it’s kind of, it’s like untaken care. They’re not taking care of the land. I noticed like heading down towards Nanakuli, Waianae, Makaha, the homeless population have taken it over. I mean, it wasn’t like that when I was growing up. It was just open, everybody, you know, they would take care of it. They would pick up their trash. If you went out there, you were barbecuing. You know, the kids, before we packed up, the parents would bring out garbage bags. Hey, go around, pick up, you know, pick up the cans, pick up the napkins, pick up this, you know, clean up our area before we left. Whereas now it looks like they just kind of let it go.

CH: Do you feel that way about Kahe?

CBR: Kahe wasn’t too bad. Kahe, it looks like somebody is working on that. It wasn’t too bad. And then like my one son, he’s really, he doesn’t like to see litter. So he walked around and you know, when we were looking around, he would pick up a bottle and say like, damn, can these people just put this in the trash can? So then he had things like collected. And like right before we went home, if it wasn’t ours, he picked it up and threw it all in the garbage can. I mean, Kahi looks a lot cleaner than, what’s that next one?

CH: Tracks.

CBR: Tracks. Looks a lot cleaner than Tracks did.

CH: So you don’t visit the shoreline a lot because you, you’re in Vegas, but how often would you say that you came back home after moving to Vegas?

CR: So I’ve been back home like five times, I want to say, since I’ve been away. And each time we go back, it’s changed. It’s changed. So like the first time we went back, it wasn’t too bad. I want to say the second time I went back, it was really, really bad. It looked like, you know, they, they thought the shoreline was their home. Like literally they were standing out there watering the grass, you know, and they had all their tents set up with their dogs tied up. And I’m like, why are they not doing anything about this? You know, it was such a beautiful place. And then, so this last time– I think the other two times, I don’t think we really went down that way because it was just me and my daughter and I didn’t really feel safe going that way. So we stayed more in town and Kaneohe side and whatnot. And this last time when we went back, it was my husband and my boys. And so I was like, okay, you know what? It’s a little safer. Let’s head that way. Let’s go look, you know, let’s see what it’s about. The homelessness down towards Waianae is a little better than it was the last time we went, but still there’s a lot of homeless still out there.

CH: Yeah. I mean, it’s a, it’s a social problem in Hawaiʻi everywhere. And yeah, I don’t know what we’re doing.

CR: Yeah. It’s, it’s sad.

CH: Sounds like you have strong feelings about Honokai Hale, and I wonder, you know, the question is, do you miss the old Honokai Hale that you knew?

CR: Yesss, I do. Very much! Very much. I miss all the people I grew up with. I miss — I call them my extended family. I mean like even now people ask me, hey, even my, my kids will ask me, mom, don’t you have a best friend? I said, I do. I have a best friend that I consider my sister, which is Dietrix’s younger sister, DeAndra. And it’s crazy because she lives in Germany. So her and her husband are military. And so she’s in Germany now. And every time, you know, I’ll call her, or she calls me, we pick up just like where we left off. I mean, we can go back and talk about memories from childhood, from growing up. You know, things that we used to do as kids and it’s like, we never left each other. And, so I told my daughter, I said, she’s my best friend. So I tell her, you know, you got to watch the kind of friends you take in. I said, because there’s friends that’ll be there for you and then friends that will just call you a friend. I said, Auntie DeAndra is one that I can call any time of the night. I can talk to her. She knows what I go through. I know what she goes through. I’m like, we’re like this, we’re inseparable. So, I miss, that’s what I miss about Hawaiʻi, is my daughter not being able, my kids, not being able to experience that kind of friendship. Because we were all like family. I mean, if they have problems. Like I said, my mom was the nurse. So if somebody fell, somebody, something happened. It was, Mrs. Baldes. Can you look at this? Something, so and so happened. You know, we had this one kid. I guess he was running over Dietrix’s wall, and he flipped over landed on his head and then he had like a cut on his head. So they carried him over the wall and, Mrs. Baldes, does he need to go to the hospital? Does he need stitches? And my mom would come out, you know, with her peroxide and her Band-Aids, and she’d clean the kids up and, oh no, you’re good, it’s just a scratch, you know, just go home and tell your mom what happened. So, I mean, yeah, we were all so close as neighbors. I mean, even growing up.

So I had my son when I was, uh, I had him the summer before my senior year. And so, I could have stood out because I was the youngest, you know, I was the youngest out of, in the community. I was the youngest girl in our family. I was only 16 years old and I got pregnant. So a lot of the neighbors took to us, took to my son. Hey, you know, we want you to go back to school. Is there anything we can help you with? You know, do you need a babysitter? So I had a babysitter that never charged me just so I could finish high school. She was like, you’re going to go to school. She said, I will help you with this baby. You bring him in the morning. I will watch him when you go to school, when you get off, you come and get him. So I mean, she was a big part in his life and he really remembers her. Even though she only watched him for his first year of life, she, he remembers who she is.

CH, SK: Wow.

CBR: So, yeah, I mean, and that’s how close we were that, okay, you’re going to watch my kid for free. Okay. That’s fine. You know, that’s helping me out a lot.

CH: That was one of your neighbors, or who?

CBR: Yeah, it was our neighbors, the Gouveias.

CH: Okay. That’s remarkable.

CBR: Yeah. So I was able to finish high school. And I mean, I didn’t have to worry about coming home to, you know, give him a bath or anything. She would have him all showered and everything before I got home from school. I would get off the school bus, pick him up, go home. And you know, all I had to do was feed him and put him to bed. Yeah, so we were close as neighbors.

SK: Wow.

CH: I kind of wanted to ask, like, do you think, what do you think made Honokai Hale, that kind of place? And do you, do you think that there were other places on Oʻahu or across Hawaiʻi that were similar to that that you ever saw?

CBR: Not like, not like Honokai, not like Honokai Hale (laughs).

CH: Very special.

CBR: Honokai Hale, we were, it was special. We were originals. Yeah, we were originals. We did our own things. You know, we had our own fun. I don’t think anybody else could compare to what we used to do in Honokai Hale, no way.

CH: If you wanted to kind of sing the praises of Honokai, what would you tell, what would you want the next generation to know? What do they need to know about it?

CBR: What do they need to know about Honokai Hale? We had great memories. Great, great memories there. You know, a lot of the people that we grew up with became family. Everybody was auntie. Everybody was uncle. My two older boys, they, they think that certain people are their cousins, and I have to explain to them, no, we’re not blood-related. They just took you in as a nephew or they just took you you know. You just respected them as auntie and uncle. And they have kids now, but we’re no longer, we’re not blood-related. But they were still your auntie or they were still your uncle. And the good old times that we had.

CH: Is there anything else that we haven’t gotten to? Because we’re kind of at the end of the list of questions.

CBR: No, I mean, did he ever tell you how we used to get to school?

CH: Please tell us!

CBR: So, we used to have the school bus, so it was during — of course, elementary we had the little, you know, the school bus that used to come take us to Makakilo Elementary. But when we got into middle school and high school, the closest school was in Ewa Beach. So, we’d get on the school bus, and we’d have to ride through Barber’s Point all the way through to get to Campbell or Ilima. And I mean, we used to terrorize the bus driver because it was a long ride (laughs). We would terrorize the bus driver and year after year we would still have the same bus driver.

We could not get rid of him. We thought, okay, this is it. We tortured him enough. He’s not going to be our bus driver next year. First day of school, here comes the bus and it’s the same old bus driver. But yeah, we used to have to get on that long bus. It was like a half hour ride because we used to have to go through the military base and all the way through Barber’s Point and then come out through like the beginning of Ewa or like Old Ewa, and then come into Ewa Beach to get to school. And that’s why I said if you, if you miss that school bus, you have to get on the city bus and go all the way to Waipahu and then catch the Waipahu, the Ewa Beach bus into Ewa Beach.

CH: What kind of things did you do to terrorize the bus driver? Oh my goodness.

CBR: That’s the question. That’s the question. Oh, we used to do all kinds of stuff. We used to terrorize him. Or we’d be like razzing each other in the bus. Like just having razz, you know, between each other. Or somebody that got on the bus last, we used to pick on the last one that used to get on the bus. That, that was who we targeted. So you never wanted to be last on the bus because you would get targeted. And we would just razz each other and tease and whatnot. And we’d be really loud. And he’d be like, you guys need to be quiet, be quiet, no make noise. And he’d pull over the bus and threaten to kick us all off. We were like, we got to call my parents, you know, cause we were little wise kids back then. And then I remember one year he, he finally did have enough of us. And I think it was, it might’ve been like my junior year in high school. I think he had enough of us, and he kicked us off. He made us- he opened the emergency exit and kicked us all off, by the water park. You know where the water park is now? That used to be the old road. So it was, there was no Safeway and all that back there. I don’t even think that road’s there anymore. I don’t remember seeing it, but we used to come down that old road and he pulled over, and he kicked us all off. And he made us walk. Cause he was like, he had enough of us. We were taking off the seat covers from the school bus and we were taking apart the, the little foam from the seats and throwing it at him. We were bad growing up. We were bad.

CH: That’s a hard job to have.

CBR: yeah.

CH: Okay, what do you think? Did we cover all the questions? I think we covered everything.

SK: I think we covered everything. It’s just, out of curiosity, when you talk about Honokai Hale to your children, especially visiting, do you tell them all that? Or do you just tell them all the good memories?

CR: I tell them all that. I said, but we, we would do things. We, we, we couldn’t get charged with anything. You know what I’m saying? Maybe we could have got charged with breaking the bus up, but other than that, like the mud ball fights and the rotten mango fights. It was all harmless. It was just all in fun. That’s all it was.

[talk about Pidgin follow up conversation]:

CH: Well, let me just say, a little bit more about language and, and what you think. It’s interesting because, you know, in a way we, we were thinking that there would be a lot of people living near or in Honokai Hale still, but it turns out many people have left, like you. And that, that might change the way that you think about Pidgin. But we’re, we’re interested in sort of figuring out how Pidgin was part of your story back then and like what role it played in your everyday life as kids growing up and as, you know, community together, but then also kind of like seeing what happened as you, as you kept growing up and moving around and stuff. So that might be, you know, another set of questions for another time. I don’t know if you’d be willing to have a conversation with you again this way.

CBR: yeah, shoot me a text message and I’ll let you know when I’m off.

CH: Did you marry someone from Oʻahu? So it’s funny you ask, my husband, I met him in Hawaiʻi, on Oʻahu, but my husband is originally from Puerto Rico. So now, but looking at my husband, a lot of people think he’s Samoan. So even when he talks, because he has that Puerto Rican accent, it’s still, it kinda sounds like it’s Samoan or something. So a lot of people look at him and he has, you know, like the turtle tattoos and they look at him like, what is he? You know, they can’t figure it out. And then I’m like, he’s Puerto Rican. They’re like, oh, okay. So, but I mean, even with his accent, he talks a lot of Pidgin.

CH: How long did he live in, on Oʻahu?

CBR: I want to say he was there for 15 years.

CH: Okay. And what, what brought him there first? Work?

CBR: Work. He worked, his cousin lived on, on Oʻahu in Waianae and he worked for his cousin. And then I met him and then we got married. He worked for the moving company in Hawaiʻi before we moved here.

CH: Yeah, I mean, if you’re going to work in Waianae, I think you’re going to learn some Pidgin, right?

CBR: Right! And he sure knows how to eat the food.

CH: We’ll follow up and get a sense of, of how that works. I’m curious about your kids too, because that it’s interesting how language can continue even though families have moved away.

CBR: Right. Yeah, and it’s funny how you can turn it off. It’s, it’s, it’s strange. Cause like in the house, we talk a lot of Pidgin, like a lot of slangs. And then sometimes I’ll be at work and I’ll drop a slang and they’ll look at me like, what are you saying? Like, what was that? And I’m like, Oh, never mind. Nevermind. You know, like I’ll be, oh, okay. I’m pau work already. And they’re like, what? And I’m like, yeah, I’m pau work. And then, you know, they’re looking at them and they’re like, oh, okay, you know what? I’m finished. They don’t understand our language. I’m like, it’s just a slang. That’s all it is.

CH: Yeah, it’s interesting. Many things to talk about there. Yeah. Well, we’ll let you be, for today. So thank you so much.

CBR: So just shoot me a text whenever if you need anything else. Maybe, hopefully, one day, I can get my dad to do this.

CH: Oh!

SK: I mean, I mean, over then we can ask him, how’d you move from Kalihi to Honokai Hale?

CBR: That’ll be the best question. That’s a good question. How’d you get all the way from that side of the island to that side?

CH: Thank you, bye bye.

((ends))