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Key West

Florida Bay near Key West is beautiful, and in February we had the flats to ourselves. Miles of brilliant blue and green clear water, mangrove islands, three-foot sharks and 30-pound turtles and lurking barracuda and porpoising porpoises. Away in the west over the calm green and blue we could see the distant Marquesas, and behind us almost distant Key West. There was blue sky and white clouds and it was a very gentle 80 degrees.

Of course we had Florida Bay to ourselves because in February Key West is full of Midwestern drinking folk who are busy drinking, not fishing. Gauging by the number of bars per square mile it’s full of drinking folk year round, but other times of the year there might also be fly anglers. Probably drinking fly anglers, recounting tales of their fabulous Key West fish over rum drinks garnished with umbrellas. There are plenty of rum drinks in February but there aren’t any fly anglers because in February there aren’t any fish, fabulous or no.

Let me change that. There weren’t any target fish on the day we were on the water. I’m sure every other day in February there are all sorts of fish. Bonefish. Permit. Tarpon. Arctic char. Crappie. Sunfish. Giant trevaly and channel cats. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. You name it, any day we’re not on the water the fish are there in spades and they’ve brought their friends. You’d better bring your three weight and eight weight and 12 and both of your Spey rods, and some golf clubs and do some pushups, because you’re going to be casting and fighting fish with all of them all day long. But not on February 7 when we were on the water.

Andrew Asher was our guide, and besides having a name that sounds like a British film star he has the best guiding voice ever. In another life he will have a British accent and be the voice of the BBC. But Andrew is a guide and he’s a good guide and he knows about fish and water and the grace it takes to guide well. There. I got in my statutorily required Hemingway imitation.

Andrew did a great job. He ran a Maverick skiff with a 115 hp engine that ran easily from flat to flat at 40. He sat us up with the wind and the sun and I trusted that he saw what was there, even when we didn’t see it. He knew enough to say “fish at two o’clock,” pause while I looked left and then calmly follow with “fish at two o’clock on the right.” Then we would decide it was something he called a box fish which is apparently a kind of puffer, and I’d cast to that for a while and it would ignore me until it meandered off.

He and Kris pretty much agreed on politics though, which meant I didn’t have to worry about getting thrown off the boat.

Zane Grey said that he, Zane Grey, not Andrew Asher, was a hard-luck angler, and I think about that a lot, whether there’s just something about me that makes me unlucky at fish. I’ve been so lucky in most of my life. My career has been fortunate and meaningful, our children are grown and are good people with real jobs, and Kris likes to fly fish and seems to like me. We now own a Chihuahua. But on February 7 there were no fish near Key West. Maybe things balance out, and I deserve some fish misfortune for being the recipient of so many good things.

Late in the day Andrew suggested I cast to barracuda. I was not a natural. My attempt at casting was awkward and embarrassing, and I put a wind knot in a 40 pound wire leader. I think I amazed Andrew, who as a guide should be inured to client stupidity, but there you are: when it comes to casting I can be amazing. I certainly amazed myself.

* * *

From Brown, Jefferson B., Key West: The Old and the New, 1912, St. Augustine, The Record Company.

As of the 2010 census, Monroe County had 73,090 residents, of which 25,478 lived in its county seat, Key West. The population is about 85 percent white folk.

By the 1760s, the Native Americans, the Tequesta or the Calusa or both, were gone from the Keys, and Key West was transferred from the Spanish to the British. In 1821, back in the hands of the Spanish, Florida was ceded by Spain to the US. In an early act of piracy (or at least real estate development) the owner of Key West, a Spanish artillery officer, sold it first for about $525 to a former South Carolina governor and then sold it a second time to John Simonton for $2000. After some string pulling Simonton ended up with it, and streets in Key West bear the names of Simonton and his cronies. When the island sold there were no permanent residents. By 1830 there were 517 residents, by 1880 there were 9,800, by 1910 there were 19,945.

Key West’s first industry was pirating, which after naval intervention (the first significant U.S. presence in the Keys) was replaced by marine scavengers (the surrounding coral reefs being an excellent provider of scavenge), smuggling (including slaves before the Civil War, rum during Prohibition, drugs during the 70s, and whatever is now the going concern), fishing, sponges, and finally, after Monroe County had become one of the poorest counties in the nation during the Great Depression (“They’re living on fish and coconuts”), tourism and real estate. It was first connected to the mainland in 1912 by Henry Flagler’s overseas train, which blew away in the 1935 hurricane, and which was replaced by the Overseas Highway. U.S. 1 runs all the way from Maine down the Atlantic Coast, and as much as anything we went to Key West to drive the Overseas Highway.

In 2016, Monroe County voted for President Trump, but the Key West part of Monroe County voted for Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t really close, Trump took the county by 54 percent, and I imagined I could see the dichotomy between the county and its county seat on the drive: the approach down the county through harder or at least more suburban living, where most contact with government is seen as an intrusion, a burden, and where there is a perceived unfairness in the distribution of all good things derived from the burdens imposed. In Key West there was greater affluence, education, urban living. Key West looks Democratic.

In 2018 the vote for governor was also Republican but very close, and Monroe County went Republican 49.59 percent to 49.18. Darcy Richardson of the Reform Party tipped the county Republican by taking 0.57 percent. It didn’t make much difference in the big scheme, but Darcy Richardson is one of those proofs that every politician thinks they’re special and that they can win, even when they’re not and they can’t.

* * *

I really had high hopes for some memorable sights in Key West. From what I’d read it’s nigh on the most decadent place on earth, more decadent than San Francisco during the Summer of Love or Bourbon Street on the night before Lent or Las Vegas on a day that ends with a “y” or even Kansas City during revivals of the musical Oklahoma!. Maybe it’s that tropical lushness that confuses Midwesterners. I guess I’ve lived in a warm wet big city for too long, ’cause it all seemed rather tame to me. Maybe the decadence migrates in with the tarpon and the fly fishers later in the spring.

We didn’t see any memorable decadence. We hung out our first night in a nice wine bar with our new friends Mike and Bill from Michigan. We discussed politics, their house in Ft. Lauderdale and their home in Michigan and ours in Houston, places to eat, and some more politics. We talked about Bill’s work to create the River Raisin National Battlefield Park, and the Recent Republican Troubles. And then we talked some more about politics. They bought us wine, and we owe them some wine and hope someday we get to repay. I also told them the long complicated story about the steelhead fly I tied from the ostrich feather I was given at the Pride Parade and on which I caught my steelhead. I’m very proud of that fly. They politely listened, for which I’m grateful.

On night two we ate at Sole, while on Duval Street the snowbirds drank and a gregarious drag queen invited folk into a bar. We talked to a Canadian couple who obsessively followed horse racing. Lexington and Sarasota they said were prime destinations, but the Kentucky Derby is nothing but an excuse for dilettantes to drink and wear hats. There was some anger there.

Later at a different bar a woman from Pella, Iowa, had drunk too many rum painkillers and felt strongly (if very politely in an Iowan way) that I should be drinking them too. Neither she nor her husband could tell me anything about trout fishing the Iowa Driftless Region, and seemed surprised any one would want to go to Iowa to fish. Who doesn’t want to go to Iowa to fish? Iowa is heaven.

At 9 at night everyone was friendly and talkative and lubricated and if you just stood around long enough you’d find people to talk to, just like a giant cocktail party. It seemed to me that Key West was all-in-all pretty tasteful and pretty tame, though there were plenty of tacky t-shirts.

Andrew the Guide told us that he lived near Duval but for him it was rarely a destination, and when on the rare occasions he went to the bars he left long before midnight. He said that ’round midnight things on Duval changed, and that the drunks came out of the bars to punch each other and so forth. I guess we missed it. Maybe the horse racing aficionado found a Kentucky Derby fan to punch. Maybe the Iowa lady passed out on rum painkillers. Maybe somewhere near Sloppy Joe’s a tipsy Wallace Stevens threw a punch at Ernest Hemingway and Ernest Hemingway knocked him down. I guess I’ll have to wait until next time and stay awake until midnight. Even better, maybe we can find Mike and Bill and buy a bottle of wine.

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Permit Fish

Permit (Trachinotus falcatus), State of New York Fish and Game Commission, 1902,  Annual Report,  Albany, New York,  Smithsonian Libraries, Wikimedia Commons.

Permit aren’t uniquely pretty, and you could make a pretty good case that they’re uniquely ugly. Permit look a bit like their cousins, the various jacks, and even more like their closer cousin, the Florida pompano. But notwithstanding that they’d never win the swimsuit competition they’ve become one of the glamour girls of fly fishing. Of course so have carp.

All of those fish (other than carp) are of the family carangidae, and pompano and permit share the same genus. There are a good dozen species of pompano, as often as not (the not being mostly fishing literature) permit are described as a pompano. There is only one species of pompano generally called permit, the permit, and descriptions often distinguish the permit and the Florida pompano by the permit’s larger size–permit can grow to twice the length of pompano–and the orange patch on the permit. That it’s not called a pompano in common parlance is probably more accident than intent, and most of the Spanish and some of the uncommon English common names use some variation of pampano or pompano.

Florida Pompano (Trachynotus carolinus), State of New York Fish and Game Commission, 1907,  Annual Report,  Albany New York, Wikimedia Commons.

Permit are tall (deep?) and thin, and their dorsal and anal fins and tails are distinctive. Falcatus translates as scythe-like. When I’ve seen them on flats it’s the tall black-tipped dorsal fin and tail, breaking the surface like flags, that are unforgettable.

Permit are relatively long-lived, exceeding 20 years. The IGFA lists the all-tackle weight record as 60 lbs, and on the fly the record is 41 lbs on 8 lb tippet. Florida Fish & Game says that fish easily exceed three feet, and that fish weighing 20 to 30 pounds aren’t uncommon. Of course Florida Fish & Game makes money selling fishing licenses. Permits for permit.

Our guide said we might fish for permit, and from what I gather the Keys are the only reliable permit fishery in the States. The best month for fishing the Keys is June, and there’s just not much happening there fish-wise in February. I’ve fished for permit before, in Belize. I saw four small schools, or at least I saw their dorsal fins and tails, and hooked two fish. That’s a pretty good ratio for permit. Of course I’ve landed none, which is more like it. The IUCN lists the permit population as stable, and that’s a good thing. It’s range is roughly the same as the range of the Caribbean version of bonefish, Albula vulpes, but the IUCN map below is very ambitious. North of the Keys it’s likely a map of where a lost permit appeared once when it turned left instead of right at Tampa. A permit in the upper Gulf would seem extraordinary, and as far north as Massachusetts would just be wrong.

IUCN Permit Range Map

Permit are found offshore at reefs and derricks, but they’re not really offshore fish. according to the Florida Museum, permit are primarily inshore fish, inhabiting channels and deeper water and hunting the flats. They don’t often occur in flats shallower than two feet because of their deep bodies. Like any fish with any sense permit prefer bait. Who wouldn’t? Like bonefish and redfish, they’re diggers. Smaller fish school, larger fish don’t. They prey on the usual flats suspects, mostly crustaceans and mollusks, and are in turn prey of the usual flats suspects, sharks and barracuda. It means that they’re skittish, difficult fish, and even when hooked they run like, well, like permit, and are hard to keep on the hook. My record? Two 30-yard screaming runs until one came off and one cut the leader on something.

As recently as 2008 the Turneffe Atoll Trust reported that there had been exactly one (1) scientific article published about permit, in 2001, so as more common than not with fish we don’t know a lot. They reach sexual maturity at between two and three years, and permit may spawn year round (but spawning is probably concentrated in spring and summer). They’re broadcast spawners, just like oysters and teenagers. The Bonefish & Tarpon (and now permit) Trust reports that tagging indicates that permit aggregate and spawn over nearshore reefs. Juvenile nurseries are likely along beaches.

B&TT’s research seems to be heavily sponsored by Costa, which is nice, both that they’re doing research and that it’s sponsored.

m
Richard A. Ingebrigtsen, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2007, Wikimedia Commons.
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Florida Triplex

This will be our third trip to Florida in a year. Friday week I have to be in Hollywood, the Florida Hollywood on the Atlantic Coast between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, so we’ll go two days early and drive south to Key West for a day. The guide, Andrew Asher, says that for February we’re unlikely to see bonefish, which means we won’t catch bonefish; that if it warms up we might fish for baby tarpon, the 20-40 pound fish, which means it will almost certainly be freezing; and that it’s a good time of year for permit. I’m not convinced that anyone ever actually catches permit. I suspect that we will have a five-hour drive and Kris will catch something just to taunt me. She’ll probably catch a permit. Blind casting.

I have an excellent if dated tourist guide for the Keys, The Florida Keys: A History and Guide, Tenth Edition, by the fiction writer Joy Williams. From time to time over the last year I’ve read bits of it because Williams’ observations are so wry and entertaining. It’s dated, it was first published in 1987 and my edition dates from 2003, but it’s very readable. I can’t remember when I bought it, or why.

There’s also a bit of magical thinking on my part. In my prior three days’ Florida fishing I haven’t caught a fish because I snubbed Key West, and I won’t catch a Florida fish until I go there. Funny thing is that whatever happens now that’s true.

If the Florida Peninsula is a long limestone spine covered with sandy soils, the Keys are the dribbling exhaustion of that spine, a 180-mile archipelago extending in a southwesterly crescent from the Everglades. The islands dot and cluster, with 106 miles accessible by car via Route 1 ending at Key West, and once you finally get there there’s no parking. One supposes that in places like Marathon there are plenty of roadside convenience stores to buy the road trip necessaries, Fritos and bean dip, or at least Cheetos. It is Florida, and there has to be roadside stuff, even on a bridge.

Before convenience stores, before the last ice age, the Keys were underwater, covered with coral in the Upper Keys and sand in the Lower. They popped out of the sea (along with the Bering Strait land bridge) about the time that Greenland froze and the oceans sank. Geologists estimate that the current Keys date from about 15,000 years ago, which makes them older than the Bible but younger than North America’s first human settlers. Key West is the southernmost outpost of the Keys (though the Marquesas Keys and Dry Tortugas are further west and a bit north), so of the continental states the Florida Keys are as far south as we can go, further south even than Brownsville (which I hardly knew was possible). The Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution that you can’t legally mention Key West without saying it’s only 90 miles from Cuba. There. Done.

The Keys will soon have a chance to be underwater again.

Google Maps

Key West isn’t in the tropics, but under the Koppen climate classification system it’s tropical. This gets confusing, but the tropics aren’t the tropics because of temperature or flora and fauna, the reasons I would expect, but because of a celestial moment. In the northern hemisphere on the summer solstice, at 23°26’12.5″ latitude north, the sun is directly overhead. That’s the Tropic of Cancer, and as the earth tilts on its axis it is the northern limit of where the sun can sit directly overhead and establishes the northern boundary of the tropics. The southern boundary is the Tropic of Cancer’s southern counterpoint, the Tropic of Capricorn.

At a latitude of 24°33’2.51′ Key West is a bit more than a full degree north of the tropics, and is considered tropical not because of its latitude but because of its warm climate–it has never recorded a frost. It has a wet season from May to October and the rest of the year is the dry season. It has an average of fifty-five 90 degree days per year, and the hottest month is July. Houston averages 74 days, New Orleans 56. Houston (a good bit north of Key West at 29°45’46”) and New Orleans (a good bit north of Houston at 29°95′) are subtropical because of summer heat and humidity and mild, generally frost-less winters, but we are all New England Yankees to the Conchs.

All of Key West, Houston, and New Orleans share hurricanes, though not usually the same hurricane..

Somebody probably has a reckoning of how many islands comprise the Keys, and I’ve read that the number is over 800, but it wouldn’t be a simple calculation. Is that wee bit of mangrove hummock over yonder an island? Are those two tiny bits of sand and mangrove a single island or two? Even without a number though there is a list of names that we know. From the Everglades, and the Upper Keys southwesterly through the Middle Keys and the Lower Keys, there is Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Big Pine Key, Key West, the Marquesas Keys (which is different from the Polynesian Marquesas Islands), the Dry Tortugas . . . Facing south and moving down those names the Atlantic is on the left, with the Gulf Stream, blue water with blue water fish, separated from the Keys by a long coral reef, the Florida Reef. To the right is Florida Bay opening onto the Gulf of Mexico, a bay that hopefully we haven’t irreparably damaged by diverting freshwater flow from the Everglades.

There is a plan in place to restore the Everglades and to improve the Florida Bay water quality, but it takes money and political will. Florida politics is strange and fascinating stuff, and November’s election was textbook Florida, but the president of the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust has sent out a letter stating that the new Republican governor has made it a priority to restore the Glades. “[H]e delivered clear, unwavering messages about the environment and his intent to protect it. Sweeping actions announced by his administration include a $2.5 billion commitment over the next four years for water resources and Everglades restoration, a directive to [the South Florida Water Management District] to immediately begin design of the EAA Reservoir, a commitment to expedite other important Everglades restoration projects, and a call for the immediate resignation of the entire SFWMD governing board.” Whatever else Governor DeSantis may do, if he moves restoration of the Everglades forward that’s big and admirable stuff, and $2.5 billion is a start. A billion here, a billion there, it can add up to real money.

As for the Keys disappearing under the deep blue sea, most of the Keys is less than five feet above sea level. The Keys are already losing land to water, and have been for decades, but the process will accelerate as temperatures rise. The United Nations projects global temperatures will rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, which will submerge the Keys, Miami, and the rest of coastal Florida. They could be under water faster if the polar ice melt accelerates. Big Pine Key, home of the key deer, is projected by the Land Conservancy to be underwater in a matter of decades. It’s probably not the place to do any long-term real estate lending. That mortgage isn’t going to be very good security.

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Hawaii Packing List

I took my board shorts to Hawaii. I’ve had a pair for more than a decade, but before Hawaii I’d worn them only once to a charity gala, along with a tuxedo shirt and jacket and a bow tie with little palm trees. The fundraiser was formal but Hawaiian-themed. In Hawaii I wore them wade fishing and Kris made fun of them, even though I thought them dashing. Maybe she was making fun of my skinny white legs. The board shorts will be at Goodwill soon.

We both took 9 wt. rods, Kris took an Orvis HD3 and I took a Loomis Asquith, our Christmas presents to each other. I liked mine better. The Asquith is nigh on to perfect, but I need to use the H3 a bit to get used to it. They had different lines, too, and I may have cast the Rio line better than the Orvis. No one was injured by my casting.

I took a pair of Patagonia flats boots, the neoprene kind Patagonia doesn’t make anymore. I’d read that coral was a problem on the flats, and that heavy boots were needed. The Patagonias aren’t really heavy, but I didn’t have any problems other than sand in the boot, even around the volcanic rock. The bigger problem was that there was no way to tie them to the roof of the rent car, and they didn’t dry before we had to pack. Do you know how hard it is anymore to find a newspaper to stuff into your booties?

The rental car was a Subaru with adaptive cruise control. I’d never used adaptive cruise control, and didn’t know the car had it. It also had lane drift correction. That’s some startling stuff when you don’t expect it.

Where We Stayed

We stayed three nights in an Airbnb. I had tried to book Airbnbs before, but it never worked out. We were in a 15th floor apartment in an older apartment tower, and the tower showed its age, but it was central, within walking distance of Waikiki shopping, and cheaper than any of the Waikiki hotels. I gave them a sterling review, and they gave me a sterling review, and I doubt that either of us were exactly misleading the public or exactly telling the truth. We weren’t in the apartment much, and the coffee pot worked. The sheets were clean.

I’m guessing that a lot of Hawaii is a resort economy, which means a lot of folk scraping by on service jobs, and things are expensive. According to Jake the guide Airbnbs pull a lot of available housing off the market, and drive up the cost of what’s left.

Honolulu from Diamond Head

We spent one night at the Turtle Bay Resort because I wanted to see the north side of O’ahu. There were fashion models hanging out in the coffee shop, at least I guessed they were fashion models: they were young, thin, remarkably tall, pretty, and armed with a photographer. There were C.F. Martin ukuleles in the gift shop, and bad karaoke in the bar. There was a nice weight room and huge breakers. We weren’t there long enough for any resort activities, but sitting on the balcony playing the guitar and drinking coffee and watching the breakers was worth the effort. There was no free coffee in the lobby. I am immensely fond of free morning coffee in lobbies, but if I’d had free coffee I would have missed the fashion models.

Our final night we stayed at the Best Western Palace Hotel Honolulu, because we wanted to stay near the airport. We dropped the rental car that afternoon, took an Uber to dinner, and the next morning used the airport shuttle. It’s a plan that works well, unless the hotel is the Best Western Palace Hotel Honolulu. It’s tucked in at the edge of a grimy bit of freeway, has itself seen better days, and for the first time I recall I pulled back the covers and checked the bed for bedbugs. It was fine for the night before an early flight, and convenient, but next time I suspect I’ll pass. There were no bedbugs.

Where We Ate

We ate dinner the first night at Alan Wong’s, which is famous. It’s the granddaddy, and The Obamas Ate Here. Our waiter had learned his trade watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and things could have gone better. I’m sure it’s ok most nights, but I didn’t like the food much, and they lost us in the shuffle. Kris gave them one star on Yelp! I guess people only do Yelp! reviews when they own the place or they’re angry.

The Pig and the Lady

Waikiki shopping is like shopping Rodeo Drive, or the Miracle Mile, or Fifth Avenue, with all the high-end retail anyone could ever need. We ate dinner at a place called Roy’s Waikiki. It was very popular and perfectly decent and I greatly admired the lips of the Australian woman next to us at the bar, which were immense and must have been made, literally, for Waikiki. There were other parts of her that looked manufactured as well.  If you’re going to eat in Waikiki Roy’s is fine, though it’s not a place that looks like a Hank’s, or a Joe’s, or a Roy’s. I liked the tuna poke appetizer. Maybe if you go there the Australian woman will still be at the bar and you too can be amazed at the size of those lips.

The two hottest places in Honolulu are The Pig and the Lady, which was spectacular and my favorite, and Senia, which was Kris’s favorite and spectacular. They’re next door to each other in the old Chinatown, which pre-WWII was the place for sailors to go for tattoos, liquor, and sexual shenanigans and is apparently now the place to go for cheap rent and leis. The Obamas had dinner at The Pig and the Lady the week before, which if I didn’t like the Obamas would make an amusing joke. I do like the Obamas though, and I liked The Pig and the Lady. Those two places made up for Alan Wong’s.

At the Rainbow Drive-in Kris ordered for us and I got the plate dinner, but with fish, beef, and chicken on a single plate, plus chili covering the side of rice (but not the side of macaroni and cheese). It was delicious, all of it. We ate tuna poke at a random sushi place in a strip center (which I’d never have done in Houston). As for baked goods, the Coco Puffs at Liliha Bakery are obligatory, plus I had the Full Hawaiian Breakfast with Spam, rice, and fried bananas. I have a secret and long-standing fondness for Spam, Salt! Fat! Pork!, so I am one with the Islands.

Liliana Bakery

The malassadas at Leonard’s Bakery are the very thing, and if you order enough of them they come in a pink box. Get the one stuffed with guava jelly, and the one with the cinnamon and salt, and the rest of them.

Malasadas

I had the Obama shaved ice at Waiola Shave Ice, then ate the rest of Kris’s shaved ice which was some other set of flavors. It was healthy. It was fruit.

There may not be an Obama statue in Hawaii, but they sure let you know where the Obamas eat.

Where We Went That Didn’t Involve Fishing

The National Park Service and the Navy are keeping the Pearl Harbor monument open during the government shut-down with private donations. The Arizona Memorial is closed, not because of the shut-down but because it needs repairs, so we didn’t get to see my cousin’s name in the list of the dead: Houston O’Neal Thomas, age 20, coxswain. He was a bit older than my father, and I suppose they must have grown up together. He was a child. I suppose he had no notions of war. I hope his death was sudden and painless.

We toured the Ilioni Palace, which was the last royal residence of the last king, King David Kalakaua, and then the last queen of Hawaii. Queen Liliuokalani. The conspirators wanted immediate annexation of Hawaii into the States, but President Cleveland refused, and sent a delegation to explore restoration of the monarchy. When asked, Liliuokalani sensibly said she planned to cut off the conspirators’ heads. Her answer derailed restoration, but she was, after all, a queen, and off with their heads is always a queenly answer. Hawaii was later annexed by President Cleveland’s successor (technically his second successor), William McKinley.  The palace (which is modest as royal palaces go), is a monument to regret at the loss of sovereignty.

The Bishop Museum is also a bit of a monument to the monarchy, but it’s very fine, and probably the best collection of Polynesian artifacts in the world.

We climbed Diamond Head. There was some guy jogging up and down the path carrying a boom box blasting 80s music. Somebody should import ear pods to Hawaii.

Where We Didn’t Go

We didn’t see any of the other islands. We didn’t snorkel, so I still haven’t. We didn’t surf, and I never will, particularly since I’m getting rid of my board shorts. 

We didn’t eat poi at Helena’s Hawaiian. I’m not certain that Helena’s Hawaiian is ever actually open. It was closed all day Sunday and Monday and even on days it claimed to be open it closed by 7:30.

We didn’t see hula, though I did buy a reprint of a book first published in 1907 about the songs of the hula. We didn’t attend a luau. We didn’t visit a ukulele factory. We didn’t feed the mongoose, though I saw it.

We didn’t see the Honolulu Museum of Art, and we never walked on Waikiki Beach. We didn’t eat shrimp out of a food truck. Luckily we get to go back.

I didn’t buy a Panama hat from Newt at the Royal, so I’m glad I’m going back. It’s startling to realize that with a Panama hat, a cigar, and a goatee I could pass for a planter, or at least Colonel Sanders. They’re a bit fine to use as fishing hats.

Newt at the Royal Hawaiian.

Playlist

Hawaiian music is everywhere, everywhere. Maybe it’s just atmosphere, or maybe it’s pride and love. It can get cloying, but in reasonable doses it’s beautiful.

Unlike prior trips where I’ve depended on my own music collection with some supplemental purchases, I owned no Hawaiian music. I finally subscribed to Apple Music. It’s miraculous. I was able to download a perfectly respectable list of Hawaiian musicians.

  • Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. A half dozen years ago Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow was all over the internet. He was a monstrous man, a man the size of a Sumo, and he was playing a tiny instrument and singing sweetly. He also did a cover of Take me Home Country Roads that doesn’t once mention West Virginia. I’m not sure that’s legal, but he was a bit of a rebel: he was a sovereignty activist.
  • Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu and Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus, Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride, from Lilo & Stitch. Lilo & Stitch may be the strangest Disney movie ever made. I can’t describe the plot but trust me, it is . . . strange. And this is a fun song.
  • Elvis Presley, Hawaiian Wedding Song and Blue Hawaii. Elvis fits the jet-fed Hawaii. There’s also a very fine version of Blue Hawaii by the famous Hawaiian musician, Willie Nelson.
  • Keola Beamer and Kapono Beamer, Honolulu City Lights. This is a 70s album, and it sounds it. It is much loved, but they probably made records that carried the dated date less heavily.
  • Ry Cooder, Chicken Skin Music. In 1970 Ry Cooder made an album that probably still baffles folk. Chicken skin music is apparently a Hawaiian description of music so good that it brings goose bumps. The album features the great Norteno accordianist, Flaco Jimenez, and the great Hawaiian slack key guitarist, Gabby Pahinui. There is a cover of Irene Goodnight, and a cover of Stand by Me. The most Hawaiian song on the album, Hank Snow’s Yellow Roses, was as far from Hawaii as Tennessee, but it manages to sound like both.
  • Don Ho, Tiny Bubbles and Pearly Shells. I am of an age that remembers Don Ho. They are likable songs.
  • Gabby Pahinui. Of all of the Hawaiian musicians, Gabby Pahinui (1921-1980) is the one guy everyone should know. Gabby Pahinui is B.B. King or Ty Cobb. Ok, I’m mixing metaphors, but in his place, in his time, he was the distillation. He was a drinking man, but in the introduction of Iz’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow Iz announces “This is for Gabby.” It is Gabby who Ry Cooder included on Chicken Skin Music. It is lovely stuff
  • Na Leo Pilimehana, Local Boys and Waikiki. Na Leo Pilimehana is the girl group, and if the Beach Boys had been three Hawaiian women they would have recorded Local Boys. I sang Waikiki to myself for days. Sometimes I might have sung it out loud.
  • Steel Guitar Rag. It’s the song that stateside crystalized the popularization of Hawaiian slide guitar. There are versions by Bob Wills, Merle Travis, Les Paul, and John Fahey.
  • Louis Armstrong, To You, Sweetheart, Aloha. There’s also an album by Andy Williams. 
  • I guess Jack Johnson is the most famous contemporary musician from Hawaii. He was a competitive surfer but was injured, so he became a popular singer and guitarist. It’s hard to see how the boy ever got a date. It’s likable, amd it incorporates the sounds of Hawaiian music: sweet guitars, ukuleles.
  • Ka’au Crater Boys, Guava Jelly.  Motown meets Honolulu. “Ooh baby, here I am, come rub upon my belly like guava jelly.” That goes on to my road trip list.
  • Jake Shimabukuro, As My Guitar Gently Weeps. I think Shimabukuro may have single-handedly resurrected the ukulele.
  • Nathan Aweau, Akaka Falls.
  • The Brothers Cazimero, Home in the Islands.
  • Hawaiian Style Band, Let’s Talk Story. This one’s something of an ear worm.
  • Ho’ai Kane, Kona Red.

To get ready to go we watched a lot of the new Hawaii Five-0, and it’s addictive. I’m going to have trouble quitting.

For guitar music I worked on the Allemande movement to Duarte’s transcription of Bach’s first Cello Suite. I’ve worked on it off and on for years, and still can’t remember where the bass notes go.