Photo: Makena Beach
“At noon I observed a bevy of nude, young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.”
– Mark Twain in Hawaii
Music in Paradise (or the lack of…)
What do you call a couple who just sold their house? Homeless.
We had sold our Santa Fe house and the new owner got a fold-out couch, a roll-top desk, my Jeep, AND our English Setter, Tory. We had said a tearful goodbye to our autistic son, Tait, living at Los Lunas Hospital & Training School south of Albuquerque. (That was tough.) We had sold a lot of stuff and loaded the rest of our possessions into a big U-Haul truck and took off to LA with Jaye’s Nisson Pulsar in tow.
“Another Moon Song” by Jon Asher
At Terminal Island we played longshoremen for a day and then rented a car. We drove up to San Francisco for some well-deserved downtime. After a few days we flew to Honolulu – first class. The container ship would take 5 days to make the crossing, but the “port-to-door” time would be perhaps 14 days at the most. That means we had to rent storage space and then start the arduous task of finding a place to rent. The clock was ticking.
We looked in the paper for apartments, houses and duplexes around Honolulu and even Kailua on the other side of the mountains. But every place we visited was crowded with dozens of rental seekers just like us. After a few weeks of frustration, we began to panic. Out of desperation we left a message at a downtown property management agency for an apartment at Kukui Plaza, a high-rise apartment complex on Beretania Street in downtown Honolulu.
A few days later we got a call from the property manager informing us that the apartment was ours, if we still wanted it. Of course we wanted it – no matter what the price. It seems that the office message machine malfunctioned and only three inquiries were recorded. We were one of them. The apartment was ours! (For a steep price of course.)
Kukui Plaza, Downtown Honolulu.
We had already loaded our stuff into storage, so we started moving the essentials into our cool apartment on the 28th floor. And yes, the views were amazing! We’re talking Punch Bowl, Diamond Head, the ocean, the Capitol building and nearby skyscrapers. We settled in and then I purchased a Toyota van suitable for hauling drums. With resumé and recordings in hand, I began searching for that elusive gig – more challenging than finding a damn apartment, that’s for sure!
And then one fateful day, Jayebird and I ventured out to Hanauma Bay. Richard, from the Rafters, had told me about a “swimming hole” called Toilet Bowl. The actual bowl is at the end of a long lava tube from the nearby ocean. The water gushes up into the bowl and then recedes like a gigantic toilet flushing. But during high tide and rough waves it can turn into a death trap. Little did we know that Toilet Bowl was one of Oahu’s most dangerous attractions with many fatalities. (It’s now fenced in and closed to the public.)
The day we were there the gushing water was throwing people up and out of the bowl with phenomenal force. Of course, I jumped in as the water receded. When the next gush squirted into the bowl, instead of shooting me out, I stumbled and was slammed into an underwater cave. The pressure knocked me around like a ragdoll, smacking my head against the lava ceiling. I crawled out and was hit by another round but couldn’t escape this nightmare. Suddenly I was tuckered out. Finally, on the next huge gush I grabbed on to a rock near the top, but I was too exhausted to pull myself to safety.
I was about to give up when a stranger grabbed my arm and yanked me out. He had saved my life. I stumbled over to Jaye and sat down. “You’re bleeding out your ear,” she yelled. My head was throbbing and I couldn’t hear worth shit. It was time to go home.
I somehow drove us back to Honolulu on the H-1. Later I drove over to the Queen’s Medical Center. I was diagnosed with a concussion and both my eardrums were broken. My inner ears were full of sand and I could barely hear. They gave me antibiotics. The next morning, I went to a specialist who started vacuuming out my ears. He informed me that one eardrum had a horizontal perforation and the other was totally gone! He said he could replace the missing drum with a skin graph taken from the back of my ear.
It seemed as though our Hawaiian adventure was in jeopardy. Playing music was now an impossibility; I was banged up and nearly deaf. The only voice I could hear with clarity was my own. But that didn’t stop us from having adventures around Oahu… oh, no.
After two months, we broke our lease and moved to Upcountry Maui.
We found a rental on an estate way up Piiholo Road above the town of Makawao. We were in the oldest structure on the property, overlooking the big house, and next to us was another cottage. The acreage was full of fruit trees and gorgeous lawns that bordered up to an enchanted eucalyptus forest. The Simpson family, John and Cheryl and their girls, four-year-old Ashley and little Sasha, two-years-old, lived in the big house. (Incidentally, the girls’ aunt was Sigourney Weaver!) In the other cottage, were Walter and Jane, and their four-year old son, Eric, who became my little shadow. Having these three wonderful kids in our midst was medicinal – pure bliss.
I set up a shop under the house and started building Adirondack furniture. John was a lawyer and had lots of rich friends who bought my chairs and porch swings. I also took care of the lawns, and made dump runs while Jayebird gardened and babysat. Always something to do on the grounds.
This magical estate, including peacocks, was the ideal place to recover from my injuries. What with the views from two-thousand feet up Haleakala, our lanai was a favorite spot.
We all became close friends and life was good. And soon my parents, and then Dale McFarland, visited us for the making of some wonderful memories. We were slowly turning catastrophe into an idyllic dreamworld. And my hearing was slowly returning to normal.
“Goodbye Sofia” by DC Duncan
We had moved to distant islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a job or a place to stay. We hadn’t known a single person in the state of Hawaii. But now we had discovered a real paradise – the state of mind called Maui. “Maui No Ka ‘Oi!” (Maui is the best!) We explored most of the Hawaiian Islands, enjoyed many extraordinary beaches and consumed fresh seafood often. And along the way, we picked up many native words and put them to use. And yes, the Aloha spirit is an actuality. (And we had a very, merry Christmas on beautiful Makena Beach!)
Christmas party at Eric’s house.
As it turned out, John Simpson was a big blues fan. I had given him a copy of the Jon Asher cassette that I had co-produced, and he loved it! He also introduced us to Judge John and Mindy McConnell who had an autistic son that we worked with. They became close friends. (By the way, the Judge was adjudicating George Harrison’s access lawsuit at the time! I asked the Judge if he’d introduce me to the Beatle – he simply chuckled. Damn.)
One evening John Simpson and I went down to a club in Makawao to see ex-Rolling Stone guitar man, Mick Taylor. The music was good, but I’m afraid Mr. Taylor was an intolerable jerk. He played with his back to the audience and kept castigating his poor keyboard player the whole night. The only time he smiled was when he was haranguing his petrified band. It was the most insufferable performance I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe this guy.
I’m not a proctologist, but I know an asshole when I see one…
A few months later my ears had mysteriously healed themselves. Somehow the missing eardrum in my right ear had grown back! I don’t know if it was a miracle, but it sure felt like one.
So, I started looking for gigs again. Soon I ran into a singer/guitar player who had attended North Texas State. He was forming a band with his wife who played keyboards and sang. He had an agent that was going to book his band at conventions in the Asian business corridors – we’re talking big bucks here. I agreed to be his drummer, and all we needed now was a bass player.
Things were definitely looking up. (But sometimes when you’re looking up to the heavens, you don’t notice the huge wave bearing down on you!)
And then we found out that our son, Tait, was having some serious medical problems. Jayebird did not take the news well. In a few days she was talking about moving back to New Mexico to be with him. I suggested that she might book a flight to the mainland and spend some quality time with Tait until he was better. But she would have none of that.
I tried to explain that we had gone through hell to get to where we were, that we had spent a great deal of money and it would take more money – and work – to return. We had been living in Hawaii for less than a year! I thought to myself that if we were going to move anywhere, why not Australia? At least there I could play music with Doc Span. But I was only thinking of myself, and was beginning to feel one of the worst of human emotions… guilt.
Goodbye, Maui, January 1991
After a week or two, I sadly came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing I could say or do to change her mind. Jayebird had decided to abandon paradise, but not me. I respected her decision – which was from the heart – and would honor her wishes. I held her in my arms as she softly wept.
We were moving back to Santa Fe; our adventure had been ill-fated. Perhaps we had jumped the gun?
In life, timing is everything.