The invitation to come over to Maui had been a godsend. At a friend’s house in Malibu, I’d run into Ron B – a Santa Barbara surfer I’d met a few years earlier. He was a neat guy, full of energy and enthusiasm and his descriptions of his new life on Maui had captured my imagination.
I’d always wanted to go to Hawai’i. In the early sixties, I almost made it, but lost the money for my trip when I invested in what was supposed to be surfing’s first full length movie shot with 35 mm film. As it turned out, “Hotdog On A Stick” never made it to the silver screen and the Hawai’i money was gone.
The more Ron talked about Maui, the more I wanted to escape. But by crunch time, Ron had returned to Maui and I phoned him in Hawai’i at the number he’d given me. The idea of pulling up stakes and taking off to Hawai’i had many attractions, but I wanted to make sure the invitation still stood.
Ron not only assured me that I was still welcome, he said I would have my own room at the house he and one of his friends rented, that I would have the use of a car until I found one to buy. He also told me that he could get me a job.
It sounded too good to be true and it was. But I wasn’t to know that just yet.
The long flight from LAX over endless ocean wasn’t as boring as I’d expected. I found myself sitting next to a man who introduced himself as Angel Romero. In the seat next to him was a guitar. We spent the flight talking about an eclectic array of subjects and he was particularly interested in finding whatever he could about surfing.
Before we landed in Honolulu, he wrote down my name in a small notebook and told me that there would be two tickets waiting for me at the door of the concert he and his brothers were giving that night. “Just come to the ticket office before the concert and give them your name. And after the concert you can come back stage and meet my brothers.”
Instead, I flew out on my connecting flight to Maui with my board because Ron was going to be there to meet us. It wasn’t until I saw Angel’s photo in a newspaper on Maui that I learned that the Romero Brothers were considered to be some of the world’s most accomplished guitarists.
Ron met me at the airport where my surfboard joined some others on top of his car and my suitcases put in the trunk. “Change of plans, I’m afraid,” he said. “We can’t go back to the house for a couple days, so we’re camping out by Honolua Bay in one of the pine plantations for a few nights.”
“Not a problem,” I replied. “Besides, I’m off to the Big Island in two days anyway. Got to meet up with my dad, stepmother and little brother for a week.”
Just before I left for Hawai’i I’d called my dad to let him know where I was headed and he told me that he and my step-mom and brother, Lee, would be staying at one of the big resorts on the Kona Coast around the same time. So we agreed to meet and he arranged for return airline tickets for me to pick up at the airport in Kahului.
After spending two dreamlike days surfing the incomparable Honolua Bay and camping out, the time had come for me to fly off and meet my family on Hawai’i. After being assured that Ron would meet me back at Kahului on my return, I packed up a few changes of clothes and left everything else, including my board, with Ron and flew out on an inter-island flight to the Big Island.
The energy on the Big Island seemed much less laid back than on Maui, but that probably had more to do with being at a resort than anything else. The food was excellent and I spent a lot of time sitting around the swimming pool being waited on by the courteous but distant hotel staff.
One afternoon, I took my brother, Lee, down to walk along the lava rocks that ran along the coast below the resort. The bottoms of my feet were like leather, so I didn’t think I needed to wear anything, but I slipped into one of the shallow tidal pools and got zapped by a few sea urchin spines above the back of my heel where the skin wasn’t so hard.
They stung like hell and while I sat down trying to figure out how to remove them, an old Hawai’ian who’d been fishing off the rocks came over and asked me what was wrong.
“Just wondering how I can get these spines out of my foot. They hurt,” I told him.
“Ahhh …” he said, shaking his huge head slowly. “Put ‘em in one bucket and peese on ‘em.”
“I’d known a few Hawai’ians over the years, so I was used to deciphering pidgin. But I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“Piss on my foot in a bucket?” I asked.
“Put ‘em in one bucket and PEEESSSSE on ‘em.”
Later, at the hotel I asked one of the staff what he’d recommend and he brought me a shallow washing bowl big enough for my foot and a bottle of vinegar. When I asked him about what the fisherman had suggested he said, “Even better. The uric acid dissolves the spines better than vinegar.” So I ended up pissnig on my foot after all.
A day or so later, the family went up to the national park around Kilauea Volcano. After spending the morning walking around the park, we stopped for lunch at the park center’s restaurant overlooking the crater. The food wasn’t wonderful, but after our long walk, we were pretty hungry.
Not long after we were served, a park ranger who looked a bit like an anorexic Smoky the Bear, walked into the crowded restaurant and made an announcement. “Kilauea Volcano is erupting. There is no immediate danger, but we are evacuating the area as a precaution. Please leave your meals, return to your cars or tour buses and leave the park.”
For a few moments, everyone sat there in silence as a handful of diners got up and walked to the counter to pay for their meals. But most of us simply resumed eating.
Maybe five minutes passed and the park ranger returned. “This really is an emergency,” his voice tense. “I am ordering everyone in this restaurant to leave immediately.”
Since we were only halfway through our meal the idea of leaving it unfinished didn’t hold much appeal, and my dad wasn’t pleased. “Then don’t expect us to pay for our meals.”
At that point the manager of the restaurant started arguing with the ranger and the whole scene became unreal. Although we couldn’t see any major signs of an eruption, we could now see swirling plumes of smoke coming from the direction of the crater and the smell of something acrid in the air.
The restaurant manager was insisting that all of us pay whether we’d finished our meals or not, and the ranger was losing his temper with everyone including the manager. Finally, my dad stood up, said, “Right. That’s it …” and walked towards the door with us in his wake. The manager attempted to stop us for a split second, but my father, who was 6″5″ simply looked down at him and he moved quietly from our path.
Once we were outside I expected to hear something, but instead there was an eerie silence. Something in the air made our noses burn and some people were coughing as they moved to their cars. All the tour buses had already left and clouds of smoke were drifting across the sun. But instead of making it cooler, the cool air we’d arrived to had become hot and humid. We left without any further encouragement.
After a week, my time with the family came to an end and I returned to Maui. There was no one there to meet me at the airport, so I figured that Ron had either forgotten or something had come up. So I took a bus to Lahaina to look around for him.
Hours went by and I started to wonder what had happened. Then, just as I was starting to think about checking into the Laihana Inn for the night, a funny looking van pulled up and the driver leaned over to talk to me through what should have been a door. “You’re Bob Feigel, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Rick Segoine. Remember … we met a few years ago in Malibu? Ron asked me to look out for you. Jump in and we’ll shoot over to my place. All your stuff is there. I’ll explain on the way.”
I discovered that Ron’s housemate had been selling drugs and that they both had left the island and returned to the mainland just ahead of an arrest warrant. On their way to the same airport where I’d arrived earlier, they dropped off everything I’d left with them and asked Rick and his wife, Toni to look after it for me.
Rick and Toni and their little daughter, Jamie lived in a rambling old house north of Ka’anapali just off the Honoapiilani Highway in Honokowai. If I thought Maui was peaceful, then this was a haven of peace within it.
Rick and Toni welcomed me into their home and in staying with them for those few blissful days, I was allowed to relax and shed all my mainland tensions. I’d finally arrived in that wonderful wonderland of Maui.
Getting there © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved
Pieces from a Puzzling Life 