Photo By Ken Sakamoto, Photo Illustration By Dave Swann, Star-Bulletin
Trolley driver Joyce Brown pulled up her Chicago roots
and planted them in Hawaii.

---

Chicago native makes the
'write' move with a book for
newcomers to Hawaii

By Burl Burlingame
Star-Bulletin

ONE night a few years ago, with the gunshots of gang punks echoing in her going-to-seed Chicago neighborhood, Joyce Brown had had enough. She didn't want her two boys growing up in that sort of climate. She literally spun a globe and put her finger down in the Pacific Ocean.

"Hawaii," she said. "Hawaii! That's it -- we're moving."

It took a few months for the Greyhound driver and writer to sell everything off, but she and her teen-age sons arrived here three years ago. While she found the Aloha State inviting and friendly -- what other state's abbreviation is HI? -- there was a bit of culture shock. Hawaii is not Chicago, not hardly.

"That night, it was also 70 degrees below zero outside, and that was part of it, too," Brown chuckles. Sons Ed and Mike, by the way, are now successful students at Kailua High School, and have part-time jobs.

Brown credits their happiness with living in Hawaii.

When she moved here, Brown took note of the things that were different, and with the logic that comes of being a professional driver, and the curiosity that comes of being a writer, she began to fill notebooks with data and observations. Brown began to work as a driver for the Waikiki Trolley, working with both visitors and residents.

One day, a passenger asked directions, and Brown pulled out her notebooks and gave her a precise guideline. The grateful passenger said she wished that information were in print. Bing! Light-bulb time.

The second edition of Brown's self-published "A Guide for Hawaii Newcomers" (ISBN 0-9655364-0-8, $9.95) has just rolled off the press and will be available in most Hawaii book and tourism stores later this week. ("The military is kind of interested, too," she said. "But they want it for practically free.")

"If you're not born here, there's a lot of subtle stuff that's hard to understand," said Brown, who has the cheery personality of a natural-born tour guide. "Just things like directions -- elsewhere in the world, they think, north, south, east, west; here, it's mountains and sea and sun."

Subjects covered include a capsule Hawaiian history, language pronunciations, cultural faux pas, housing, time-zone problems, driving courtesies, insurance, schools, health inoculations, educational transcripts and testing, and all the other little details of settling in.

Writing it wasn't the problem. Brown had been writing romances and adventures based on what she saw as a Greyhound driver for some time, and entering contests. But she was determined to publish the guide herself, and self-educated herself in the garage-book business. It's also printed here, courtesy Dolphin Press of Kailua, because she wanted to keep it all local.

The idea is to try and keep it as a quarterly or twice-yearly, finances permitting. That way print runs can be monitored, and information can be updated often.

"The hardest part is dealing with agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles, which keeps changing information, often from department to department," said Brown.

She's looking into possibly putting the information on the Internet, so the book can be "downloaded" anywhere on the planet. Brown also finds herself providing services to outsiders, like mailing local newspapers (the afternoon daily, we assume) to folks moving here who want to assimilate before moving.

Some readers are already dependent on the work. "I carried my guide with me for the first six months when I first arrived here from Philly," testifies Margo Pearl of Ewa Beach. "I couldn't have made it without it." Pearl's brother is moving here this spring, and she's mailing them the latest edition this week.

"It's just a matter of helping folks out," shrugs Brown. "We were helped when we arrived, and now we want to help others."