The last three loads of sugar cane head for the mill.
Photos by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin

"It's sad," said off-duty cane truck driver Charles Saragosa. "Even the horns are sad."

The skies over Pahala yesterday were gloomy, threatening rain.

"If it starts to drizzle, that's tears coming down," said Saragosa, 51. He had 23 years at C. Brewer subsidiary Kau Agribusiness, which is closing its sugar division.

Margaret Ann Cabudol and Emia Peralta
watch the last load go by.
Emia Peralta broke into tears as the trucks delivered their last loads of cane to the mill. Her husband Benjamin, 46, had worked for the company 26 years, 7 months, and 10 days, she said. Now he has no job, less than a high school education, and they're trying to pay their son's way through college on the mainland.

"I will just pray to our heavenly father he will give us a better job in Kau," she said.

Many of the town's 1,500 people turned out to watch, and most tried to be upbeat.

Francis Gravela, 32, with 10 years at the company, suggested it was just outward appearances. But Gravela does have reason to be happy. He got a new job as a welder at the Natural Energy Laboratory in Kona.

In a prayer, Catholic priest Stephen Macedo said the end of sugar is not the end of life in Kau. But there were no speeches.

There was symbolism.

Workers had planned to throw their plastic hard hats onto the mill conveyor belt, but the burning plastic chips would have violated Environmental Protection Agencyrules. Instead, an aluminum hat, now banned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration because it conducts electricity, was found and sent up the belt.

The ceremony ended and people trickled away. And a few raindrops began to fall.