Honolulu Lite
While shoveling our driveway after a particularly brutal Nebraska snow storm many years ago, my Dad said, "I'd like to tie this snow shovel to the front bumper of the car and keep driving south until someone asks me what that thing is attached to the front of the car. That's where I want to live." Digging deep to
get tourists to visitHe eventually retired in Hawaii, where many people might be hard-pressed to identify a snow shovel, so he got his wish without having to drive to Guatemala. A snow shovel is really just a symbol of what a pain in the butt snow is. Sure, it's beautiful and everything, if you're snugly warm inside drinking hot chocolate by a fireplace. But if you have to get to work and there's 2 feet of snow piled up, on and around your car, snow does not engender many tender Hallmark feelings.
I think of snow shovels often, even though I've now lived in Hawaii longer than I've lived anywhere else in the world. A snow shovel brought me back to Hawaii in a 'round-about way. I was working at a little newspaper in West Virginia during one of the worst winters on record. One day, the snow was more than 3 feet deep. I was using a snow shovel to unbury my Buick LeSabre, literally shoveling mounds of snow off the hood and windshield. I had no idea how I'd get out of the driveway. The phone rang. It was John Simonds, then managing editor of the Star-Bulletin, recruiting reporters to go to Guam to work on the Pacific Daily News. (I had applied to work at the Star-Bulletin after graduating from college, but I guess they mistook me for a Peace Corps volunteer looking for a Third World assignment.)
Nevertheless, looking out at my snow-buried car, Guam sounded awfully good, which is to say, warm. I soon was on a plane to Guam. It was about 98 degrees when I landed, which isn't necessarily bad, except that it was 3 in the morning. The radical 100-plus degree temperature change had my lungs screaming, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!"
But Guam wasn't so bad. There were no snow shovels. And after a couple of years, I ended up here.
All this is a way of getting to today's subject, which, oddly enough, is the flower lei. Specifically, the recent Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau May Day promotion in which it sent 31,000 flower lei to spread the Aloha Spirit to the mainland and maybe attract tourists.
Unlike some critics, I thought it was a great idea. But it did take me back to a scheme I dreamed up a long time ago: What if Hawaii sent thousands of snow shovels to the mainland in the dead of winter with a colorful advertisement on the back of each that said, "In 12 hours, you can be in Paradise"? It would include a toll-free number and Web site address for making hotel and airline reservations.
Had I seen something like that while I was digging out my Buick, I might have hopped a plane to Honolulu instead of Agana. Sure, I'd be waiting restaurant tables instead of writing, but my lungs would be as happy as a large, spongy pair of organs could be.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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