My Kind of Town
The biggest mistake
>> Honolulu Soap Co.
There were failures in the early days. Not many, but though they were few, they were spectacular. It wasn't the kind of stuff you could just pour down the drain. It would be the last time you used that drain. If the chemicals didn't corrode the pipes, the coagulating agents would clog them forever.
Sheets Ah Sun found a solution one day when he was having his car worked on, including an oil change.
"Eh, Henry," he'd said to the mechanic. "Where you dump the old oil?" Although Henry Watanabe ran a one-man shop in Aiea and Sheets was his only customer at the moment, he still glanced around before answering. "Why you ask?"
"Remember, I mentioned about my side business, making soap?" In those days, Sheets' first job was as a waiter at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. "Well, I got a batch that didn't work so good, so we gotta dump 'em."
"Way out in the boonies," Henry said in a conspiratorial manner. "Waimanalo. Bum-by I show you."
And he did.
Sheets rocked in his office chair, its rusty squeak like a mantra, and remembered that day over 30 years ago. Towing a U-Haul trailer that carried two 50-gallon barrels of soap gone very bad, he'd followed Henry, who had a tank full of used motor oil in the back of his pickup. They turned mauka off Kalanianaole Highway, drove way back in the valley, Sheets making mental notes as they went so he could find it again if necessary. He was a penny pincher, had to be at this stage, and he hated to throw anything away. But mistakes do happen when you're experimenting with new formulas.
Just off the road in a jungle thicket, Henry showed Sheets a pit, maybe 10-by-12 feet, filled with bubbling, iridescent goo. On the side of the pit, 5-gallon tins of a white, crystalline power lay open on their sides. The smell was so strong Sheets had to cover his nose.
"Don't fall in," Henry said, turning the spigot on the tank, releasing a stream of black oil into the toxic stew.
Over the years, Sheets had returned to the Waimanalo site two more times to dump mistakes. Well, three if you counted that night 21 years ago with his brother Mits and Bobo. That was the biggest mistake of all.
>> Down the hall Lily Ah Sun's heart was in the middle of a meltdown. "Listen, Quinn," she said. "I'm on long-distance with Laird. Can we talk later?"
"Just two questions, Lily, and you never have to talk to me again. No, three questions. Who's Bobo? What does he have to do with you changing your mind about me? And how come only one photocopy?"
"One, I don't know. Two and three, what the hell're you talking about?"
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com