We could end up saying,
‘Remember Pupukea?’

He said there's nothing to be gained from nostalgic recollections because those days are lost forever.

He said talking about the past seems a prevalent characteristic among people here. He said the habit annoys him.

He said he believes some people tell these stories to exclude others, particularly those who have moved here recently.

And, he said, just for the record, he was born and raised in Hawaii, a "keiki o ka aina."

I suppose I'd be nettling him by recalling that in the early 1950s, before Styrofoam-white became the chinaware pattern of choice, we'd have to bring a pot to Fong Fong Chop Suey when we wanted take out saimin.

I guess it would be mean to pass down tales about high school football games at Honolulu Stadium where fans stomping their feet on the termite palace's wooden risers made a din heard all the way across Isenberg Street at Chunky's Drive-In, the hot spot for a celebratory bowl of beef stew or consoling cup of Green River punch afterward.

Neither Chunky's nor the stadium survived Hawaii's continuing evolution from sleepy exotic blip in the Pacific to tourist mecca-cum-urban hub. Fong Fong is gone gone. So are hundreds of other restaurants, shops and businesses that once defined the texture of the islands.

There's no way this state could withstand progress. In truth, for every Fong Fong or McInerney that disappeared, another restaurant or retailer has taken root, albeit homogeneously and indistinct from those in Ohio or Texas.

In its human-generated surroundings, Hawaii can look pretty much like Florida or California. In fact, there's one part of Honolulu that mirrors a Tennessee town I passed through once.

What's unmistakable are our natural areas, the fast-dwindling portions of the islands that remain open and lightly handled, where footprints are few and gentle.

The need and desire to build houses and condominiums, roads and ferryboat harbors, resorts and tourist destinations, stores, malls and their must-have parking lots, bark parks, all-terrain vehicle and speed-racing tracks, quarries and even landfills compete persistently with preservation of untamed spaces.

Miles of coastal lands are obscured by commercial buildings. Walls and fences surrounding residential areas block views and access to beaches. Structures jab along the edges of forests and watersheds. Cultural and historic sites are bulldozed or damaged, agricultural acreage is ransomed for suburbs.

People who live here and those who visit say they want lands and shores protected. But when it comes to directing money for this, more often than not political leaders and taxpayers decide other things like schools, transportation and economic development -- that dodgy and unquantified notion often exploited for government handouts -- take precedence.

The prevalent belief is that areas left natural have little, if any, monetary value; nice to look at, nice to have, but what have they done for us lately?

The answer is a lot. Mountains and forests provide clean sources of water. Hawaii's shorelines, oceans and green spaces are at the core of the state's economy. Without them, the tourism industry would not exist.

A proposal being considered by the Legislature would increase the state conveyance tax, which now collects a scant $1 for each $1,000 of the value of real property that changes hands. A portion of the money would go to a land conservation fund -- which has stood empty since it was set up in 1973 -- to buy available land in partnership with state or county governments and nonprofit groups for preservation and to sustain already-established natural area reserves.

The idea is to save them for the future so that they do not go the way of human-produced aspects of Hawaii, and they don't become subjects for annoying nostalgia. Natural areas are our true legacy.