File it finished

A family carpentry shop that was a fixture in Kalihi for decades is going the way of all its old neighbors

Some family trees take root and blossom forever, and a family business continues. Others send up shoots in unexpected places, and the family continues but the business does not. That's life.

Consider the Chung Carpentry Shop in Kalihi. Bus riders of a certain age might remember the modest corrugated-metal building butting up against the Umi Street Turnaround for the Honolulu Rapid Transit Co., the side facing the street decorated with a charming mural and a metal cut-out of a Hawaiian chief.

David Chung pauses and looks around the dusty shop. The mural was painted by a sister-in-law, Susan, who died of cancer some years ago. Out back there's an enormous Navy-surplus plank planer, the size of a washing machine, that Uncle Jimmy used to shape the boards to re-plank the hull of his fishing boat Oio, a surplus torpedo retriever. Over here used to be a vertical ladder that Chung's father climbed every Saturday morning to sharpen his saw blades.

"A very distinctive sound, almost musical," said Chung. "Zinngg -- zinngg ... using a small triangular file on each tooth."

"Need good eye, good hand," said Uncle Jimmy, who was poring over buckets of galvanized nails. "You know it's right when a needle slides perfectly down between the saw teeth. That's one well-sharpened saw."

"Hey, Uncle," wonders Chung. "Does anybody in town still sharpen saws?"

"Used to be one place, Pohukaina area. But no more. Gotta mail 'em to the mainland."

"The sharpening noise was what I woke up to every Saturday," mused Chung. "I climbed up into the area to clean it out and ran into the clamp used to hold the saws, and could almost hear the sound again."

A lot of memories.

The sign that says "CHUNG CARPENTRY SHOP" now hangs on the inside of the shop. The only sign on the outside says "DRINKING/NO SLEEPING/EATING." "Under new management," said Chung. "It's a different neighborhood than when I was a kid."

The bus turnaround is gone. Across the street is a rental storage area that used to be an HC&D concrete plant and before that a garden, both of which took advantage of a natural artesian spring. At the end of the street was Thomas Pineapple Co. -- later Libby of Honolulu -- that was destroyed in a fire. At least that's what Uncle Jimmy remembers.

The shop itself is built atop the old right-of-way for the OR&L railroad (which is why the bus turnaround was next to it), and that explains why the property is long and narrow. It's only 40 feet wide, and that includes a driveway.

In the 1930s, Kam Lum Chung and wife Lin Tai had a carpentry shop on Kalihi Street -- "I went to the address recently, but there's a warehouse there now," said Chung -- and when the railroad sold off their rights-of-way in the late '40s, the Lums snapped up the long, narrow lot and built a new shop. The sides are made of surplus corrugated metal from military Quonset huts, bought from Frank Fasi's salvage company, and the metal still shows the stress lines from where it was straightened.

Right behind the shop, nestled under the eaves, the Lums built a home and raised brothers David Chung, Bernard "Brother" Chung, and sisters Cynthia "Oi" Chung and Evelyn "Girlie" Chung.

Kam Lum died a couple of decades ago, and the shop became a workshop space for the brothers. But when Lin Tai died at age 92 a couple of years ago, it was crunch time. What to do with the family business?

"My sisters were in favor of selling the property and cashing out," said Chung. "Bernard wanted to continue using the space for building projects -- he built a car from a kit right over there! -- and so it was up to me."

David Chung was using the space as well, as a place for his hobby of turning wooden bowls. But most of the workshop was cluttered and unused. Although they still owned the family business space, no one had continued the business itself.

David Chung made the decision to sell, but negotiated the sale so the family could use the space rent-free for a couple of years. That time period is running out, and last month they filled a Dumpster with unsalvageable trash from the shop. Cathartic, was the way David Chung described it. "Once in there, your stuff, the stuff you grew up with, becomes anonymous. It's just old rusty junk."

A fair amount of good stuff remains. On Oct. 14, family and friends are invited into the shop to pick through the old tools and stuff. What remains will be sold off in a kind of garage sale, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 4 and 5. (Information: 247-7099.)

Chung has begun to move his bowl-shaping tools and log sections to his Kaneohe home. He'll continue his hobby -- "I need it to keep myself from going crazy!" -- and wife Johanna said she's looking forward to it. Maybe there's another family business in a nascent stage.

In the meantime ...

"Get plenty of galvanized nails here. Plenty," said Uncle Jimmy, letting them rattle through his fingers, back into a bucket.

"Does anybody still use galvanized nails anymore," wondered David Chung, "or is everybody using nail guns? I don't know. I'm not in that business anymore."