…again?
Doesn’t this imply once it was great and now it’s not?
If so, then wouldn’t it be true, only one who lived on Kauai during its great period could respond? I mean, what changed? To go from greatness to not so great must mean something changed.
My husband and I sailed to Kauai in 1969. We tied up at the sea wall in Nawilili, just around the corner, as it were, from one of the hottest hot spot saloons on the island. The first person we met was Walter Brian–Head of the Water Department–we’d known him on Oahu–and my husband was headed towards a job as Engineering Department Head of McBryde Sugar.
Sugar was King. Actually, managers of sugar plantations were Kings. Department Heads and their wives were Lords and Ladies. There was an inside joke: haolis lived in the haoli camps; field hands lived in Japanese camps, Filipino camps, Portuguese camps. But– by our time– racism was floundering. There were lots of shanties. Warm. Dry. It was a feudal state, but McBryde was benevolent. Mules–Brownie, Blackie and Caliban– wore saddles filled with seed cane to replant at planting season. It was a great life, for most of us. Bill loved the men he worked with, they loved him. Bobby Pfeifer was President, Ceo, and Chairman of the Board of Alexander and Baldwin of which McBryde was a totally owned subsidiary. There couldn’t have been a better man at the helm.
Cane was a dollar crop. Grown to maturity for almost two years. Burned to harvest. Cane fires flared in splendor in the still winds of early morning sky. Then milled and shipped to California to be refined and packaged and sent back home. Alexander and Baldwin is Matson, remember? Those guys didn’t go to school to carry their lunch. Sugar kept their ships full going out and full coming back.
This glorious field of long tall grass worked with grace and beauty to keep our air fresh. The air on Kauai, clean and invigorating, filled our lungs with the essence of life. Of health. Breathing is the most important thing we do on this planet. Breath bad air, breath illness and misery and death.
I see more cars–spewing stink and CO2 and sporting angry drivers–driving to Lihue then there were on the island when we arrived. Today, on Kauai, there are places where you should wear a little white mask to keep your lungs working.
We’d little crime. Few homeless. Few unemployed. We weren’t rich, but, for the most part, we were happy. Put a dollar sign on that.
Recently someone suggested we contact young Mark Zukerberg–philanthropist– to get us back on track.
May I humbly suggest we contact Ted Turner? He’s a philanthropist. He owns over two million acres of land. “The sad thing about destroying the environment is that we’re going to take the rest of life with us…” I think Bobby and Bill would have loved him. I do.
bettejo 
I remember too remember the Islands living and visiting the Islands as a young girl. I remember on Oahu you could see the boat harbor from the beach. That the Royal Hawaiian Hotel was one of the few and best hotels on Waikiki. I learn too swim 🏊 in the ocean and the beaches weren’t packed. No high rises, there was the old Chinese market what is downtown
where my parents shopped. This is what
they cause progress. I refuse to visit Oahu now and it’s happening all over the Islands. Corporate greed needs to stop on these islands. Kauai’s watershed is running dry stop the building .
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