I grew up in the sugar plantation town of Waipahu on the island of Oahu. Our homes were provided by the plantation and my parents paid a very low rent. We called it "the camp". It was on a sort of flat hill.
We were about two houses away from the sugar cane fields and when they burnt the leaves for harvesting the canes we'd get a black ash shower that would have mom scrambling to get her laundry in.
There were huge mango, avocado, lemon, banana, tangerine, star fruit, plumeria, etc. trees everywhere. My brother and I had the entire "camp" to play in. Our parents never worried about us.
This is a photo of mom and Dennis in front of our house and our huge mango tree.
And here's Dennis swinging from the avocado tree in the back yard.
We had so many avocados that it was a chore to get them all given away.
I confess that when I got older, I may have felt a little embarrassed about living there instead of a regular home. However, now that we're older, my brother and I regret not having taken more photos of the place because it's all gone.
When I was in Chicago, Dennis sent these photos to me to describe how it looked. The camp had burned down. He'd taken his sons to see the place he grew up in.
The area was later sold, plowed over and graded so that everything that used to be there was completely obliterated. It's as though it never was. There are only stores or new homes there today. We've tried to drive around the area but can't find any landmarks to tell us where our home might have stood.
It's really a strange feeling.
We were about two houses away from the sugar cane fields and when they burnt the leaves for harvesting the canes we'd get a black ash shower that would have mom scrambling to get her laundry in.
There were huge mango, avocado, lemon, banana, tangerine, star fruit, plumeria, etc. trees everywhere. My brother and I had the entire "camp" to play in. Our parents never worried about us.
This is a photo of mom and Dennis in front of our house and our huge mango tree.
And here's Dennis swinging from the avocado tree in the back yard.
We had so many avocados that it was a chore to get them all given away.
I confess that when I got older, I may have felt a little embarrassed about living there instead of a regular home. However, now that we're older, my brother and I regret not having taken more photos of the place because it's all gone.
When I was in Chicago, Dennis sent these photos to me to describe how it looked. The camp had burned down. He'd taken his sons to see the place he grew up in.
The area was later sold, plowed over and graded so that everything that used to be there was completely obliterated. It's as though it never was. There are only stores or new homes there today. We've tried to drive around the area but can't find any landmarks to tell us where our home might have stood.
It's really a strange feeling.
Interesting, my mom's birthplace is now a ghost town with no buildings anywhere. It's empty though the streets are still there and the cement steps to a two story school building that is gone too.
ReplyDeleteThat's so sad, Lin.
Deleteits amazing how things can change so dramatically, but you and Dennis and your Mum are still here and thats the most important thing,
ReplyDeleteIt must be amazing to have that fruit growing all around you, so exotic to these winter weary eyes!
I'm wishing spring for you, Laurie. :-)
DeleteProgress! Our childhood home (in NY state) is still standing, but the woods and fields surrounding the old neighborhood are gone--new houses all around. On the trip home, we drove right over the spot where my grandparents' house once stood (rte. 81 in PA). Today, kids just do not have the freedom to wonder the way we did. So who gets to define 'progress'?
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that we can never let our kids out of our sight these days.
DeleteInteresting, of a time gone by.
ReplyDeleteThe first home I remember was a low income apartment, "The Projects." We moved when I was two. I found my way back several years ago; it was a poor, shabby place. Recently I looked at google maps for it; and it is a vacant field.
ReplyDeleteYes, you led a very special life. You did not know it at the time, but as a photographer I think we do not take enough photos of what seems commont to us
ReplyDeleteI understand -- when the landmarks of our childhood are gone, we have a real sense of loss.
ReplyDeleteI guess it feels like we're not grounded. It's weird.
DeleteSo you were in a sense a "farm girl" too! You had different fruits to pick, and probably year round, unlike me on my childhood farm, but enough to still make you want to grow things, like maybe that Meyer lemon!
ReplyDeleteI can still drive by my childhood home and farm in Oregon. I'm glad you have these photos, for your sake, and that you posted them, for your readers' sake.
We had horses until I was about two years old I was told. After that we only had tall trees and gardens. Everyone had a garden to supplement their diets.
DeleteI hate it, the way we just obliterate the past in this country!
ReplyDeleteDennis still has the same look, even if everything else is gone. I tried it find a place where I lived as a child in California, but it was gome, too. It is a strange feeling!
ReplyDeleteI have heard that people brought up on the plantations do NOT yearn for the good old days. Hardships created a "the good old days? They were rotten" feeling. Since Hawaii is awash in nostalgia for the good old days, that must create a layer of complexity.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't yearn for it much. Our grandparents really struggled. However, we were children and just liked running around. My grandmother used to tell me terrible stories of the difficult life she had working on the sugar cane fields while carrying a baby on her back. She couldn't change the diaper so her back would often be wet and smelly.
DeleteNostalgia. I think like that now and again, too. The past only lives on as ghosts in our memories, and eventually there will be fewer and fewer who can remember them as we all, too, pass. This is the nature of life, to recycle the living spaces that once were. I once acquired a large box full of hand tools, some obviously much older than I was... large heavy chisels with heavily mushroomed heads and some tools which no longer served any purpose. The marks on them attested to their heavy usage and I remember spending hours turning them over in my hands, thinking on how many prior owners had sat thus, examining them and wondering on owners long gone and tasks which must have seemed important at the time, but which now could touch me only as a vague sense of loss and forgotten purpose.
ReplyDeletewalt
This is so true, Walt. Mom says your family used to like the avocados from our tree. I remember it as being very buttery, but I was so tired of it that I didn't want to eat avocados after we left the plantation home.
DeleteMy fiancee took me to her old apartments she used to stay with her grandparents when she was young. They were so run-down she was heart-broken at the time.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh... but at least she could see her old place.
DeleteAgain, synchronicity lol...just this past Sunday we passed by my childhood home. I usually see it from a distance when passing on the streets in town but we actually stopped in front this time. Husband needed to do an emergency stop and the closest convenient place to stop was right in front of our old house. I told our granddaughter who was riding with us that I grew up in that house. What a strange feeling to know someone who doesn't know us is now living in the home where I grew up.
ReplyDeleteMy mother lived in a camp in Kauai during the 20s and 30s perhaps like what you described. However, she didn't enjoy her childhood there and repeatedly told us that she suffered being bullied by others. She also worked very hard in those days with chores from sunrise to sunset being the oldest child. Husband thinks it left a huge scar on her personality. Seems your days at camp in Waipahu was much different. It could be the fact that life was more modern with convenience in the 50s and 60s.
L...w
L...w
I'm so sorry for your mom. That must have been so hard. My mother was a very strong personality so nobody bullied her. She was the eldest in the family, class president of her school (in North Korea) and the priest's daughter. It was her duty to protect those who needed help. She said she was always under pressure to be good because all eyes were on her.
DeleteThe camp days weren't bad for us because we didn't know any other life.
What wonderful memories you must have - and what parent wouldn't love to raise their children today in such a wholesome environment as you experienced? The first time I visited our family's old home place (following a 20+ year absence) it seemed so much smaller than I remembered as a child. And it felt so odd knowing that strangers live there now. Maybe it's true that we can't go home again. I enjoy your blog! -- Jan
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jan. It's so lovely to meet you.
DeleteI'd like to know more about your life on that farm. My grandfather's farm is gone now and I felt like a part of my heart had been ripped out when I stood at a very serious fence and realized I was no longer welcome on that property.
ReplyDeleteActually, it wasn't a farm, but a sugar plantation. It was very rural. We always felt like country bumpkins when we were older, but when we were young the whole place was a playground.
DeleteYes, little Dennis still has that same smile, and your Mom was beautiful then, as now. It seems the buildings were made of wood, and not meant to last as long as they did. Parts of the southern Kauai plantation area look totally different than when it was a thriving community. Keep the memories! (Bet there are some additional older photos at a library or museum in town.) DrumMajor
ReplyDeleteYou know what? You're right! He does still have that baby face. My friends used to always tell me how beautiful my mother was. She was just my mother to me. I look like my father.
DeleteI wish I had grown up there with you, Kay.
ReplyDeleteWe would have had so much fun, Dina.
DeleteThanks for sharing living, yet fading history
ReplyDeleteALOHA from Honolulu
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