Homes That I Remember...

Do you remember the Beatles song In My Life?

"There are places I remember...All my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone and some remain..."

Whenever our kids and grandkids come to Hawaii, we often take them to the Big Island where Art  grew up. They get to see the home where he spent his childhood and then the home they moved into next which was behind the mom and pop restaurant/soda fountain that his parents operated. It's a very special feeling to return to the places that will always bring him fond memories.

Someone asked me recently if the grandkids had seen where I grew up. No, they haven't because it's all gone.

It's rather disconcerting to think I can't even figure out where those places were.. once upon a time.

I spent the first 5 or 6 years of my life in an isolated large sugar plantation home in the middle of a sugar cane field in Kunia, Oahu, Hawaii. That's my grandfather on the porch. My father and mother are on the right of that family grouping. My grandmother (father's side) is the other lady. The two young girls are my older cousins. I don't think I was born yet. 

I know the home was demolished but I don't know when and I don't know where it was actually located. It's totally gone. My nephew said he was in what he thinks was the general area and saw some debris that might indicate where the house once stood.

Because the house was so far from school, my parents moved to another smaller plantation home, with a few neighbors... this time at what was called Camp 56. (I don't even know a town name to identify with that home.) That's me. I must have been about 7 years old.

I've asked my brother with the better memory, but he's not sure either. I think I remember getting chicken pox when we lived there... or was it measles? Hmmm....

From AI: 

"The historical location of Camp 56, one of the many plantation camps associated with the Oahu Sugar Company, is no longer a distinct, named area on modern maps. The original plantation camps have largely been redeveloped into contemporary residential and commercial areas within Waipahu...."

Whatever the case, it's completely, totally, forever gone too. 

Eventually, even that house was too far from school requiring a long bus ride so we moved to an actual town called Waipahu. It was another sugar plantation village.

I think I must have been about in the 2nd or 3rd grade by then. I think. We had LOTS of neighbors then and LOTS of friends to play with. My brother and I could even walk to school. I always told people it was about 5 miles to school, uphill both ways, but discovered later it was more like a mile. 😏

I lived there until I left for college and moved to the dorm and then to an apartment near campus. After Art and I married, we moved to Illinois. My brother sent me these bottom photos showing the aftermath of a fire. I don't know if it was purposely set by the plantation so the area could be used for as an industrial area. I don't know. The bottom left photo with my nephews is where our house once stood. The other photo is the neighborhood that we knew so well at one time.

And now it's all gone and nothing remains. 

It's a feeling of sadness of a time I can still remember.