Maybe the last time Cully was in the back seat of anything with wheels.
March 31, 1946, Auntie Ruthie and Uncle McCully brought Cully to our house on Mokule’ia Beach from their home way way far away in Makiki. We got to play and have fun all day, and my father even pulled us in my wagon, too!
There weren’t many kids living in Mokule’ia and Cully was my very best friend. Probably the grownups had an early lobster dinner after putting Cully and me to bed, but I am not sure of that except my father always caught lobsters on the reef for his friends to eat when they came over. Anyway, Cully and his parents must have gone back to Makiki because they were not around the next morning, April 1st, when the phone started ringing and I woke up.
Dad was saying something about a bad jokes, tidal waves, April Fools day, and went back to bed with Mom. A little while later the house started to shake and the ocean came in our house and Mom and Dad were yelling and grabbing me and my sister Baba. Many, many years later Mom told me that Baba’s bassinette was actually floating in her room and the house was shaking and moving too! There were fish on the ground and seaweed and coral and stuff and the water was going back to the beach as they put us in our car and drove away as fast as they could. After a while my Dad and I went back to our house to see what was happening, but when we got there another wave was coming and the water was coming back up the beach and we had to drive away before it could come and catch us.
That is all I know about that April Fools Day except that our house was wrecked from the waves and we could never sleep in it, or anything, ever again.
Our house the next morning, my bedroom on the right
Oh, one of our neighbors, I think it was Tommy Frazier, climbed a coconut tree and stayed there until the waves stopped coming. Also, the man who called Dad was Alan Davis, whose wife called him from their ranch which was on the shore between Sandy Beach and Makapu’u. I wish that over the years I had asked my parents more about that day and what happened in the days after. I do know that many of you have your own stories about the Tidal Wave of April 1st, 1946, and if you would like to share them on this site, feel free to email me at nick@ramascreensaver.com
Getting back to Rama, my mother was totally freaked out by the events of that day and she insisted that her next home would be 1), much closer to town than Mokulei’a, and that 2) it would NOT be on the beach. After a trip to her father’s home in San Francisco, for a month or so of recovery from the tidal wave shock, we were back in Hawaii and soon found a temporary home, on the beach in Kailua, that was guarded on the mauka side by a giant banyan tree (that stands to this day near 104 S Kalaheo Ave). That tree happened to be the home of Rama, my secret friend who only I could see. One night we came home and I got out of the car and saw a toad (bufo) and started trying to catch it and I ran into a steel fence post SO hard that I fractured my skull so badly that I had to stay in the Queens Hospital for a week. My Godmother, Auntie Ruthie lived right up the hill from Queen’s, in Makiki, and she was the one who watched over me most of the time I was there. I’m not sure what she did with Cully – did she bring him, or leave him with a sitter Maybe that accounts for why I am so….uummm, maybe we should leave that for now. Suffice it to say, somewhere in this time frame my parents later told me I started talking about “Rama” who I gave credit when I was praised by my parents for doing the “right thing” – I would say, in two year oldese, “Rama helped me.”, . I grew up, to the extent that I have, lol, knowing that Rama, who lived in the mynah bird* (Banyan) tree, was my secret, invisible friend, and I guess he has always been with me, as have banyan trees (still have a banyan tree to climb in, care for, and endlessly trim and take to the dump lest it cover the whole neighborhood with its tendrils and trunks and ka-jillions of leaves
to be continued
- The mynah birds from all over gather at certain banyan trees like the one at 104 S Kalaheo Ave., and the one where Kailua Rd., Kuulei Rd., and Oneawa St. come together at sunset time to chatter and talk story before it is time to sleep.