Barbara, being 5 years older than me, was someone I really looked up to. Not only going to a grown-up school like Punahou and playing the flute, and learning German (she taught us to sing Oh Tannenbaum in German on Christmas and was mostly successful) she loved cats and anything to do with cats.
The ancient Egyptians also had a lot to do with cats, thus she loved reading about them, and we had a few really nice "coffee table" books about them. So I read up on the Egyptians too. I doubt I learned as much about them as she did, but the ancient buildings and the sculpture and art, and the tales of adventure with archaeologists discovering the ancient tombs were all pretty interesting.
Barbara also had a huge shelf with every kind of cat statue, sculpture, pendant, teeny glass knick-knack imaginable. It was absolutely amazing. I wasn't supposed to, but occasionally I'd go into her room and admire them. I remember picking up a couple of the teeny ones just to look at them closer, but other than that the rule was "no touch"; I knew that.
She also had two "show" cats, white Persians, named Shara (male) and Shebti (female). They'd been "fixed" so they were not breeding cats, but they were very beautiful, and Barbara was always, with Dad's help, taking them to cat shows in the H.I.C., Honolulu International Center, now called the Blaisdell Arena unless they've changed the name again. I remember going along to pick her and the cats up, and I may have gotten to walk through a bit of one once, but mainly I remember all the tons of ribbons Barbara's cats won. And trophies too.
This was becoming the end of the Golden Age though. Dad's job at HC&D was not working out well, Mom was nagging him too much for him to be happy at home, and he bought a Datsun 240Z sports car so he could go out and drive around and get away from it all. Dad loved that car and so did we kids - it was really small but Dad and 4 of us could fit in there, 2 kids in back and 2 kids (one in the other's lap) in the passenger seat. Dad was always a car guy, not in fixing them so much but in driving them. Although his glasses were quite thick, he never had an accident. He was always very physically adept, a good swimmer, and woodworking and carpentry are fairly physical activities too.
Although the 240Z could not have been very expensive, I think it signaled the beginning of the end of the good times. I think the household budget was fairly delicately balanced, and that car may have been enough to tip it downward. Another huge factor would have been, with Mom nagging Dad so much, he was eating out at restaurants instead of eating at home and that makes a huge difference.
I remember Dad held a huge party, for what reason I don't know. Maybe it was to try to ingratiate himself with his bosses, or to "network" with some people to try to get a better job. Maybe he just decided he ought to throw a big party. So our lanai, which was quite large, was set up as the buffet area, and we stocked up on all kind of crackers and party foods, and we had a dragon dance. Everyone expected me to be scared of the dragon, but I stood right in front and smiled at the guy I saw peeking out of the mouth of the head. It was great. This was about the time Barbara was getting to know Tom Farrell, the guy she'd later marry. Alan was mad at Tom for a long time because he had taken the last piece of steak or something. He held that grudge for years.
I remember one time we went to a Boy Scout pancake breakfast, and were standing in line, in the hot sun, at the Hawaii Kai shopping center and I fainted. I kind of tottered over to a store front and fell against their window, chipping a front tooth. The thing is, I think we were short of breakfast foods at home so the idea was to just take the kids there. Another time Mom wasn't feeling well or something so Dad set me up to go to school, and cooked me a flat scrambled egg thing and I ate it up fast. He said I was a real "hungry tiger" and I hoped that meant he'd make me another, but he didn't.
Eventually it was decided that we'd sell the house. We had to keep it very neat, and "open house" people would come through. We kids had to be on our best behavior, or better yet, go out and play and not be around when the open house people were around.
During this time I got an ominous feeling, like everything I did or was, was fake. Cinda and I had these toy "motors" on our bikes, they were really just things you put batteries in and made a motor sound. I realized these were really fake, they're not a real motor, they need batteries, they don't make the bike go forward, and who are we fooling anyway? Anyone can tell we're on bicycles not motorcycles. And that feeling extended to everything, somehow. I think the root of it was my knowing that our settled, becoming rooted, life on Portlock Road was going to end.
If we'd been able to stay, maybe a couple more of us could have gone to Punahou (the only really good school in the state) or at least Kaiser High is decent. We'd have grown up with the same people, and that's a very powerful thing. When I tell people how much I moved around growing up, the first thing they say is "Army brat, eh?". I explain that no, my dad programmed computers ... and then kind of drift off because there's so much that happened, it was not like having a computer-programming Dad in Orange Country or Santa Clara County in California. Any computer programming job in Hawaii is tenuous at best, and if you're white they don't want you taking a local's job, so if you're white the best thing you can do is work in the tourism industry because you can relate to white tourists (be less intimidating) and Japanese tourists find it exotic to be waited on by a white person.
I've seen this in small towns in general - everyone's known each other from elementary school on, through high school, and what high school you went to is a question that *will* be asked.
It took a while to sell the house, and then some people, the Joneses, did buy it and there was an agreement for us to be out by a certain time, and with all the books and furniture and stuff we had, plus the house Dad was having built in Pupukea was taking longer than anticipated. So in the end, we had to leave before we had a house to move into. Obviously Dad must have gotten something out of the house on Portlock Road, because the land and pre-fab house in Pupukea were bought with something, but I believe we took quite a financial hit.
I don't remember saying good-bye to Portlock Road although I suppose I must have, but I think at the time I thought we would go back and visit, spend time on Little Beach, swim with the fishes at Hanauma Bay, have Dad point out the blowhole further up the coast, etc. But the truth of the matter is I did not see Portlock Road again for many years, and at times I missed it a lot.
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