Hawai'i #6

AAA To The Rescue Once Again

After several days of sitting on the wall with Dennis, I get a phone call early in the morning – too early for me to answer. When I listened to the voicemail, it was from Dennis, saying that his car had broken down a few miles up the road & he needed to get to town with ‘Lita, his impossibly sweet 95 pound Rottweiler/Bulldog mix who evidently thinks she’s a lap-dog & if I got the message & could possibly help him out to call him back. He had pissed me off a little the day before, so I didn’t jump to respond. But when we got ready to leave the room later that morning, I figured I’d go check & see if he’d made it to town. He was there on the seawall, weaving away. We chatted a bit & as I was walking away, he asked if I had a AAA card. I allowed that I did indeed. He asked if I was covered to have other cars than my own towed. I didn’t know, but told him I’d call them and ask after Megan & I went & explored the Farmer’s Market & ate.

Megan thought this was dumb, the guy had been doing nothing but give me a hard time, she said. I dunno…why not do something nice if it doesn’t cost me anything? Later when I called AAA, I just told them that I was visiting my brother in Hawaii & his car broke down & sure enough, they were happy to come tow it. Went back down to the seawall & told Dennis that we were go on that & hung out while he tried to figure logistics, whether we should go do it that afternoon, or later or the next morning. And he relented and told me that he’d go get me some of what I’d been seeking. But he’d need to take the rental car for about 45 minutes.

And I didn’t even hesitate. I somehow just trusted him. Megan thought I was nuts when I got back to the room and told her. But he was back in less than 45 minutes, not even giving me the chance to worry and obsess. He still wasn’t sure about when he wanted to do the towing thing, so he went back up to the seawall to sell more bowls. Megan & I enjoyed another lovely sunset & went to dinner at Don the Beachcomber at our hotel – excellent food – and when Dennis called during dinner we made plans to do the towing bit early the next morning.

The next morning, I drove a few miles north of town to Boomshakalakalaka Harbor (Honokohau Harbor), his pied a terre in Kona where he sleeps on the beach. (He spends half his time in Kona, weaving and selling his stuff, and the other half working at a taro farm with a Hawaiian family on the other side of the island). He went and got us some delicious Kona coffee to drink while we waited for the tow truck & we talked some more; he’d been talking to me for days about coming to sleep out under the stars on the beach with him, both Megan & I, (she wanted nothing to do with him at first, though), that we should go with him to the taro farm, get away from the hotel & Kona & see some real stuff. That morning I started to seriously consider it; we’d gained each others’ trust now. We were friends.

Megan & I were booked on the sunset cruise for dinner. It was so beautiful out there on the water and during that time of the evening when the sun is down and everything’s all blue, I noticed the older lady sitting next to me in tears. And I knew: she was grieving a death. And I reached out & touched her arm & asked her softly “You lost somebody, didn’t you?” Her husband had died in May, the same month my mother died. We talked a bit & I told her about my family and then I said, “You know, this is gonna sound crazy, but you should go down to the seawall and talk to the guy who weaves hats and bowls…he said some stuff that helped me.” When I told him about that the next day, he just laughed and said that talking to me probably helped her more than he could have.

“Do you see how it works now?”