TheBanyanTree: more stories again

[Mike Pingleton]

OK, OK, I have been hooked by the Hooki Lau. Somebuddy reel me in while I
reel from ancient remembrances.

Here's me own Hooki Lau story. In second grade, I was in Miss Bowman's class
at Blandford Elementary over near the Puente Hills. I did not want to be in
Miss Bowman's class. I wanted to be in Miss Dixon's class. Miss Bowman had a
beehive hairdo and cat glasses, and every time I open one of Gary Larsen's
Far Side cartoon collections, there is Miss Bowman staring back at me, and
it's 1965 and I am eight years old again.

I wanted to be in Miss Dixon's class because she was crazy-insane over
Hawaii. Miss Dixon was around sixty at the time, and she wore a muu-muu
every day to class. There was no bee hive on her head, but her long hair was
always adorned with a flower, and when she wore glasses, they were granny
glasses with little rectangular lenses. And the lei. I should not leave out
the lei around her neck each day.

One day Miss Dixon threw a Luau for the entire second grade. Our class
trooped over to her classroom, and as we went through the door she draped a
crepe-paper lei over each of our necks. We sat in a big circle and food was
passed around. I don't recall a roast pig, but there was pineapple, and
chunks of coconut. Everything was served on a banana leaf and eaten with our
fingers. There was a sweetened white rice, and poi. Poi, we were informed,
was fish. Miss Dixon left out the part that poi was raw fish. I suppose that
counts as my introduction to sushi.

After we ate, Miss Dixon played her ukelele and sang songs, and taught us to
sing the Hooki Lau. She had a lovely high voice, and we learned to throw out
our nets when we sang about throwing out our nets, and made little swimming
amu amu with our hands. Aloha, aloha, she sang to us, when the Luau was over
and we went back to our own classrooms. We got to keep our leis, of course.

I loved Miss Dixon. I did not like Miss Bowman, and she did not like me.
Much later in life I learned that she sent a letter to my parents, informing
them that I was mentally retarded, but that's another story.

Occasionally I'll hear some woman with a fluid voice, high and clear, and I
am thrown back to my second grade Luau.  Aloha, Miss Dixon, wherever you
are.

On 9/15/06, Tobie Shapiro <tobie at shpilchas.net> wrote:

       "We are going to a Hooki Lau
       Hooki hooki hooki hooki hooki Hooki Lau.
       Everybody loves a Hooki Lau
       Where the mau mau and the kau kau make a luau.
       We throw our nets, out into the sea
       And all the amu amu come a swimming to me.
       We are going to a Hooki Lau
       Hooki hooki hooki hooki Hooki Lau."