(This is a politics-free zone but I have one word for 2021 so far: JesusChristoManassusKenworthLoadaSchistDropForgedMotheramaCarambaBananaDingDong. And Whoa. That’s it. Speechless. Words fail.)
That lovely seafoam and forest green sculptural scooter above is a British Maico and it sold for around $600 in the early fifties. Fifteen to twenty grand might get you a nice one today. Reminds me of a Hudson Hornet. And that color! It’s Ike on the golf course, homemaker in her all-electric kitchen, Marshall Plan, More Doctors Smoke Camels pastel and proud of it soft two-tone GREEN. It was a tossup for me whether to go bull-baiting, cop head-turning red for my 1949 cruisemobile Ford, or this Seafoam Green. Guess I’d rather be red, thanks, and no turning back. If I rob any banks or payday loan storefronts it’ll have to be with my ’03 Chevy pickup. But that particular green was a thought for awhile. And it has nothing to do with what follows—I just liked that Maico is all.
Good color, green. We got married here thirty-three years ago. Seems like last week.
Haleakala Volcano, early a.m
History. Thirty-three years ago today, F and I got married in Maui. It was at a small, charming church in Kihei, the Keolahou Congregational Church, by the Reverend James W. Pifer, a portly gent who was featured in that night’s production of Fiddler on the Roof at a Maui playhouse.
A good friend on the island, Tim Morrow, gave us a furnished condo at Kaanapaali Plantation for the length of our stay. He was in the process of selling it, and shortly before we arrived an NBA player said he wanted it, and he wanted it immediately. Tim said wait a couple or three weeks. It’s a wedding gift to some friends of mine, for their stay on the island. NBA guy says no deal, now. Tim says no deal then, sorry. NBA guy waited. We didn’t know about this until afterward or we’d have made other arrangements.
This same friend had been an ad agency owner in Chicago years before, and one of his stories involved taking a horse up to a prospective client’s office in an elevator. Tim was flamboyant, fun and generous. I had spent a lot of time with him years before when I’d been interested in partnering in a Maui agency that was floundering (not his, anything he turned his hand to flourished) but it was not to be.
Freddie and I had a beautiful time on Maui, and what a way to start our life together. In these crazy times, it’s even more of a pleasure to look back on those idyllic days and nights. Reminds me of a Sinatra song, some of which went: Like painted kites, those days and nights, they went flyin' by, The world was new beneath a blue umbrella sky. Whoa, getting nostalgic here. Heck that’s okay. Thirty three years. Think it’ll stick?
That parrot picture to the right was taken in Lahaina and the bird guy says, “Don’t panic, it’s organic.” But the birds were polite to the newlyweds. We spent a lot of lazy hours on the beach, cooling off now and then in that azure blue Pacific. The little pic above left was taken on Haleakala at sunrise. Cold up there in the early a.m. Shoot, I want to go back right now, but they’re having covid problems like anywhere else—on a lesser scale, though, thanks to careful attention to CDC guidelines and a strict mask and gathering law. We did go back a few years ago and it was just as Edenic as it was before. Like they say, Maui No Ka Oi.