Another goal of this trip was to visit our family's house in Manoa Valley where I grew up. I had left most of my old high school year books there two dozen years ago, and I decided to finally retrieve them. The old neighborhood was no longer the same; all my friends had also long ago grown up and moved away. Just as in my old house, strangers now lived in most of their houses. But the valley remains: stubbornly resisting the onslaught of the 21st century (and most of the 20th too).
The fixtures of the valley seem to be slipping away. Paradise Park, the source of the peacocks that used to rule our front yard, usurping my old tom cat, has long since been closed. The popular tourist spot, Waioli Tea Room, seems to have fallen on hard times too. Because we used the Waioli grounds as a short cut home from school for years, I could readily spot the decay. The famous Robert Louis Stevenson grass shack was gone, leaving only a concrete pad being rapidly reclaimed by the jungle. And the open air roofed dining areas in the back had also disappeared under years of agressive jungle growth. There didn't seem to be the hustle and bustle of tourists like when I was growing up. Perhaps the tourists are all occupied shopping in the lovely authentic Prada, Chanel, and Louis Viton stores that have displaced all the fun stuff in Waikiki. Feh.
