Chapter 12: Linda Revealed

Her name was Linda and she was a local, hapa haole, born in Hawaii on the big island. Her father was a doctor and she grew up in Kona but came to Honolulu because her family was Catholic and they wanted that Jesuit run education for her. But she was Hawaiian in spirit through and through.

Her older brother also went to school with us, a couple of years ahead. He was a tall handsome dude and I would often see her with him. I thought them a couple before I found out they were siblings. That was a relief. I didn’t know how I would ever handle competition with my low self esteem.

Linda came to the car lot almost every day after classes. I started teasing her I was going to make her grub under the seats for goodies. And Wally always had the hots for her but she would just give him a hard time teasing the “old fart”. Wally was 45 years old. She knew he routinely chased prostitutes at the bars in Waikiki and she teased him about that. There was nothing you couldn’t say to her. Like the Hawaiian spirit in her she could take it and give it back plus. She frankly reminded me a little of Siza.

So at school we were considered a couple and girls still gave me the eye, seemed even more so. Linda, I thought, was more beautiful than anybody else hands down, easy. She made me feel proud like I was being accepted although I was so lousy at social politics and stuff like that.

I was teased constantly for always leaving school in a hurry for work, the rest of those rich kids having nothing better to do. But they didn’t know Linda was almost always with me at the car lot. I never again told any of them where I worked.

Because I’d begun driving cars from the lot to school it also attracted kid’s attention. Wally told me he didn’t care if I took something off the lot especially if I’d tuned it up and wanted to test drive it. That was cool. I didn’t have to pay for the gas and I took a wide variety of vehicles just to be different.

[Before I started working on it -- but surfers were nuts for this old truck and it ran good.]

The one thing that attracted some guys attention was what was called a Sampan, an old 1941 Chevy one ton modified and used in the cane fields to haul labor to and from.

It had benches in the back running fore and aft from the drivers seat all the way to the back gate. Open sided with curtains it was an all weather rig paradise style. It was big and dark green so I painted the 20 inch wheels white and surfers caught a glance and wanted to know more about.

It was one piece in a lot of 20 wholesaled from the new Ford Agency and Wally didn’t want it but kept it around for a while. Thus the two military brat twins at school whose father was an Army general wanted to get to know me better.

I thought they were kind of juvenile but I wasn’t a snob by nature. I broke my rule and told them where I worked. They could see for themselves. I was sure they would tell everybody at school what a dump I worked in but that was part of my mystique, I thought laughing to myself, the dirty boy friend of the most gorgeous girl at college.

Like magic (true story) they showed up at Pepo I’m sure expecting something different and I was all grubby with buffing compound splattered on me in the haphazard environment.

I was my usual friendly self but wanting to get a chance to tease those guys. Turns out the landlord of the car lot land demanded all dead rigs in no man’s land be hauled away or else. It was the usual demand, move it or pay more in lease payments for all the car lots. It was quite political.

There was Dave’s lot which he happened to own free and clear but he parked his junk with everybody else’s. Add to that Pepo and Maxwell Motors and you had plenty of dead cars adding to the stench. The homeless people would move in and plaster the car windows with old newspapers so they could sleep and who knows what and it was time to vacate, move on.

Finally there was almost no room to drive behind or even walk to Dave’s lot through all the dead car bodies. And once in a while you’d run into a scruffy looking homeless person who didn’t want to negotiate with you. But - we had to get into those cars to steer them off the lot and into the waiting transfer trailers heading to the North shore and the only existing junk yard piles on the island.

[Wedges Daughter: She was a local icon, family member of the people who owned a wrecking yard and she worked the business, her life’s work, wore her work as part of her reputation, an island life aside]

Dave and I, Iseka and a tow truck guy were in charge of moving all that stuff.

The two young guy wannabe surfers were teased to get involved. They were dressed in their college clothes and we started in towing rigs. When Iseka jumped in one old dodge sedan, papers plastered on the windows, he started screaming “Ukus, Ukus, Ukus, Ukus,” and Dave was screeching laughing, his style, as a flock of cock roaches came flying out the doors. We all started laughing, that is all but the two military brats and I yelled at them to “jump in a couple of rigs and get ready to roll”. I figured that would get them gone for good. It did. It worked. They were no where to be seen.

I didn’t pay attention and the next time we noted where they might be they had left without word. So I drove to school the next day in my Sampan and they never spoke to me again. Job well done. They avoided me like the Plague.

As mentioned I drove a variety of vehicles and it was a fun. I loved the pink Cadillac convertible with white upholstery and I was sorry when it sold. Linda said I looked like a pimp in that thing and I announced it was probably because I was one. I couldn’t embarrass her even in the hallways at school and she would get even with me.

One time I drove a Plymouth, basically a street drag racer with a huge hemi engine and a stall speed set up Torque-flight transmission. The car was a ground shaker, “rump, rump, rump” when it idled. When I stepped on it out in the street in front of the car lot it came off the ground and went sideways.

Really loud, that thing was a monster stripped of upholstery inside and lightweight. I drove it to school although the gasoline guzzler cost me. I pulled up around the parking circle hit the throttle hard a couple of times, parked and sat there and studied for a while. The Mynah birds were gone instantly and I should have been thanked by everyone for chasing those crappy birds away.

I always wondered why Wally bought that in a lot block wholesaled. It sat on the lot for quite a while. People, beach bums blowing into Waikiki didn’t want or need that kind of rig. It had only a driver’s seat, no room for Linda. But Wally said he got it so cheap he couldn’t turn it down. So I used to drive it down to the drilling company shop to visit Aron and Shorty. They thought it was so cool. “You should give Wally a cheap offer on this so you can go to lunch in it instead of that old Jeep.” I’d light up the tires as I left and they loved that, just one example of my $1.50 per hour transient outside benefits.