In the spring of 1964 on a day just like today in New York, our family chauffer picked me up at boarding school in Connecticut and took me immediately to the airport to fly to Hawaii. It was spring break, and I had been anxiously awaiting this day since the morning I had returned back to school from Christmas break.
This had become the family routine for a few years. No matter where my parent’s were over spring break, they would fly me out to meet them. This year Hawaii, next year sailing a private yacht in the Caribbean.
Oh the hardships I had to endure. Leaving freezing New England for some warm, luxurious, sunny place. Interestingly enough, I even had a great deal of fun.
So with a runway that must have been too short, or a plane that was too large, I landed in Honolulu and the plane immediately overran the runway. I should have known then that something was out of order. Luckily no one was hurt and I was greeted by my parent’s with a lei they put around my neck. I think they were actually pleased to see me.
Off we went to the beautiful, pink, Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu for two weeks of sun and fun. The first thing my father did for his rather pathetic son was to arrange private surfing lessons. In Switzerland it was private skiing lessons, in the Caribbean it was private swimming lessons at home it was private golf and tennis lessons. It was as if he was trying to teach me the game of life.
No matter how much I tried or how often I surfed, I never really got the hang of it. It was O.K. but it was not for me. Just sitting out in the water waiting for the right wave seemed so beside the point, when as I searched the beach horizon from afar, there seemed to be so many girls of my age on vacation, lounging, talking, and looking quite cute and available.
Enough with the athletics, and lets get down to the basics of a boy looking for a cute girl. So I quickly abandoned my surfboard and took up beach combing. One afternoon by some miracle, I found myself next to the most beautiful creature on the beach, Ricky Randall. How’s that I still remember her name after all these years? We started talking and I remember going back to the place on the beach where her family was sunbathing.
You see sunbathing in the 60’s had gone way past an activity and had become an art. People would discuss at length how best to get tan. What was the best lotion? Everyone wanted to look bronzed and beautiful. To Hell with the 19th Century, where women would hide their faces with umbrellas from the sun, where pale, delicate skin was a sign of refinement. In the 60’s youth and handsomeness were all tied into the suntan.
My father’s favorite suntan lotion (and he was the bronze George Hamilton of his day) was by Ban de Soleil, and amber gel that not only made you look bronzed, but cooked you in oil like you were deep fried. Today, what lotion you use seems trivial, but in those days it was a serious matter. Your vitality was matched only by your suntan. My father died too early to reap all the benefits of years of exposure, me on the other hand that’s a different story.
Anyway, Ricky and I became companions. Me lusting over her, and she simply liking me and thinking I was funny. Our happiness together had no bounds. It must have been fate, because we took out a dollar raffle ticket together and won what every 17-year-old wants, a new washing machine. She lived in California and I lived in New York, so this romance was never meant to be. But it was great fun while it lasted.
A few nights before the end of our stay, just as I had gotten my routine down, and was actually truly enjoying myself, we went to a famous nightclub on the island called Duke Kahanamoku. I remember all of the sudden a man walked on-stage and in a very serious tone said a major earthquake had hit Alaska and a large tidal wave was heading for Hawaii. With that, everyone rushed out of the club into the streets where everyone was screaming and running. As I was walking on the beach to the hotel with my parents, I saw hundreds of kids running with their surfboards towards the water, with the police screaming at them from behind to evacuate the beach and seek higher ground. I guess these kids thought this was truly going to be the wave of a lifetime and they were not going to miss it. I don’t remember what was more ridiculous, the kids with their surfboards or the police chasing after them.
We got back to our hotel and all pandemonium had broken out. There were buses in the front where we were told that we could get into them and they would quickly take us to higher ground. If we decided to stay we must go to the roof of the hotel. I was ready to jump right into the bus to flee Dodge before it was too late, but my father would hear none of it. He said we were staying and up to the roof we went. When we got up on the roof a band was playing and they had set up a bar where we could watch the sea as it began to fill up with thousands of lights of all the ships. All the boats had left their berths to ride out the wave at sea. It’s as if the stars had moved to the horizon.
Everyone was drinking and dancing as we waited for hours. Finally, typical of my fearless father, he announced to my mother and myself that he was going to bed. With that he returned to our room to go to sleep.
My mother and I stayed, urging him to remain but he refused. Finally sometime later, there was a roar as we heard the ocean begin to recede from the shoreline. I could just make out from the roof thousands of fish lying on the bare sand, which just a few minutes before was covered by water. Suddenly we heard a roar and the water rushed to return to its source.
It entered the hotel’s lobby and did considerable damage to the first floor. But we were all spared. The next morning we heard that the north side of the island got the full brunt of the wave and was severally damaged. With this event we left Hawaii and Ricky to return to our lives. I went back to school, back to classes and back to the normalcy of my life.
In the light of recent events in Japan, perhaps this story seems inappropriate. It is really about Spring Break, but given the tragedy in Japan, I hope that no one feels me insensitive. As I have grown older, and I look at the tragedy in world, I now know what actually was possible. In my story the surfer’s, the band, the bar, they all seemed so removed from the possibility of catastrophic devastation. They all acted as distractions, which perhaps was their intention. I was young and naïve. Unfortunately, like all things in life sometimes there is nothing we can do. Sometimes you find yourself simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily for us that was not the case.