Molokai

Little has changed on Molokai...the clock has moved ahead barely a moment...the island slumbers peacefully in the warm Hawaiian sun. Trade winds funnel into Halawa Valley. It’s a lifetime removed from crowds and traffic of the cities--so still one can nearly hear a petal drop.

A huge moon shines down on Molokai tonight and the Ebb Tides are picking away at the strings over at the Pau Hana, which is the island’s oldest inn.

They’re doing their number under an immense banyan tree next to the ocean. Four guys the size of Brahman bulls playing “Tiny Bubbles” while barefoot islanders in tank tops and shorts boogie under the stars.

Because it’s Saturday night, customers are hit with a cover charge. That’s right, no one gets in free at the Pau Hana. Not on Saturday. This is no backwater joint. It costs a buck to make your way past the big moose at the door. What’s more it costs another buck for a beer. Hey, who’s kidding? Isn’t this the same Hawaii where they get $4 and $5 for mai tais at those fancy hotels over in Honolulu?

Well, sure, but Molokai has escaped those shenanigans. Molokai is different. Molokai is old Hawaii--Hawaii before the tour buses and high-rises and too many tourists and third-rate talents like Don Ho with his low-life humor.

On Molokai it’s a tradition on Saturday night for locals to gather at the Pau Hana. Island girls in minis and muumuus and island guys in red tank tops and shorts. Torches flame beside the ocean and candles flicker at tables scattered under the old Bengalese banyan with its gnarled branches and a trunk bigger than the bar itself.

Besides Hawaiian melodies, the Ebb Tides grind out pop tunes and the crowd dances until the moon vanishes. After the bartender waves everyone off, they leap into a bunch of battered pickups and VW Bugs and chase off down the road to parties that go till dawn. Or sometimes till the sun is high in the Hawaiian heavens.

I remember when the Pau Hana was called the Seaside Inn. A Coke machine rattled all night long outside my door and trade winds blew through the window. The place had no air conditioning, but no one minded. Weather-beaten frame cottages stood in a grove of palms and rain pounded the rusty old metal roofs like hail hitting the side of a barn.

The fragrance of plumeria drifted into my room and outside great bursts of bougainvillea wrapped themselves against the entrance. Moisture dripped from the ceiling and the room was musty, but this is the tropics, so who cared? In my mind I was a million miles from the crowds and traffic snarls of the cities and it was simply wonderful.

Happily, little has changed on Molokai. I don’t mean just at the Pau Hana where a few new bungalows and a swimming pool have been added. I am talking about the entire island. On Molokai the clock hasn’t moved ahead hardly a minute. The only concession to big-time tourism is a development along the western shore.

Otherwise, the island remains unchanged. It slumbers peacefully in the warm Hawaiian sun, trade winds blowing through the old plantation town of Mauna Loa and funneling into Halawa Valley, and down 2,000-foot cliffs that dive straight to Kalaupapa, the colony where Father Damien shared his faith and his compassion with the forgotten.

On Molokai the roads are mostly deserted. Hawaiians who occupy little frame shanties by the sea are content to live the simple life. I recall when there was but a single daily flight to Molokai. It landed at a ramshackle old terminal that a heavy gust would have toppled.

A few jalopies were for rent, but there was no Hertz or Avis--and no one guaranteed you’d get as far as the street in one of those wheezing old disasters. Ours broke down and we wound up pushing it two miles back to the owner’s house near the airport. He gave us a vintage coupe and less than a mile away it blew its radiator, sputtered and stopped.

Molokai’s frontier town, Kaunakakai, resembles the scene from an old John Wayne flick. It hardly stirs during the heat of day. Sometimes it’s so still that one can nearly hear a plumeria petal hit the earth.

Islanders shop in a Chinese grocery and buy bread and pastries at Kanemitsu’s Bakery, and there’s a decrepit old poolhall where the locals gather to play snooker and drink Primo, the local beer. Sometimes on Saturday night they get into beefs and punch each other out.

By morning, though, it’s forgotten. They meet at a coffee shop/bar that’s run by an old Hawaiian woman where they laugh it up and order another beer. Besides, usually they’re too hung over to start the fight over again. And anyway, this old Hawaiian lady with the stringy hair and the wrinkled muumuu gets plenty miffed whenever someone starts a beef in her joint.

Several years ago the foreman of a ranch up the road stormed into her cafe. He was after a couple of guys who’d stolen his cattle. This time the old Hawaiian woman said nothing. She remained behind the counter. She sensed that this paniolo meant business.

With several of his boys, the cowboy hustled the two customers out the door, loaded them into a pickup and drove off, dust flying, which illustrates what I said about Kaunakakai being a frontier town. (He got his cows back.)

Mule Drag Race

Only last September the Great Molokai Mule Drag Race took place in Kaunakakai. Starting at the local dive shop, it ended at the Molokai drugstore. The first team to cross the finish line won the Grand Muleskinner Award. After this, others chased greased pigs at Kaunakakai ballpark, got into a cattle raffle and helped crown Molokai’s paniolo queen. Her prize was a trip to Honolulu, and when you have spent your entire life on Molokai, that’s like flying to the moon. Well, Paris anyway.

On the eastern shore of Molokai axis deer gallop down slopes knee-high in velvet grass, stirring up pheasant, dove, chukar partridge and quail. Several miles beyond here water pours into the haunting Halawa Valley, spilling furiously from Moaula and Hipua-pua falls.

The valley, possibly Hawaii’s loveliest, was hit by a tidal wave nearly 40 years ago. After this the Hawaiians left. The foundations of homes and churches remain, along with a few hippies who grow pot.

The jungle valleys on Molokai’s north shore are accessible only by helicopter and boat, with sheer cliffs plunging hundreds of feet to the shore.

Bucolic Countryside

Molokai’s bucolic countryside extends for miles, past taro farms and little New England-style churches and homes with metal roofs and open windows so the breezes can blow through.

Until recently, pineapple fields carpeted the island’s rolling hills. Now the plantation towns have been phased out. Dole and Del Monte are gone. The plantation of Mauna Loa slumbers except for a market and a service station and the kite shop of bearded 45-year-old Jonathan Socher who fled the freeways of Los Angeles eight years ago for the country lanes of Molokai.

Earlier, Socher met his wife at a Buddhist mission in India, but that gets complicated. Just say that they’re content peddling kites on Molokai and let it go at that. Socher, who writes whimsical poetry, calls his store The Big Wind Factory and tells his customers flat out, “I’m the big wind!”

No Need for Fortune

He isn’t making many bucks, but his life style doesn’t call for a great deal of cash, either. In the beginning, while collecting unemployment, he hung out with locals who taught him to fish. Four years ago, flat broke, he opened the kite shop. Weekdays are mostly quiet and so he plays chess or goes outside and flies a kite, a middle-aged Huck Finn having a simply wonderful time. And, well, if he feels like really being lazy he curls up in a hammock and takes a snooze.

Socher tells you that all this sure beats fighting rush-hour traffic on the Ventura Freeway.

Socher’s kite store is just up the hill from the island’s only major hotel, the slick Sheraton Molokai, an enclave of two-story Polynesian-style bungalows surrounded by an 18-hole golf course on the shores of Kepuhi Beach. Remember, this is an island without a single elevator. No night life, no TV. If you’re looking for action, remain on Oahu or try Maui.

At the Sheraton Molokai there’s only the peaceful wash of the ocean and the sky blazing with stars, the darkness uninterrupted by the lights of other resorts.

Close by are other beaches, Papohaku, Kawakiu and Pohakumauliuli, and if you can’t pronounce it, don’t worry. Neither can half of the Hawaiians.

Hideaway Will Do

If it’s peace one seeks, Sheraton’s hideaway will do. Besides golf and tennis and mule rides to Kalaupaupau, guests join safaris to Molokai Ranch Wildlife Park with its giraffes, eland, Barbary sheep, ostrich, ibex, oryx, antelope and other wildlife ordinarily found in places like Ngorongoro Crater, Serengenti and the Amboseli Game Preserve.

Twice a day vans spread out to Molokai’s wild animal park. Roaming the spread are 400 African and Asian animals. All that’s missing is a pride of lions.

Earlier, operators of the 67,000-acre Molokai Ranch were collecting wild animals for zoos when someone got the bright idea--why not start a wildlife park here on Molokai? Terrific, said the boss.

Now it costs 12 bucks for a tour that looks like a slice of Kenya. It’s not Africa, but that means not having to worry about swatting tsetse flies. A few mosquitoes, maybe, but no exotic bugs.

That’s the word from the big moose steering the safari van.