What made you "local"? I grew up on a small plantation camp called "Paauhau". I lived there for 28 years, same house...

• Planting, burning, harvesting, and hauling sugar cane.
  
• Playing in the huge sprinklers that watered the cane.
  
• Catching crawfish in the ditch.
  
• Plantation life, housing, segregation, and climbing banyan trees.
  
• Banana, ulu, haiden mango, common mango, papaya, and passion fruit growing wild.
  
• The Checkers and Pogo Show
  
• Primo beer
  
• Candies shoes and wrap around shorts
  
• Our "hana buttah" days
  
• Southern Comfort, Olomana, The Brothers Cazimero, Kalapana, Cecilio and Kapono
  
• Frank DeLima, Andy Bumatai, Rap Replinger, and Booga Booga
  
• Portuguese Sausage, Eggs, and Rice
  
• Plate Lunches
  
• Bento
  
• Weekend visits to Hapuna Beach, Waipio Valley, and Mana Road.

This were some of the things that were uniquely a part of Hawaii...what were uniquely a part of your heritage?


.
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 9:35:19 PST 2003 by LaVisHh]

Beautiful idea, toolittle time to post though

gooeythehamster said:

I understand, it's not the quicky post. Thanks for stopping by though.

I just had a huge reply ready and it just got erased! Son of a bitch.

TRON said:

2 strikes...

The beach..The Ocean...Climbing the cliffs of PaloVerde California and getting to the bottom and finding different shells and lil sea things (like sand dollars)...Jumping off of the Santa Monica pier and swimming back up to shore only to run back up catch another wave to swim in... Will Rogers Park, Horse back riding. Driving down from Hollywood through Beverly Hills to Malibu and then taking PCH all the way around the coast to San Pedro...The beach, the beach, the beach! PALM TREEs...I miss the Palm Trees, thank goodness I am able to go visit once in a while...never want to leave but I have to. Hopefully one day I want to settle down in nice quiet place and just enjoy the quiet...but until then... ... and

hmmm... tough...


- red rice
- collard greens with corn dumplins & hoppin' john
- poverty
- gullah
- some rednecks
- angel oak trees & palmetto trees
- the beach
- shrimpin' & crabbin'
- taking the ladies down to the charleston battery
- hanging out at the mall
- lots of folks coming up from mexico during the summer to work the labor camps...
- sitting in a hot-ass car with no a/c in the middle of the summer while the drawbridge is letting boats through... although i hated this one at the time, it's something i love now... i never realized how much i liked johns island, until i got stopped by the bridge a few years ago... and i just sat there and looked around me and realized how much i love that place...

however, the last time i went home i saw that they were building a much larger, newer bridge that would be large enough that the boats could pass under it... people's homes had to be knocked down and all kinds of shit... all because the rich bastards with their vacation homes complained about being stopped by the bridge... ... none of the people who were born and raised on that island want a new bridge... everyone was perfectly happy with the old one... then again, most of the people who were born and raised there and didn't move off are kinda poor... i guess money talks...


i can't really think of anything else right now... i'm still thinking about the bridge... ...

i don't know that there is one place that i would call home... i was born in charleston, sc... and lived in charleston until i was about 10, when our house was repossesed... then we moved to johns island... although there is only a 10 minute drive and a drawbridge seperating charleston & johns island, they really do seem like 2 very seperate places...

a lot of charleston is old-school (that's how it makes its money), but it's mostly the white old-school (the plantations, the rich folks houses on the balcony)... so, you get to see the white side of the story on the way things used to be...

but johns island is the black old-school... that's where you find a lot of the gullah heritage... and that's where i lived until i went off to college... completely different culture in a lot of ways... you get a different perspective on a lot of the same shit...

a funny thing about downtown charleston, though, is the ghetto... if you were just the average tourist, you wouldn't understand what was going on... it's funny because a lot of the houses that are condemned in the ghetto look exactly like the houses on the battery, only falling apart... they are the same houses that have been standing in charleston for years and years... now, it's the ghetto... so, what was old-school to the rich white people is now-school to the poor black people...
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 6:53:34 PST 2003 by EllisDee]

LaVisHh said:

i particularly liked the webfcfbcfwvegfbwigfbwsienf cldxshnfewhnfc2t8743fvenfcognnf8cn38fg3nfgwnef8gnfgebvognbvbnnf3nvsbnv83vnbvnbvrqbv
shit...damn computer

shit, that was a long-ass post... sorry...

I don't know why, but I get a wonderful feeling inside when others write of personally meaningful things...thank you, O.

EllisDee said:

No! Please don't be, I loved reading it. It's passionate.

The short version:

I grew up outside of Detroit in Port Huron, Michigan.

Directly across Lake Huron is Ontario, Canada. It's an international city with lots of commerce going over our 2 bridges. And it's top 10 spots in the world for a possible terrorist attack.

I've heard from a meteorologist before that Port Huron receives the least amount of daylight of anywhere in the country. Also that it is the hardest spot to predict the weather for. I don't know if I believe him.

The city is quite diverse. To the south is the shady area of town. And the downtown. This is the "city proper". There are lots of gangs, shootings, drugs and run-down homes in that area. To the west are numerous hills, rivers, and wildlife. To the north are the suburbs and the more privileged neighborhoods. And to the east, like I said, is Canada.

I suppose the things that made me local are:

1. Where I grew up. My parents' home is right on Lake Huron. When you look out their front window, you see a gorgeous, expansive beach and the cleanest, nicest lake ever. In the summer it's very warm. In the winter it often freezes. So my childhood was spent swimming, boating, skating and just slumming around the beach.

2. My job. When I worked at a youth shelter for about 5 years, I spent most of my time in the southern and western parts of the city. We were located right across the street from one of the main drug dealers in town and it was common to hear a random gun fired off in the middle of the night. Many of the kids we helped were gang affiliated. I also did extensive work with the DNR on an erosion prevention project in the hilly area to the west.

3. My school. Port Huron is very conservative. And the schools are very competitive. At the time, I was one of the best students in my class. But by my senior year, I entered my rebellious phase and became anything but conservative and competitive. My highschool was very clique-ish and I did my best to not be boxed into any one group.

4. Detroit. Music is very important to us. I learned the value of a good record store and killer concert from my fellow Detroiters. I've always loved music more than anything but the enthusiasm here is infectious. I've heard many artists say it's their favorite city to play. That the 3 best audiences in the world are New York City, Chicago and Detroit. Plus, it's Prince's 2nd home.

LaVisHh said:

Wellcome! ...It was nice sharing.

LaVisHh said:

What was the first one?

Thank you, TRON.

TRON said:

gooey didn't have enough time...

LaVisHh said:

:LOL: yeah... it just really gets me worked up to know that rich people can move onto the island from godonlyknowswhere and just start changing things...


and it's obvious that the local people don't want them there... and it's easy to spot the new people... the rich people had to build another grocery store and everything... anytime they would come into the piggly wiggly everyone would be rude to them... the islanders make it really obvious that they don't want these people there... me and my friends used to hang outside the piggly wiggly during the summer and taunt the people...

so, now they have their own shopping center... :LOL:...

it's segregation all over again, except that this time, it's the black people that are calling for it...

i basically moved around too much to get attached to any one place...i worked it out once (with some family help) that by the time i was 17 i'd lived in 21 different houses

LaVisHh said:

Oh. I thought that it was 2 strikes against me.

Whew!!

MrBliss said:

i couldn't imagine that... i've moved a few times, and there is nothing that i hate more...

I grew up in El Paso, TX. It's a military town on the border with Mexico (yeah, I crossed the bridge to go drinking in Juarez when I was under-aged; everyone did).

There wasn't much culture in El Paso other than a distinctively hispanic feel to everything, but this was sort of cancelled out by the military feel of everything--El Paso is built around Ft. Bliss, a very large army base.

I learned to switch between having a Spanish accent and an English one depending on who I was hanging out with...most of my Spanish came from working as a dishwasher with the other po' folks.

I spent 4 years in the ROTC program in high-school, which in that town was a pretty big deal. I learned a lot about leadership and discipline there...I was even commander of the military drill-team in my senior year, and we were good!

I never go back, though, because gangs and crime have taken over the city. It's a real scary place now and I have no ties. My current home (Norfolk area) feels "right" somehow perhaps because of the huge military bases here, though I never became a military person--I cannot stand authority figures anymore.

So in answer to the original question...I'm not sure...I don't feel tied to any one particular place. But it was fun to share!

3rd strike!!!

I just wrote up a HUGE response to EllisDee, about the changes in Hawaii!!! POOF!!!

LaVisHh said:

... it's the thought that counts...

LaVisHh said:

you're out!!!

LaVisHh said:

Doesn't that just burn your cookies? Most of the time when I have a long-ass post, I copy it before I reply. I can't even count how many times my hard work has been erased and I had to start from scratch. I don't know why I didn't do it this time.

I'm going to (from now on) write my long posts out in Notepad, then copy and paste it to the org...

Take two!!!

Here goes, AGAIN!

Hawaii has been devistated by the Japanese, what irony, eh?

When the Japanese economy was booming, back in the eighties, they came over to Hawaii and invested heavily. They bought out land, businesses, and caused quite a stir to Hawaii's economy. The sugar mills were still operating, and everyone appeared ok.

Then the locals began to cry out, because the land values, along with taxes, were skyrocketing! People whose families had come to work in the sugar cane fields since the 1700-1800's were now unable to continue to live there because they couldn't afford the land taxes!

Then a great deal of them began to work for hotels, which were the Japanese main targets, and that too seemed great, at first. Then, when the Japanese economy plummetted, they took their money and ran! :O

If that wasn't bad enough, the sugar mills were losing money due to the U.S. getting "cheaper" sugar, and eventually...within a 10 year span after the Japanese "invasion" all sugar mills have shut down.

Now, all they have is the tourist industry...so sad... It's a mess out there, lucky they are very "ohana" (family) oriented, and know how to enjoy the beauty of life and nature.

LaVisHh said:

ouch... talk about drama...


so this is something that i've always wondered... exactly how close do the people of hawaii feel to the US..? for some reason, i've just never thought that hawaiians would identify much with the US...

Thank you, teller and MrBliss. I did consider that many people probably moved so often, they didn't really have any local connection.

Everyone's story is wonderfully unique, I could read this kind of stuff all day/night.

Maybe I should have become an Anthropologist?

EllisDee said:

They don't.

They look at the continental U.S. like they look at the movies in the theatre. A seperate entity. Like a dream. Visiting the "mainland" is something to brag about.

The Hawaiians want to gain back sovereignty over Hawaii. They have been battling this in the judicial system for many years. You can get detailed information here: http://hawaii-nation.org/

A while back, I posted how Hawaii was "stolen" from Queen Lili`uokalani ( http://hawaii-nation.org/soa.html ) by the United States Government...

.
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 7:30:55 PST 2003 by LaVisHh]

I grew up in a leafy suburb of North London called Southgate. The great thing was that the centre of London with all the action was only 30 minutes away on the underground, whilst the countryside was a ten minute car drive.The area I lived in retained it's villiage look, so it didn't really feel like you lived in London until you left the area.

The different nationalities of the kids at my primary school. English, Greek, Turkish, African, Indian, Oriental and all the different religions.

Strict English schoolteachers!

Scool trips to the National Art Gallery, Imperial War Museum, London Zoo, soaking up all the history.

Playing soccer on a freezing Saturday morning.

Riding round the parks with my friends on our BMX's.

The cherry blossom on the trees lining the road I lived in, in the summer.

Regularly witnessing 40,000 people in a professional soccer stadium and being carried along with all the passion, anger and humour that was generated.