Happy birthday, Spanky!
It would have been Jimmy’s 73rd birthday today. In the years that followed the completion of our stints in the military, me as a sailor and he, as a Ranger in the Army, we reconnected back in Sunset Beach where we both grew up. Our mothers were very close, as close as sisters could be, really. Sue, Jimmy’s mother, loved her coffee and cigarettes, as I remember. It seemed like either Mom was over at her house or she at ours. I remember that Sue like to work on puzzles and typically had a cigarette between her lips and a cup of coffee nearby. Jimmy and I shared a love of the ocean. I recall all those nights, we’d wait until the sun had set and we’d go spearfishing in the dark with our Hawaiian-style spear guns and rubber insulated flashlights, dragging a small innertube that held a rice bag, so we would have a place to put the fish. Uhu, aveoveo, manini, and sometimes even lobster found it’s way into the tips of our spears. So quiet and a little scary and in the beams of light, we would see various kind of unidentified little sea creatures swimming like little worms in the ocean. After I had transitioned from surfing on my old balsa wood surfboard (that ended up in two pieces while storm surfing), we both took up bellyboard surfing and spent so much time, usually at Sunset Beach, but also at other surfing spots along the North Shore, including Velzyland, the point at Waimea Bay and the Banzai Pipeline.
After we reconnected in the early 70’s, I learned that Jimmy had become quite the skilled Marijuana gardener and was producing some very potent pakalolo in his yard, I suppose with the blessing of his mother. I had never smoked marijuana before but after about the second time I tried it, I really developed an appreciation (shall we say) for the way it made me feel. There was always a tray at Jimmy’s with weed on it and he taught me how to separate the seed from the leaves and how to roll a joint. On the weekends, we knew people in the neighborhood and we’d be at their house, partying and Jimmy, with his pocked full of pre-rolled joints would keeping pulling out one after another, lighting it, taking a hit, then passing it to the closest person. Weed, music and friends, living in the moment with no concern for anything going on outside our “circle”.
Jimmy, (strangely enough, I never called him “Spanky”) was quite the ukelele player. He was always a chunky kid, something he carried into adulthood, but man, with a ukelele in his hand, his fat fingers would just blaze a trail across those strings and sweet music would flow. He could play that Hawaiian music like no other that I knew at the time and loved that “slack key” style.
I wish I would have stayed in touch with him and in the years after I left Hawaii, in 1972, bound for California, we never connected. There were times when I would wonder how he was doing, particularly on his birthday, but I was never able to make contact. I had an email address that I thought was his but never got a response. Was he doing okay, did he get married and settle down, did he start a family, have kids, or was he even still alive? I don’t think that I had any success with an Internet search of his name and I believe it was through a mutual classmates of ours that I finally found out that he had passed away. He’s playing that ukelele for the angels and his mother now, I suppose. I don’t think of him often but I remember how close we were, as kid growing up, as teenagers, catching waves during the day and fish, in the darkness of night and high times as adults. Gone but never forgotten. Happy birthday, Jimmy, my best friend and “brother for life”. Rest in peace. Happy birthday, Spanky. September third will always be remembered because this is your day and I will never have another friendship that will equal the one we shared.