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Sharing Mana‘o

“Faded photographs, covered now with lines and creases; Tickets torn in half, memories in bits and pieces.”“Traces”

The old Classics VI song ran through my head as I tackled the task of salvaging what I could from a box of memorabilia damaged by dampness in storage. The box held clippings and snapshots dating back to 1951, squirreled away by my mom. Thanks to her sentimentality and pack rat tendencies (which I inherited), I’ve been spending a few hours every day in nostalgic reverie, carefully peeling apart squares of paper to reveal traces of my youth and hers.

Sorting through the snapshots also stirred memories of the various cameras used to capture these moments. The earliest of the color photos, from the mid-1960s, were taken with my Kodak Instamatic. It was either a birthday or Christmas gift from my parents; I’m not sure. But I do remember how excited I was to have my very own camera, so much more modern than our family’s trusty old Brownie, the clunky black box that you held at waist level while you peered down into the viewfinder.

I was thrilled to find in the box a photo that I thought I’d lost long ago, one of the first taken with my Instamatic. It’s a portrait of Roman Gabriel, smiling down at me from atop his horse at the Makawao Fourth of July Rodeo Parade. His buddy, Peter Baldwin, had brought the famed quarterback and several of his fellow L.A. Rams to Maui for summertime football clinics, sponsored by Haleakala Dairy. The parade was one of numerous public appearances by the NFL stars, and I had a front-row seat, thanks to my aunt, who was as eager as I was to see our favorite QB up close.

Somehow, she caught his attention and coaxed him over to our curbside spot, long enough for me to get a handshake and a photo. The image, though faded, is identical to the one etched in my mind: Wearing a long-sleeved aloha shirt imprinted with the dairy’s Mountain Fresh flower logo, Roman Gabriel is flashing his movie-star smile directly at me.

I captured a few other celebrities on film, including the Harlem Globetrotters at the War Memorial Gym and pro wrestlers like Nicky Bockwinkle and Handsome Johnny Barend. But most of the hundreds of snapshots are of friends and family at May Day programs, New Year’s parties, days at the beach. I found Polaroid photos of my first dog, Jingles, as well as my first bicycle (an electric blue Schwinn StingRay) and dozens of shots taken with disposable cameras at various weddings and birthday parties.

The greatest find was a stack of black-and-white, scallop-edged prints that my mother had sent to her sister after moving to California in 1951. On the back of each photo, Mom had written explanations or comments.

This was a double exposure — Robert forgot to turn the knob after. I don’t know who Robert was, but he apparently took the blurred shots of my mom and her friend Su-chan at Golden Gate Park, possibly with the same Brownie camera Mom used to record my early childhood.

View of S.F. — Oakland Bay Bridge from the Oakland side. The foreground stinks like Kanaha Pond! Remember when holding your breath was an automatic ritual when driving past Kanaha?

Mom took photos at the Golden Gate Bridge, too, as well as the Rose Parade and other, more personal occasions like my dad’s best friend’s birthday. These were taken four years before my parents married, presumably at the start of their courtship. One, dated May 13, 1951, shows my 19-year-old father shivering in his swim trunks at Pacific Grove.

That’s my favorite photo of the bunch. But my favorite caption is written on the back of a sightseeing photo. The image is of a Japanese garden, with a bronze Buddha statue surrounded by a bamboo fence. Outside the fence, on the sandy path, stands a gentleman in a suit, gazing at something out of camera range. Mom wrote simply, I donno who the haole is.

I guess I inherited my sense of humor from Mom too.

* Kathy Collins is a storyteller, actress and freelance writer whose “Sharing Mana’o” column appears every Wednesday. Her email address is kcmaui913@gmail.com.

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