Life in Hookiookipookiwow land...
Apr. 19th, 2007 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primsongI'm back, sort of! Just crawled in very late last night from Maui, my head feels half stuffed with cotton like a Pooh-bear from the time changes and multitude of details still going. Spent a week dealing with people in shock - my dad was a BIG part of his community and everyone knew him, even when I would call up the utilities to get them disconnected or changed, the people on the line would all be "What? He died! But...but..." Always followed by some crazy story about him. Everyone, but everyone had a story. Two guys gathering notes, talk of putting together a book.
They did a couple different articles in the paper for him - my brother called and said a third one just came out, though I can't find that one online yet. Various snapshots in my head: baskets of birds being released over the polo field, special memorial belt-buckles being made up at the western store with his name on them, a float being planned for the 4th of July parade and my brother and I wanted back then to drive his car (a restored VW Thing) in it... and the dove that only eats dogfood following me around the store wanting to be fed. Emptying the fridge and running around main street with a frozen turkey under my arm trying to find a small store with a freezer big enough to take it. The waterbed blowing a leak when we were draining it and ramming towels in the doorway to keep the flood from going into the store, bailing with a garbage can and splatting the dove so it walked around muddy the rest of the day….newspaper guy calling to say he wanted to help, teensy elderly Japanese sisters nodding and hugging me, telling me "You look like hees dott-ah!" (I look like my mom, so we must all look alike?) … on and on with people who cry, have to be held, are shocked, have to be consoled until my brother and I just start shaking our heads and finding it weirdly humorous - everyone has a story, everyone has to talk about him, everyone wants to know about his dog and to volunteer to take it in. We call to get a security system to lock down the store and the security guys who come (what else?) knew him - they ram this job to the top of priority because it is "for Gary" and put in the system that next morning instead of two weeks down the pipe. I box up a green trunk to send home and the delivery guys (what else?) knew him - "Oh yeah, he was so nice, always gave us bottles of hotsauce…".
It's been really wild and very, very surreal, no connection to real life, and very tiring. I spent hours and hours on the phone trying to sort out his papers and get stuff for his business taken care of, trying to figure out the handwritten system he had going in assortments of crates, deciphering scrawls on boxes and trying to find whomever it is so they can get their stuff. My brother is still over there for a few more days and I may have to go back again if the legal stuff gets tangled up. We're trying to sell the business - anyone want to run a bbq/woodstove/hot-sauce business in Makawao, HI? Call me. We have a broker, and he (what else?) knew him.
I thought about you guys - had almost no comp access or extra brain cells to spare while there, but hope all has been well here. Seems like it's been forever to me - hard to believe its only been a little over a week!
A couple brief articles online, if anyone is interested:
http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=29496
Another I liked - can't find the online link right now - though I must say this reporter got a few of the facts a little scrambled, I met him at the memorial and he was an extremely nice man and really missing his friend -
MAUI NEI
By RON YOUNGBLOOD, Staff Writer
Makawao isn’t the same. The HI Hearth & Leisure lending library and social club is closed. The proprietor is no longer standing at his post, flicking on and off the lights illuminating a wall of hot sauces, answering questions and telling stories. Chase, the successor to Bully, is no longer at his post just outside the front door.
Gary Moore died Sunday.
I first met him while both of us were building sets for the Maui Community Theater production of “Tempest.” It was a meeting of hot-tempered hard heads who became friends after the dust settled. Gary was an ardent supporter of local theater and once hosted a legendary cast party when he lived in the warden’s house above the Olinda Honor Farm.
Somehow, he had convinced a state agency to let him rent unused state property – quite a feat for a Mainlander who hadn’t been on the island that long. I think that was during his contractor phase. I know he built three retail boutique stores and knew how to handle a crew of what he called nail benders.
What I know about his past is incoherent, bits and pieces gleaned during anecdotes he told in an off-handed fashion.
Other people told me he had been in Vietnam with the Navy and suffered a serious head wound. He told me about eating whale steaks and sending two motorcycles from Japan to Oregon where he apparently grew up on a kind of farm with the kind of parents a rough-and-ready kid could appreciate. He was a pilot.
Gary once mentioned he landed on Maui with a camper van. How and why, he never said. When I got into scuba diving in the 1990s, he told about being a professional diver, leading tours, collecting puka shells in the water off Lahaina and once getting caught in a current off Kaanapali when he and a buddy were looking for cowrie and spent desperate hours swimming back to shore.
I kept bugging him to come diving. He kept putting me off and finally said, “I’d rather remember the reefs the way they were.” I got a kayak and told him I’d named it Honu Ha’aha’a (the humble turtle). The next time in the store, he gave me two decal-like honu. “I thought you could glue ’em on your kayak,” he said. That’s where they are today.
Gary loved giving stuff to people. Getting presents made him uncomfortable. There was only one time I saw him enthusiastic about a gift, a box set of jazz CDs. He loved to ask customers to guess the identity of the performers.
“Hey, Ron, there’s a guy who has a nice fireplace he’d like to sell. Give him $300 and he’ll be happy.” The fireplace came with a detailed set of instructions. Gary was positively messianic about fire place safety after he’d seen more than a few installations “done by idiots who were lucky they didn’t die in a fire.” I thank him every time the temperature in the house gets below 60.
When he bought it, the place was called Outdoor Sports. Gary continued to sell firearms and outdoor gear until the revenue got too slim and the ATF got too overbearing.
The store became HI Hearth & Leisure, at first specializing in fireplaces and stoves. He had at least one other store on the Big Island. Later, he got into high-end barbecue grills and that led to him stocking all manner of hot sauces. When someone asked, he’d say “Want to be uncomfortable the next morning?” or “Fire extinguishers should come with that.”
He became a newspaper man’s best friend, feeding information or promoting this or that in Makawao. Gary usually downplayed his part in getting a huge star hung in a Cook Pine or originating the stick horse race that became the traditional start of the Fourth of July parade. He once rounded up some painters and proceeded to paint all the fire hydrants red, white and blue.
This is tough to write. Book length would be easier.
Gary loved books and circulated them and movies he recorded on videotape among his friends. He also loved anything on wheels, especially a VW Thing he had restored to showroom condition.
A couple of years ago, Gary was up at the polo matches. “I was pouring myself a glass of wine. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed. I pulled out the IVs, got my clothes and checked myself out. Took a cab home.”
He’d had a stroke. It left him a little shaky. Last Sunday he was at the polo matches. He died of an apparent stroke.
Makawao isn’t the same. The kids going home from school won’t be stopping by to play with Chase, a mellow boxer who has found a new home. Dog-loving tourists returning to Makawao – there were dozens – will miss petting Chase.
A lot of people will miss Gary Moore.
I'm going back in July, we're putting him in the Veteran's memorial with flag, guns and all right before launching the 4th of July parade he started up. I know I'll miss him - thanks for sharing this time with me.
They did a couple different articles in the paper for him - my brother called and said a third one just came out, though I can't find that one online yet. Various snapshots in my head: baskets of birds being released over the polo field, special memorial belt-buckles being made up at the western store with his name on them, a float being planned for the 4th of July parade and my brother and I wanted back then to drive his car (a restored VW Thing) in it... and the dove that only eats dogfood following me around the store wanting to be fed. Emptying the fridge and running around main street with a frozen turkey under my arm trying to find a small store with a freezer big enough to take it. The waterbed blowing a leak when we were draining it and ramming towels in the doorway to keep the flood from going into the store, bailing with a garbage can and splatting the dove so it walked around muddy the rest of the day….newspaper guy calling to say he wanted to help, teensy elderly Japanese sisters nodding and hugging me, telling me "You look like hees dott-ah!" (I look like my mom, so we must all look alike?) … on and on with people who cry, have to be held, are shocked, have to be consoled until my brother and I just start shaking our heads and finding it weirdly humorous - everyone has a story, everyone has to talk about him, everyone wants to know about his dog and to volunteer to take it in. We call to get a security system to lock down the store and the security guys who come (what else?) knew him - they ram this job to the top of priority because it is "for Gary" and put in the system that next morning instead of two weeks down the pipe. I box up a green trunk to send home and the delivery guys (what else?) knew him - "Oh yeah, he was so nice, always gave us bottles of hotsauce…".
It's been really wild and very, very surreal, no connection to real life, and very tiring. I spent hours and hours on the phone trying to sort out his papers and get stuff for his business taken care of, trying to figure out the handwritten system he had going in assortments of crates, deciphering scrawls on boxes and trying to find whomever it is so they can get their stuff. My brother is still over there for a few more days and I may have to go back again if the legal stuff gets tangled up. We're trying to sell the business - anyone want to run a bbq/woodstove/hot-sauce business in Makawao, HI? Call me. We have a broker, and he (what else?) knew him.
I thought about you guys - had almost no comp access or extra brain cells to spare while there, but hope all has been well here. Seems like it's been forever to me - hard to believe its only been a little over a week!
A couple brief articles online, if anyone is interested:
http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=29496
Another I liked - can't find the online link right now - though I must say this reporter got a few of the facts a little scrambled, I met him at the memorial and he was an extremely nice man and really missing his friend -
MAUI NEI
By RON YOUNGBLOOD, Staff Writer
Makawao isn’t the same. The HI Hearth & Leisure lending library and social club is closed. The proprietor is no longer standing at his post, flicking on and off the lights illuminating a wall of hot sauces, answering questions and telling stories. Chase, the successor to Bully, is no longer at his post just outside the front door.
Gary Moore died Sunday.
I first met him while both of us were building sets for the Maui Community Theater production of “Tempest.” It was a meeting of hot-tempered hard heads who became friends after the dust settled. Gary was an ardent supporter of local theater and once hosted a legendary cast party when he lived in the warden’s house above the Olinda Honor Farm.
Somehow, he had convinced a state agency to let him rent unused state property – quite a feat for a Mainlander who hadn’t been on the island that long. I think that was during his contractor phase. I know he built three retail boutique stores and knew how to handle a crew of what he called nail benders.
What I know about his past is incoherent, bits and pieces gleaned during anecdotes he told in an off-handed fashion.
Other people told me he had been in Vietnam with the Navy and suffered a serious head wound. He told me about eating whale steaks and sending two motorcycles from Japan to Oregon where he apparently grew up on a kind of farm with the kind of parents a rough-and-ready kid could appreciate. He was a pilot.
Gary once mentioned he landed on Maui with a camper van. How and why, he never said. When I got into scuba diving in the 1990s, he told about being a professional diver, leading tours, collecting puka shells in the water off Lahaina and once getting caught in a current off Kaanapali when he and a buddy were looking for cowrie and spent desperate hours swimming back to shore.
I kept bugging him to come diving. He kept putting me off and finally said, “I’d rather remember the reefs the way they were.” I got a kayak and told him I’d named it Honu Ha’aha’a (the humble turtle). The next time in the store, he gave me two decal-like honu. “I thought you could glue ’em on your kayak,” he said. That’s where they are today.
Gary loved giving stuff to people. Getting presents made him uncomfortable. There was only one time I saw him enthusiastic about a gift, a box set of jazz CDs. He loved to ask customers to guess the identity of the performers.
“Hey, Ron, there’s a guy who has a nice fireplace he’d like to sell. Give him $300 and he’ll be happy.” The fireplace came with a detailed set of instructions. Gary was positively messianic about fire place safety after he’d seen more than a few installations “done by idiots who were lucky they didn’t die in a fire.” I thank him every time the temperature in the house gets below 60.
When he bought it, the place was called Outdoor Sports. Gary continued to sell firearms and outdoor gear until the revenue got too slim and the ATF got too overbearing.
The store became HI Hearth & Leisure, at first specializing in fireplaces and stoves. He had at least one other store on the Big Island. Later, he got into high-end barbecue grills and that led to him stocking all manner of hot sauces. When someone asked, he’d say “Want to be uncomfortable the next morning?” or “Fire extinguishers should come with that.”
He became a newspaper man’s best friend, feeding information or promoting this or that in Makawao. Gary usually downplayed his part in getting a huge star hung in a Cook Pine or originating the stick horse race that became the traditional start of the Fourth of July parade. He once rounded up some painters and proceeded to paint all the fire hydrants red, white and blue.
This is tough to write. Book length would be easier.
Gary loved books and circulated them and movies he recorded on videotape among his friends. He also loved anything on wheels, especially a VW Thing he had restored to showroom condition.
A couple of years ago, Gary was up at the polo matches. “I was pouring myself a glass of wine. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed. I pulled out the IVs, got my clothes and checked myself out. Took a cab home.”
He’d had a stroke. It left him a little shaky. Last Sunday he was at the polo matches. He died of an apparent stroke.
Makawao isn’t the same. The kids going home from school won’t be stopping by to play with Chase, a mellow boxer who has found a new home. Dog-loving tourists returning to Makawao – there were dozens – will miss petting Chase.
A lot of people will miss Gary Moore.
I'm going back in July, we're putting him in the Veteran's memorial with flag, guns and all right before launching the 4th of July parade he started up. I know I'll miss him - thanks for sharing this time with me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 12:47 pm (UTC)*hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 01:00 pm (UTC)What an experience you've had! 'Moore' is my mum's maiden name... what a coincidence!
I didn't know your dad, but after reading this I almost feel as if I do. It is comforting in a way, to know that so many share your grief and appriciation of his life, isn't it? So much love just floating around!
*sigh* He must have been quite a guy!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 02:16 pm (UTC)Please when you can call my office
653-8865
or
cell
888-1543
Remembering you still.
"O"
btw my new LJ is tstharp
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 04:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 05:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 07:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 12:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 02:03 pm (UTC)*sends belated hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 03:58 pm (UTC)Let your parents know you love them - and be sure you write down your poems - someday those who loved you will really, really appreciate having that little journal of them. *hug*