Hawaii memories, part 1
Sometime between the end of the school year and having “part of a dead person,” as my son calls my ACL donor graft, put in my right knee, we were lucky enough to spend a bit of time in Hawaii. The Big Island of Hawaii. We were in a part the locals call “Up North,” which, since that is what Minnesotans call anywhere their lakeside cabin finds itself, amused me to no end.
“Up North” on Hawaii and in Minnesota, I discovered, have three things in common.
First, they both offer excellent swimming. I believe I am clearly and firmly on the record as loving swimming, particularly in naturally occurring bodies of water. The warm salt water bath of the Hawaiian Pacific and the bracing effect of northern lakes are two sides of the same coin in my book.
Second, if you happen to go out for breakfast in either place you are likely to find yourself surrounded by old guys with incredibly strong accents spending the morning drinking black coffee and shooting what can only be called the shit.
Third, fresh fish. The soft spot on my palate for the delicate taste of fresh water lake fish like sunnies and walleye and bass seems to be fairly entrenched. But who am I to turn up my nose at a supremely fresh piece of ono? The very name of the fish means “delicious.”
The lunch wagon above was parked next to the fish market in the small town near where we stayed. You could watch the fishermen come in with their catch, off-load it into the giant refrigerated section next to the shack where it would later be sold, and, if you didn’t make too big of a deal about it, watch the fishmonger filet it up before it was walked over to the lunch wagon and cooked up for your sandwich. Dude had a way with the knife.
What’s not on the menu is the specials page taped to the window – the daily special plus a list of the fish you can choose to have cooked up for your plate or burger that day.
Besides being deliciously fresh food at a fair price, the lunch wagon offered the opportunity to interact with the lunch wagon lady. She was the kind of woman who happily gave Ernest all wings in his Korean chicken special. The kind of cook who noticed that I salted my sandwich one day and so asked if I’d like extra salt the next. Plus, I liked how the lawn furniture she had out front was the same kind I used to scrub clean when my parents brought it out from the storage space under the garage every spring.
If you’re on the Big Island anywhere near Kawaihae at lunchtime Monday through Saturday, I cannot recommend strongly enough eating lunch out of this ailing old vehicle.
