On the Beach at Ala Moana

ON THE BEACH AT

ALA MOANA

By

Don March

Copyrighted 2011 Don March

Revised June 2013

Published at Smashwords

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ON THE BEACH AT

ALA MOANA

CHAPTER 1

THE REALITY OF DREAMS

Dreams, the bricks, the mortar and the lumber that reality is built upon, life at times is a grind, day in day out, work, family, kids, hopes, expectations and demands, but it is the dreams, it is the dreams that gets us over the hump. By dream, not meaning the sleeping dreams that fill REM sleep, the mish-mash of past, present and future, blending together vividly in ones subconscious forcing people from the beginning of time to analyze these seemingly prophetic visions, no, by dreams, meaning life goals, aspirations, the big dream, the thoughts that force people to stretch beyond what they know to what they desire. But dreams die, dreams get lost in the minutia that is our lives, they change, they mutate, they seem impossible, they seem achievable, they seem to have a shadow of hope, and the hope that a dream can come true is all that stands between us and the collapse of our lives, our world and ultimately our dreams.

Dreams have a life of their own, they are rich, they are full, they are filled with imagery and detail or they are simple and they are straight forward. They change, they die and they grow. The changes that dreams take on interest me. As a child, dreams are simple, the dreams they grow they expand then just as abruptly, the dreams they stop, they end and if you are lucky a new one will fill their place. Dreams evolve as our life goes on, as our wants and tastes change as the life around us changes.

In college I dreamt of being a marijuana farmer, the dream hinged on the chance that marijuana would be legalized at any moment. Yet some thirty years later marijuana is still illegal and I haven’t smoked or wanted to be a marijuana farmer for most of those thirty some years. In college those around me, my roommates they all had dreams. We all shared our dreams with each other. Tiger was a roommate for a time. Everyone called him Tiger but his name was Scott. Scott believed he was nicknamed Tiger because he was small yet scrappy. The truth was Scott reminded everyone of Christopher Robin’s stuffed animal Tigger from Winnie the Pooh stories. Scott’s dream, he dreamt of a career in the army, he was ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) in college, the Army paid for college and he expected a commission in the army after graduating, then his whole life was planned for him, a twenty year Army career, retire at seventy percent pay, his future was a lock. His future was a lock until he didn’t get the expected commission, the Viet Nam war was over and lieutenants weren’t dropping like flies in the back country and a little man who looked like a toy soldier was not all you could be or what the new Army wanted its lieutenants to be. Scott was crushed, all his dreams were gone, and his life’s dream was trashed. Last I heard he was living in a trailer in southern Illinois and he was testing tires for General Tires. He spent his time fishing, hunting and growing pot. I guess working for General Tire was the next best thing for Scott; he was kind of in the military still taking orders from a general of sorts and still working for a general of sorts.

Jonas was another good friend and a roommate for a time. His dream was to get his doctorate in chemistry, live in Colorado spending everyday possible skiing. Last I heard he lived in Colorado and was working on his doctorate. I found him on Face Book, he was living in Colorado, but there was no Dr. before his name.

Then there was Paul, Paul was unique, very unique, but ironic enough he had a brother Brian, Brian diminished Paul’s uniqueness, Brian was unique, very unique in fact a hair more unique than Paul, two hipster geeks with genius IQs. Paul was 6’8 and incredibly wide, not fat just wide, Brian was 6’3 skinny but he too was wide but just across the shoulders. I knew them separate, Paul was a year older, then together when Brian joined Paul in college and then separate again when Brian despite his genius IQ, he dropped out and that is when Paul was a housemate for a time. Paul was a housemate for a year along with Scott and Jonas, we were a dysfunctional yet a cool house, weird and an odd bunch, Paul 6’8, Jonas 6’5, me 6’4 and Scott 5’2, that is a very odd group photo and a very odd bunch. We all were close friends for that year, but the friendships dissipated quickly once the glue of college life was gone, college was the thing the only thing we had in common, even though we shared our dreams we never shared in our dreams. Paul, he just wanted to work for Bell labs and make enough money to get high and drink beer every day, hopefully getting laid along the way. I saw him once or twice after college but we were disconnected. I struggled to find even a menial job despite a college degree. Paul was developing super compact integrated circuits, a hundred layers of circuits in the width of a hair. Paul had his job at Bell Labs, then he got married, he had a bunch of kids and he developed a multilayered computer chip whose plans looked more like a high rise then a teeny tiny computer chip, every time I pick up a cell phone I know there is a circuit in there that Paul pioneered. He died a while back riding a motorcycle, high and drunk at least that is what I heard, but the real cause of the accident was a rear wheel nut, Paul did a brake job on his bike, he got high, he got drunk and forgot that he didn’t finish tightening the rear wheel before he took it out for a spin.

Mark was my second dorm mate, actually my third dorm mate, but my dorm mate for my first junior year, a bad case of pneumonia set me back, a bit of luck it seemed I lost almost a semester of school, but I would have flunked out if I completed my first semester of my first junior year, Mark was a very, very bad influence. The reason Mark was a bad influence was because his dream was to be a big time drug dealer. As misdirected as Mark’s dream was, he pursued it with a driven gusto, I mistakenly introduced him to a friend, the roommate of a dealer and Mark was on his way to pursue his dream. Mark drove his life down a bumpy road, beaten up, ripped off, trashed our friendship, stoned all the time, drunken the rest of the time, he lost his first and only love Jan, his prize comic book collection, his prize Les Paul guitar and any chance of ever getting a college degree, he wound up living back at home. Mark’s name popped up in the local arrest reports, he got arrested for open alcohol in a public park and I think I saw him working the overnight shift at a Seven Eleven, but he was so grizzled and burnt out I wasn’t sure it was him, the following week he was gone.

Mike was my second dorm mate. Mike didn’t have a dream. he had a plan. stay in college as long as possible and thanks to a generous Grandmother he was making a damn good run at that plan. When I met him he was at his third university, always on the honor roll, fifth major and his seventh year of college, he did graduated two years later and started on his first master’s degree. Mike like I said didn’t have a dream he had fun, he left me with a penchant for Dr. Who, Monty python, psilocybin mushrooms and English women. He became the unofficial liaison to the English exchange students, they were all women and they were in our room all the time, all the time. So that semester was spend in my dorm room, watching British TV shows on public TV, surrounded by beautiful and interesting English women doing psilocybin mushrooms, no wonder I went on probation and almost flunked out during the following year my first semester living with Mark. I think it was in the room with the hot English women, watching Monty Python, doing mushrooms that I came up with the dream of being a marijuana farmer.

Finally there was Hank, my first roommate at college. His dream was to marry his high school sweet heart and run his family’s nursery and greenhouse. I heard that he was doing just that in central Illinois. I wonder what his dream is now. Whether you achieve a dream, lose a dream or the dream slips away, you need a new dream, you always need a new dream.

My dreams seemed to evolve every day after college, I wanted to get married live in the suburbs, drive a station wagon and have a couple kids and a dog. After achieving those, I wanted to be a store manager for Osco Drug, to write children’s books, to own a lake front vacation home and maybe a house boat. One after another my dreams seem to fade or they died. I was fired from Osco in a corporate cost cutting move, not for any thing I did or didn’t do, I just had risen too high on the pay scale and had too much vacation time and I made a good target during cost cutting time. I replaced the job with a mindless task driven job, where I didn’t have to think, making this replacement job the perfect job because it paid the bills at least most of the bills and my wife’s job paid the rest of the bills. The house on the lake faded as I couldn’t find enough money to live much less buy a vacation property. The house boat just isn’t the same if you don’t have your own property to dock it on. About a thousand rejections killed the dream of writing children’s books. And a sudden and unexpected tear in an artery of my wife’s brain ended my marriage. For the first time in my life I didn’t have a dream to hold on to. Hope was nearly dead. I lost my reason to love, I lost all reasons to work, not for the house, not for the car, the station wagon; It turned out to be a lemon. It is cold to say, without my wife’s salary I barely had the money to live the life we as a couple couldn’t really afford. I still had one hope the American dream of winning the lottery, then at least I would have enough money to pay bills and send the kids to college. And if, and just if there was enough money left maybe I could kick back somewhere in Florida, where I could sit everyday and think is this all there is to life. A long shot yes, but it is the dream of every person that hands over their dollar for a slip of paper and the chance at a dream. Not much of a dream but you hold on to what you have.

The truth was loneliness and emptiness filled my life; a huge gaping hole existed in my life, a hole that might never be filled. There wasn’t someone to spoon with, when you rolled over in bed nothing but more bed. There was no one to kiss in the morning and to kiss good night to. The kids, my two kids tried to fill the void the best they could, but they had their own issues to deal with. Each in their own way filled the void with school, work and friends. I was left to find my own way along. The dogs did what they could to comfort me but they missed my wife too, one dog howled. A dog that never howled or had the inclination to howl howled at odd times. You knew that they felt something was missing; one dog always waiting at the door for her not knowing that she would never cross that threshold again. Both dogs would come inside, running wildly looking for my wife blow-drying her hair, eager to again bark at that evil blow-dryer, not knowing that the evil blow-dryer would never blow again, ruffling my wife’s fine brown hair with its hot gentle breeze. Then of course there was sex, actually there wasn’t sex, no sex. Dealing with no sex would be simple if I simply put those thoughts and urges on hold, buried until the time when I could decide it was time to once more awaken them. When that time was, if there would be a time, that I still didn’t know, how could I ever enjoy sex again?

Time passed, bills mounted, the job I once loved, well loved but never truly loved was now a pointless daily trudge, bringing no joy, no satisfaction and not enough money to pay bills. Friends, co-workers and family all in their own way tried to rescue me from the hastening spiral of depression. Does debt fuel the depression or does the depression fuel the debt, but both always seem to unite together to accelerate the depression fast and faster down the spiral until despair over whelms it all.

At the urging of my daughter I reluctantly started to date once again, I wasn’t the biggest fan of dating thirty some years ago, but I accepted it as the time tested method to meet, get to know and learn if you are compatible with a woman. My daughter thought of a dozen things to break the mind numbing routine, she thought that dating might take my mind away for a moment so I would not dwell in the dark place of my mind that had become such a comfortable hovel where I lived with my despair. Dating was never my game and thirty years away from a game, you neither liked nor you were very good at, thirty years is a very long time, altogether this made dating a huge undertaking. Who was the first question? Where was the second question and do I really even want to do this was the third.

When the kids were little it seemed like I met a divorced mom at every school event. Now that they are in college, the school events are very formal and I rarely ever talked to other parents. We have a lot of divorced friends but that would be just weird, knowing both parties of the divorce and being there when the divorce was in progress. Church might be another way to meet a woman, if I actually went to church. Our church changed pastors a few years back, I took the summer off and never went back. Returning to church just to meet a woman seems like a sure ticket to hell. And since me and the big guy have come to terms for now, I was pretty mad at him for a while, he did take away my wife and all. And well, I think we will just leave it at that.

A fix up, a blind date, two losers thrown together, for an awkward dinner, a lunch or coffee might be slightly less traumatizing, yet still two lonely people tortured by caring yet clueless friends, no, no way, you must be kidding. Work, meeting someone at work, now there is a possibility, a possibility but not a probably, as far as co-workers, no one seems compatible or attainable. Co-workers fall into four categories, unattainable, unrealistic, no attraction and sexually incompatible, not that there anything wrong with that, but they are your co-workers you see them every day, every flub, blunder, mistake, faux pas, or sexual misstep and you would relive any flub, blunder, faux pas or sexual missteps every day. Dating customers would just be a bad business decision.

Computer dating, I would be afraid I would get a step-ford wife with a defective micro chip, I know, I know computer dating isn’t dating a computer, it is just so artificial. Which bring us directly to dating services, why would I trust a total stranger to do something that I don’t trust a family member or technology to do? So it comes down to the simple fact that I am just not ready, because the excuses come easy and the reasons why, seem to be out of my grasp. Sit here in my self-pity, watching mind numbing TV at night and dragging myself through the days finding more ways why I hate my job and I am so, so sad to say I am beginning to hate my life.

On the half full side of this purgatory that has become my life, I do like routines; some people say you are digging yourself a rut, I say you are cutting a well worn and comfortable path, that path is a pity filled path to hell but still, routines are easy on the brains. Pets love routines, dogs easily get into routines, they develop their own routines, and the trick is molding them to your routines and not being molded to theirs. The morning routine makes sure everything that needs to get done gets done; if you start at the same time you will usually end at the same time and arrive at work on time, and work follows along the same path start at the same time do the same thing every day and you finish at the same time. The nights are easier. It is easy to find things that are mind numbing and non-taxing on the mind and the path to that recliner in front of the TV is so well worn. Come home after a hard and stressful day, start your routine and the next thing you know is that you are asleep in the recliner with the TV providing the sleep inducing background noise. Everything that needed to be done is done and you didn’t have to think at all. The downside is that you have given up control of the pace that you travel through time, you will wake up years later if you ever wake up at all and wonder where your life has gone and you are an old man sleeping on your recliner. Once in a while if you are very, very lucky, life will throw you a curve and shatter your routine into a million pieces and all the kings horses and all the king men will never be able to put that routine together again, and you find yourself standing in the sunlight, standing in the light of day and you must chose a path and you just hope along one of those paths is a dream filled life of possibilities and free of regrets.

CHAPTER 2

TIGGER

The old car seemed to be acting up on the way home, sometimes it had a mind of its own acting up just to see how far I would go to fix it, but I never could find the problem or fully resolve the problem and just as quickly the problem disappears. The car was a lemon but a mischievous lemon that fed on money and delighted in the frustration it caused me and it reveled to see the consternation it caused me. I guess a new car is needed, not affordable but needed. I always bought the new cars for Beverly so she would have the safest ride, without her a new car just didn’t seem to be a priority, even if I could actually afford it, I owed more on Beverly’s car than it was worth, so it had to go, the old car was a money sucking lemon but at least it was paid for. Our house stood out as being a little different than the usual cracker box bi-levels that filled out the rest of the block. It was near dusk but I swear the house looked sad. Boy, that driveway needs work, Beverly always harped on me to do something about it, but it is the same old driveway just a bit worn and chipped and in the scheme of things it real doesn’t matter. I could hear the dogs barking as I pulled in to the driveway. They knew the sound of my car. Into the garage, close the door, close the gate, and let the dogs out for a quick pee, while I dished out their food for their dinner. Let them in, they ate while I put away my lunch bag and I brought the mail in and so another piece of my routine fell into place.

Bills, junk mail and catalogs, it just seems people don’t write any more, of course I don’t write either, the odd thing is everyone is consumed with email and twitter but you can’t transmit the emotion of the writer through those electronic miracles, yet through the simple letter you can easily convey a range of emotions, through the computer you connect with the cold machine and video screen, through the letter the writer and reader share a moment, a moment in time and people through history have connected through letters. But writing letters has slipped away from our society and if it wasn’t for the occasional hallmark card I think the post office would go broke. The cards, the sympathy cards did flood in when Beverly died, writing everyone back was quite a chore, it seemed like I had a deep well of self pity and I hauled up bucket after bucket writing all of those kind people back. Bill, bill, bill, credit card offer, charity, bill and oh what is this a delivery notice for a certified letter held at the post office from a Law firm and another letter from the same law firm this doesn’t look good, so who is suing me. Let see, we regret to inform you of the passing of Scott Halvorson, name sounds familiar. Mr. Halvorson named you as a beneficiary in his will. Who the hell is Scott Halvorson? Call us at your earliest convenience. What the hell, this might be important, this definitely is a curiosity, the faster I find out, the faster I can stop thinking about it and get back to my routine. I better rush to the Post Office before it closes, to see if the certified letter gives any more of a clue to resolve this curiosity. I hope the dogs don’t poop in the house, it is their time to poop and pee but if I don’t leave now the Post Office will be closed.

The Post Office should still be open, one more red light and I would have been late. I see the clerk heading to lock the door, I just squeeze in and the clerk locks the IN door behind me. I know these people must hate last minute customers, because you know they are the ones with the problems. Short line and