We had two teachers in the sixth grade, Mrs. Sharp and Mr. Kuroda.

I don't know very much about Mrs. Sharp (her first name completely eludes me), except that she was pretty cool and we all liked her. She left in mid-year to become a teacher (actually, the teacher and principal) at Kalapana School -- a small school with one class that included kindergarten through sixth-grade students.

Mr. Kuroda was Joe Kuroda -- "Jumbo" Joe Kuroda, who would later become a state legislator on Oahu. Mr. Kuroda was kind of cool too. Once, he even played marbles with us in the playground dirt, getting down on his hands and knees with the rest of us, and wiping us out in both "Mauka" and "Ring." A real dead-eye.

Of course when Mr. Kuroda came on board, we all tested him. "Mrs. Sharp used to let us do this," and "Mrs. Sharp used to let us do that." He was no dummy, and he never let us do "this" or "that."

I had to pay for one of my pranks that year. You know how "boys will be boys"? Well, while walking to Japanese school one day, as we passed Lincoln Park, I grabbed the math book of one of the younger kids who was walking with us, and ran 'way ahead of him.

About a block and a half ahead of him, I turned to see him huffing and puffing, chasing me for all he was worth. I stopped, and put his book on the back fender of a car that was parked there. Just before the kid got to the car, it suddenly pulled out of the parking space.

We both stared with our mouths open as the car -- and the math book — disappeared down the street. The poor kid started to cry and said he was going to get it from the teacher for losing the book.

Of course, big man that I was, I told him not to worry, that I would go with him to his class tomorrow, explain what happened to the teacher, and pay for the lost book. First thing the next morning -- and I do mean first thing -- the kid sought me out and reminded me of my promise. So, trembling in my shoes, I went to talk to his teacher. It was Mrs. Baptiste, my fourth-grade teacher.

I explained the situation and told her to let me know how much the book cost. She was pretty nice about it, and I think she was proud of me that day. I forget the cost of the book -- it was about $7 or so, and it did hurt financially.

However, remember that I told you earlier that I was lucky. Someone else must have been proud of me that day because the very next week I made a phone call from the public phone at the Hilo Library. When I hung up the phone, this avalanche of dimes came pouring out. It was about $4 or so — not enough to make up for the entire cost of the lost book -- but enough to replenish my piggy bank.

In retrospect, I guess I should have turned the money in.

That was the year I saw my first and only dragonfly nymphs. There was a blacktop area between the swings and the ballfield; it apparently was the base of the old Hilo College that used to stand on the site.

Anyway, a huge puddle about 20-feet across used to form in one corner whenever it rained. And seeing how it rained almost every single day in Hilo, the puddle never dried up. One day, we were walking in the puddle after a hot session of marbles, feeling the mud ooze up between our toes, when I spotted something zooting along in the water.

I bent down to investigate and discovered a number of strange-looking things that looked like underwater crickets. Soon the bunch of us were splashing around trying to catch the little buggers.

What we had found were dragonfly nymphs. Holding one in your hand is like holding a miniature prehistoric beast — those things were ugly! They were brown like the mud, and had this huge, articulated lower lip that they used to catch food (including black little toad tadpoles), sucking the life out of their victims. If you squeeze them ever-so-slightly, they'll shoot out a jet of water from their butt-side. In the water, the jet propels them to wherever they wanted to go. Out of the water, it's a good, gross way to shoot your friends.

We were chasing around all over the place, squirting each other. And like most kids do, we continued to the point of excess, and used up all the nymphs in the puddle. Nobody ever thought that these were living things we were playing with. Of course, we had killed them all.

That was the only time I ever saw a dragonfly nymph. I've never seen another real-live one since. There aren't that many chances to look for them. I went on a few "nymph safaris" in the weeks that followed, but they blend in so well with the water bottom that they're practically invisible unless they move.

These apparently should be quite plentiful, since I've seen them advertised as bait in national fishing magazines. But not no more in that blacktop puddle.

That summer, I picked up two more activities. Piano lessons were forced on me, but I came up with stamp collecting all on my own.

Mom and Dad always came up with stuff to cramp my style. If it wasn't Japanese School, it was those consarned piano lessons. Dayle had started taking piano lessons a couple of years before and was really not bad at all. This being the case, our parents decided to buy a piano.

Now, a family cannot have a piano in the house with only one child able to play. Actually, I think they had a grand plan in their heads all the time. The plan was for all their children to take piano lessons.

They succeeded.

After Dayle had proved that musical talent ran in the family, it was time for Craig to learn music. Then Audrey, then Eric, then Karen. Much to everyone's surprise, I turned out to be quite good. My regular teacher had quit after I'd been taking lessons for a year or so (it was not my fault), and Mrs. Kunitomo, who ran the studio, took me under her wing.

I remember my first lesson with her. I wasn't doing so well sight-reading a new piece she had given me, so she started scolding me and telling me that I really needed to practice more. Then, she asked me how long I had been taking lessons, and I said one year, and she got quiet real fast.

"Really? I thought you were a fourth-year student! Then, you're good!"

The Miyamoto Legend grows . . .

The highlight of my piano career was a duet I played with John Haraguchi in a recital at the Gaspro auditorium. The piece was "The March of Wooden Soldiers." John played the first piano part and I played the second piano, and we brought down the house with the lively piece.

Our teacher at that time was Miss Shinn, and that magnificent performance and resulting accolade kind of made up for an earlier recital she put on, where everything went wrong. Students had forgotten their music, the duets were out of synch, music sheets fell off the piano, and I got confused at one point and had to stop for a second before continuing.

I continued with my lessons through my sophomore year in high school, before I was allowed to retire. Throughout high school though, I bought popular sheet music and continued to play. As usual, Mom and Dad were right. Piano lessons instilled a deep of appreciation of music in me during my adolescent years.

My own two sons would benefit from this experience as well. When they were kids, we forced them to take lessons. Call it "passing on the agony."

Speaking of the piano, Obachan surprised me one day. Out of the clear blue, she decided to play the piano. I don't ever recall her touching the piano before, and I'm sure she never had a lesson in her life. On this day, however, she sat down and began plinking out a tune for some reason, Red River Valley sticks in my mind.

And one day, as I was playing Elvis' "It's Now Or Never," she walked over and asked, "Where'd you learn to play Back to Sorrento"?

Sometimes, Obachan could be amazing. You just never knew what she could do.

One day while reading a Superman comic, I came upon an advertisement for 100 foreign postage stamps, "absolutely FREE!" if I bought the all-new, "profusely illustrated" Majestic Stamp Album. All I had to do was send in a dollar and I would soon be the proud owner -- the first on my block -- of 100 scarce and valuable stamps, a watermark detector, perforation gauge, stamp tongs, 1,000 peelable stamp hinges, and the stamp album with space for thousands of stamps.

I bit, filled in the coupon, and sent in the dollar.

A week later, a big bulging manila envelope addressed to me arrived at Dad's office. The first thing Dad said to me as he handed it over was that he hoped it wasn't another knife.

The envelope contained everything the ad promised, including 100 of the most fascinating pieces of paper I'd ever seen in my life. I picked up the atlas and began seeking out those strange lands from whence these stamps had come.

And, the envelope contained additional stamps -- larger and even more beautiful ones than those I had received. I could either buy them at wonderful bargain prices ("Only 10¢ a set, or all 15 sets for only a dollar!") or send them back in the "handy return envelope" that was provided. It was a veritable treasure trove that hooked me, and hooked me good.

I remembered seeing many more of these ads in the weeks that followed, and before you could say "Stop already," Dad was handing over more and more of those manila envelopes from stamp companies with names like "Jamestown," "Garcelon," "Littleton," "Mystic," "H.E. Harris," "Lincoln," and "Worldwide." It grew to the point where I was spending virtually every cent of my $2.00 allowance, plus the $1.50 I earned by mowing the lawn, on stamps. It's a wonder Dad didn't question why I was mowing the yard once a week, when I used to let it go unattended for three weeks at a time.

I quickly outgrew the Majestic album and soon invested a whopping two bucks in the Scott Modern Album, with spaces for even more thousands of stamps. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I had bought my first really big album -- the Regent. During the next couple of years, it would grow to two volumes as I added the yearly supplements.

Other kids I knew were also into stamp collecting -- their goal was to "fill their book" as soon as possible so they could brag about it at school. I had a different goal. I wanted to own every single stamp that existed -- a lofty goal to be sure, and one that was quite impossible to achieve.

It wasn't easy being a stamp collector. There were so many things to learn. You had to be able to find the watermark on a stamp, for there were so many varieties that looked alike, and the presence or absence of a watermark could determine whether two seemingly identical stamps were actually different.

It was particularly hard for me to get the hang of hinging stamps. You had to fold the hinge, then place the folded part toward the top of the stamp. Many times I did it just the opposite, the result being that the stamp lifted off the page the wrong way.

I tried just about every approval service in existence. Most of them were dropped after a month or so, but there were a few I stuck with. One of these was the "Lotta Stamps A Month Club" of Littleton Stamp Company, which turned out to be one of my favorites.

They not only gave you a neat selection of stamps -- along with a bonus packet -- they also supplied you with another 500 hinges. Littleton also had a newsletter that they sent every month or so, with tips on hot issues to buy, and hints on how to make collecting more fun.

One local source of stamps was the Hobby House, owned and operated by Mr. Hebe (Hay-bay). The Hobby House was located on Kamehameha Avenue, a few blocks past Mamo Street as you walked toward the Wailoa River.

Mr. Hebe had lots of packets -- 50 Germany, 100 France, 50 Triangles, 25 Japan, and on and on. Every now and then I'd scrape up a few dollars and visit his shop. During the tidal wave of 1959, his shop was hit, and I remember the story in the Tribune-Herald quoting him as saying that all his stamps were good for now was postage.

This is one hobby that I stuck with for quite a while -- years, in fact. Decades, in fact. I eventually turned it into a business and made some fairly big bucks doing so, but at that stage of the game in the '50s, all I wanted to do was collect as many as I could.

I've said it rained a lot in Hilo. It never bothered me before, but it did when I became a stamp collector. You see, the gum on the unused stamps would moisten, and the stamps would stick to the album page. Those from Czechoslovakia were the worst -- every collector in the world has stories about how their Czech stamps attached themselves to the page without any help.