Part 3: The Public Schools

In September 1956, we -- the "private-school" students of Riverside -- joined the real world of public school as we moved our station up the street to Hilo Intermediate. Here we assimilated into a strange new world of homerooms, class changes, intramural and interscholastic sports, hundreds of new kids our age, and an electric excitement we'd never felt before.

There were yearbooks, class bells, a school band, guys wearing shoes, a new report-card system that reported your effort as well as your grade, and glory be -- a seemingly unending supply of pretty girls with budding breasts (the allure of the female breast was etched indelibly on our adolescent male minds the day we entered the seventh grade).

Hilo Intermediate was a great experience. We were the mighty Spartans, the "sons of the blue and white," in whom "our hopes are met in you today."

The first day at a new school. Well, I shit my pants the first day at Riverside, so why not do something strange the first day at Hilo Intermediate as well.

As our car approached school that first day, something was just not right. Either our clocks at home had gone kaplooey and we were very late, or everyone had decided to go inside as soon as they got there. There was nobody to be seen. Even Dad, who had all the answers, was puzzled, but he dropped me off anyway since he had to tend to a sick patient in a few minutes.

"Ask someone if today's the first day. If it's not, just walk home," he said, giving me a worried look as he drove off. Easy enough for him to say. He was driving. I'd have to walk a mile, uphill all the way.

I went straight-away to a man raking leaves, who told me that sure enough, school started tomorrow, and didn't I read the papers, and I was the only stupid kid to show up today, and I'd better not tell my friends or I'd be laughed out of town.

I walked the mile, uphill, feeling like a fool all the way, and hoping that I wouldn't pass anybody I knew. Mom was certainly surprised to see me home so early. I don't know how to explain it, but at first, it just didn't feel right to not start school that day. You know how it is when you prepare mentally for something and then suddenly are given a respite.

But as it sank in, I rejoiced. It was like finding an extra present under the Christmas tree that had been pushed into the corner and forgotten for a few hours. It was like getting an extra scoop of ice cream left over after everyone's had their fill. It was like getting an extra day of . . . SUMMER VACATION!

Mrs. Chock was supposedly one of the strictest teachers in the seventh grade. A Hawaiian lady who had married Chinese, she taught English and was quite adamant about us not speaking pidgin in class.

She and I got along quite well -- in fact, most of us Riverside School graduates did well in her class, since after all, we had been selected to Riverside on the basis of our English in the first place. Some of the students who came from other schools did have a rough time in her class.

So, the inevitable happened. Mix together a strict teacher, a bunch of hormonal young boys from public school who weren't exactly her favorite students, and you get a lot of pranks.

One of the boys had gotten hold of some condoms -- we called them "rubber cocks" in those days. It's anybody's guess where he got them, because back then, they just weren't displayed in the stores. You had to ask the pharmacist for them in person. The rascal blew up three or four of them -- they are quite elastic and do get quite large -- before class, and put them in Mrs. Chock's closet. Unfortunately, she didn't go to the closet that period, but we learned the results second-hand from the class two periods after us.

As the prankster had hoped, Mrs. Chock opened her closet and the inflated condoms came floating down on her head. The class had erupted in laughter, and Mrs. Chock demanded to know who had booby-trapped her closet -- she was certain the culprit lurked among them.

Of course, they didn't know anything about it, and since nobody from our class was stupid enough to tell her, Mrs. Chock never discovered who the guilty party was. But some of us know. And we'll never tell.

I took beginning band that year, selecting that manly instrument -- the clarinet. Well, it had a manly shape, anyway. Mrs. Ando was one of Dad's patients, so I not only had to be good, I had to be excellent. I think she favored me since she was always encouraging me, and I made first clarinet by the end of the year.

We had to take a band test while in sixth grade to see if we cut the mustard. There were questions on tone and volume, sharps and flats, that seemed simple enough. There must have been a couple hundred of us from all over Hilo who took that test, and not all passed. Apparently however, those of us from Riverside did quite well as usual, since we made up the bulk of the beginning band class.

And as much as I hate to admit it, my piano lessons did give me a head start.

Band was fun -- we started with the standard "learn the notes" mnemonics: "FACE" for treble clef spaces, "Every Good Boy Does Fine" for treble clef lines, "All Cows Eat Grass" for bass clef spaces, and "Good Boy Does Fine Always" for bass clef lines. God, you never forget this kind of stuff.

This musical group stuck together for three years, and we had a pretty decent band by the time we were ninth graders. By that time, I played solo clarinet -- a fine career in the making that would come to a screeching halt when I went to Hilo High School. I'll tell you about that later.

Sister Karen was born in 1957. Dad trucked Dayle, Audrey, Eric and me down to the hospital, where we all looked up and waited for Mom to stick her head out the window and wave to us.

Practically every kid has been to summer camp at least once. I went to mine in 1957. For some reason, I didn't say no when Dad asked if I wanted to go to the YMCA summer camp, but when it came time to go, I was sure that I'd only stay the one week I'd signed up for, then would return home for a normal summer vacation.

I ended up staying the full six weeks. God, it was fun. Every Friday I'd call up Dad and ask him if I could stay another week. During my fifth week, they made me a Junior Counselor so I got to stay the last week free.

There was this neat bus that made its run into the YMCA headquarters on Saturday, dropping off the previous week's campers and picking up the new ones to join us veterans who were still there.

Just like in the movies, the camp bus was a rickety old thing that rattled, wheezed and puffed up to the campground, which was along the way to Hawaii Volcanos National Park, about a half-mile from the volcano road store and post office. You could easily miss the campground if you didn't know exactly where to turn.

The campground complex consisted of a main building, one small cabin, a large front yard, and a flagpole. The main building was a two-story job. The camp director's office and bunk, a dining hall and kitchen, and the counselors' bunks were on the top floor. The bottom floor, which was on ground level, consisted of the showers and toilets, and a bunk-room for the campers.

The slightly older male campers slept in the small cabin, on double-decker bunks. I stayed in the main building for three weeks, then transferred to the small cabin for the last three weeks.

We all split into teams, each headed by a counselor and an assistant (the aforementioned junior counselors). Our team was called the Kilauea Lumberjacks ("We're the Kilauea Lumberjacks, man, we're gone. We ain't got brains, but we got brawn!") and we were always challenging the other groups to wrestling. We hardly ever won, but after all, we ain't got brains . . .

So what was so great about camp? We had hours-long sessions of Capture the Flag, sneaking through the wet and dark jungle behind the buildings. We learned archery, and how to shoot the blasted arrows at targets without having the bow string slap against the tender insides of the forearm.

We picked peaches on someone's farm. The director stopped the bus one day and said, "Let's steal some peaches from those trees." The bus emptied in seconds and we swarmed all over the trees until there wasn't a fruit to be found.

We were all excited at having put one over on the owner, and were crest-fallen when the director told us the whole thing had been pre-arranged. Where's the fun if there's no danger?

We went swimming at Warm Springs and at Queen's Bath — two lovely volcano-heated swimming areas that no longer exist. Apparently Madame Pele wanted her baths back, so she covered them with hot lava.

We hiked down one of the dormant volcano craters in the National Park. What a helluva hike! Easy going down, but no fun going back up. The thing of it is, a few years later, the wall of the crater we'd been walking in erupted. It was Kilauea Iki, which set all kinds of records for lava volume and fountain height.

We had a Camp Olympics -- raw spaghetti javelin-throwing, toilet-paper roll shotput, 25-yard "on your knees" dash. Stupid things like that.

We got to watch movies -- Swiss Family Robinson, and Rocket Ship X-M. You know, the blockbusters.

I got to pass out during a trip to Kona and an overnight stay at Kahaluu Beach Park. We all over-exerted, and were pretty tired. I went to get my dinner tray, and as I was talking to the table, I lost it. Next thing I know, there's someone yelling at me because I flipped my food went all over him when I fell. No big thing. Just add it to my list of embarrassing incidents.

I learned to take aspirins without water during the drought that hit the volcano area the last week of camp. No water to bathe, so we all were pretty stink. Many of us came down with the flu or something, so a nurse came up and dispensed aspirins. No water to take aspirins, so we chewed them with gum. Not bad. Tasted like li-hing mui.

Camp gave us all an opportunity to burn up some hormones and satisfy our gross humor with some pretty raunchy practical jokes.

A couple of us once peed in a soda bottle and put it in the refrigerator until it got cold. We then gave it to one of the younger boys, telling him it was orange soda. The unsuspecting victim gratefully poured a swig into his mouth before his eyes widened and he spat it out. It was a horrible thing to do to a kind and gentle, harmless kid.

We carried the junior counselor's bunk outside one morning while he was still sleeping in it. He woke up freezing and threatened to cut off the wieners of the wieners who were responsible. Trouble is, we all stuck together so he never did find out who was responsible. My wiener thanks God for that!

Then, somebody mentioned that someone had told him that he had heard that if you stick a boy's hand in warm water while he was sleeping, that he would have a wet dream. We tried that with more than one camper on more than one occasion, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone tried it on me as well. But of course, that was one myth that didn't work. However, that didn't stop us from lying once we got back to school. We were telling everyone in sight that we made so-and-so have a wet dream via this incredible new method we'd learned. I wouldn't be surprised if kids today still talk about how to trigger a wet dream with a warm pail of water.

A couple of counselors were haoles from the mainland who had signed up for a summer in Hawaii. It was necessary that we break them in. Since the counselors had a meeting every night before they went to bed, that gave us a chance to short-sheet their beds. There's nothing worse than a tired counselor jumping into bed after midnight and finding that he can't get his feet all the way down the bed.

We had to cut that out though. The counselors would wake us all up and keep us going for at least a couple of hours to teach us a lesson. They'd make us do nonsense things like pulling off our sheets, blankets and pillowcases, moving to another bunk, making it up, then tearing it back down to return to our original bunks.

It was at summer camp that I won my first and only fart contest (not that I compete that often, you understand). We called them "futs" in those days. This is pretty gross so you can skip this section if the subject bothers you. Personally, I've always thought that farts were pretty funny.

It was night, and for some reason, everybody was talking in the dark and nobody could fall asleep. The counselor was no help — he was talking more than we were. So, we decided to have a fart contest.

Now, in a fart contest, you must have at least one fart stored up, ready to go, in the first place. At least eighty percent of the cabin is immediately eliminated simply because they can't come up with their first fart within the prescribed time limit. Fortunately, I was one of those that had tummy rumbles earlier on in the evening. I had one stored up, so my fart in the qualification stage assured my participation.

The contest started, and I must say it got pretty stink in the room. One fart, two farts, three farts -- the counselor kept count. One by one, the farts got weaker and weaker. One by one, the contestants dropped out. Soon, there was only one farter left. Me. And like the Energizer rabbit, I just kept going, and going, and going. You see, I had discovered a fart-winning technique. If you got on your hands and knees, put your head down to the mattress, and poked your butt into the air, you could fart over and over again. What happens is that while your butt is open, it is possible to suck air back up into the butt.

I guess in actuality one could go on forever, attaining fart nirvana and a place in the Fart Hall of Fame. But I reached my limit that night - 276 farts. Witnessed by a roomful of hysterical young men.

I was so proud, and my feat will never be forgotten. For, carved into the wooden post of my bunk, and preserved for future generations is this legend: "C. Miyamoto, 276 futs, 8/57."

Summer segued into the start of my eighth grade school year -- not a very remarkable one, in fact it was rather non-descript. I did go back to school with a gross case of the boils, and I did end the year with the mumps. But sandwiched in between those two medical disasters was a whole bunch of hardly anything at all.

So let's talk about the boils.

During my last two weeks of summer camp, you may remember, we had a drought. We did go swimming in the ocean at least once each week, but we didn't have enough water back at camp to take a bath. We never washed out clothes, so they were horrible as well. Consequently, I returned home pretty dirty -- and with a heavy tan. I know it was a tan because it didn't wash off with the dirt.

And I was skinny too -- eating wholesome food in sensible amounts will do that to you, especially when the refrigerator is no longer handy. Mom couldn't wait to put some flesh back on my bones once I got home.

A few days after my return, I started getting these pimple-sores on my hips, on my knees, on my arms, on my back, and in the pubic area. I tried putting on some mercurochrome and covering them with Band-Aids, but they got larger and worse. Enough was enough. I had to show them to Dad. I remember his words to this day: "Whooooo boy!"

He proceeded to lance the ones with heads, squeeze out the ropey white pus, then cover the boils with Bacitracin ointment and dress them with bandages. Was I ever glad that Dad was a doctor. It was the first time I had ever heard of Bacitracin. Practically a wonder drug, that ointment was, even if we kids did mispronounce the name and call it "bassa-trishin." It took a few weeks for all the boils to disappear completely, but without the ointment, I would have suffered even longer.

I ended up going to school with hidden, bandaged boils, hoping no one would find out. Luckily, no one did, or I'd be subjected to all sorts of embarrassing questions ("You have what? You have them where?") and would have been intensely derided (you know how eighth-grade boys are).

Occasionally however, someone would accidentally rap me on one of the boils and I was hard pressed not to faint from the waves of nauseating pain. Those little buggers were tender and sore, and I was miserable until they went away for good. I still have some reminder scars on my right hip.

There comes a time in one's life when it's necessary to start paying attention to girls, and to learn how to dance. Harry Kaneda's dance studio came to Hilo regularly, and transformed awkward, stumbling young boys into sophisticated young men about town. He taught us to dance.

The classes were held in Waiakea Uka gym on Saturdays, and we'd pass an hour or so stepping off the box step as we learned the waltz, or stepping off the box step as we learned the fox trot. I got a little tired of the song "Fascination." Mr. Kaneda played it over and over again during class. I have to admit that it was a good record for learning how to waltz -- slow, even-tempoed, melodic, (monotonous).

We also learned how to do the Lindy hop, bop and the jitterbug. That's actually what I was in there for. I wanted to be able to dance to the rock and roll songs that were hitting the Top 40.

The class eventually ended, and we all re-upped for the next class where we got into more exotic dances like the tango, and widened our repertoire by learning advanced steps for the waltz, tango.

We'd practice our steps at the YWCA dances, leaving the other dances gasping in awe at our terpsichorean mastery.

Ah, we were magnificent.

Dayle and Audrey took hula lessons. It used to drive me up the wall because while they were practicing, I couldn't watch the cartoon programs on TV. Instead, I had to listen to that infernal song, "Do The Hula," over and over again, day after day after day.