The Dole Pineapple Plantation tourist trap was on the way home from Haleiwa, so we stopped by there on Wednesday, for the first time since I last visited the place about 30 years ago.Back in the late ‘70s, the pineapple variety garden display was situated at a fork in the road.
People would park alongside the pineapple fields and dash across the two-late “highway” to walk amongst the plants.
“I didn’t know pineapples grew on the ground,” you’d hear. “I thought they grew on trees” was another comment from folks who obviously thought the pandanus (lauhala) fruit were pineapples.
The misconceptions are understandable, but they remind me that many people still don’t know that cows have to bear calves before they give milk, or that chickens don’t have to breed in order to lay eggs.
Nearby, alongside the road, was a Dole stand that gave out free samples of pineapple, where gracious hosts would also sell you a whole fruit if you wanted one.
The current Dole experience is 100% commercial. It’s turned into a huge enterprise with the world’s largest maze, a train ride, a shopping mall, tours of the grounds, a little farmer’s market stand, a big ol’ parking lot that can accommodate tourist buses, and a much-larger display garden of pineapple varieties.
But alas, I was dismayed to discover that one can no longer get a free sample of pineapple. Practically everybody who was there when we visited didn’t care about that, because they didn’t know. But I knew. And somehow, I felt a little cheated.
Oh well … c’est la vie. I probably won’t go back there again anyway, unless a visitor asks me to take them.
2 comments:
I had no idea about cows and chickens! You learn something new everyday. (Right about now is when Kurt would call me a "city girl". Bah!)
I sorta knew about the chickens, but I seriously did not know about the cows. But it makes sense!
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