Hilo Days: Mom, the Great Cook

Here's another story from my old "Hilo Days" website that chronicled my life in my hometown of Hilo, Hawaii. It's an excerpt from a limited edition book that I made for members of my immediate family.

One of these days, I'll start another blog and run all of the stories there.


Mom, c. 1950

Mom, the Great Cook

Our yard on Ekaha Street had a lot of grass. Well, when we first moved there, the back was nothing but four-foot-tall California grass. Dad hired some older kids from the church Christian Fellowship club, and they all came over one weekend to do some clearing.

I knew most of them, as I saw them every Sunday at church. I would guess they were in intermediate or high school, and to me they all looked like adults (remember, I was only in the first grade).

Anyway, I tried not to be spoiled and useless, and helped as much as I could, dragging weeds around and working up a few beads of sweat that dotted my mainland-milky white skin.

The kids worked through the day, and by the end of the day, several columns of white and black smoke were rising from our back yard. The massive California grass growth had disappeared, and red dirt was exposed.

I don't know whether Dad bought seed, or cuttings, or what, but in a few months, the back yard was covered with grass – Wailuku grass, we called it. The kind that grows real fast in the rain. And remember, it rained a lot in Hilo.

Mom made special oven-baked barbecue hot dogs for their lunch. Actually, it was the first time I'd ever had that particular dish. Great stuff. The older kids scarfed up the whole shebang in nothing flat.

You see, Mom was a good cook. Years later, when I went to college, I asked her for a bunch of easy recipes. Included among the handwritten index cards was the recipe for the oven-baked barbecue hot dogs. I've embellished the recipe a little over he years, but to this day, it's one of my favorites.

Mom once had a bunch of her recipes published in a story that the Hilo Tribune-Herald wrote about her. We were all real proud, and I know she was, too.