Treasure barrier island
As we drive back towards the ocean over a series of causeways, we see a gang of pelicans resting on a cement balustrade. Sometimes a gull briefly matches our speed. From some vantage points you can look out on a landscape of sailboat and small islands and errant tropical vegetation and I get an inkling of pride, that maybe this habitat of mine is special and beautiful.
Landing back on the island, we pass by a lot with a flimsy lumber frame erected in the middle. Depending on the shell they give it it will be a bank or a pharmacy or a fast food restaurant. We stop at an enormous intersection, 6 lanes one way and four the other. It’s big enough to be a ceremonial plaza or a parade ground.
Then the light turns and we continue down the stroad. We park in a lot next to a hot pink apartment building, and can see the aquamarine miracle of the ocean just out beyond a low-slung ridge of sand dunes. The ocean! Rama exclaims, I was wondering if we were ever going to see it.
For my speech this time I won’t make Rama suffer through standing in a parking lot. I do, however, make her pause and appreciate the sea grapes (Coccoloba uvifera) as we march out on a wooden boardwalk that passes in between the sand dune bramble! The lone native fruit of Florida. Stumbling through the sand, I tell her that sea grapes are impressively drought-tolerant. She takes off her sandals as I tell her they can withstand hurricane force winds. I struggle to take off my boots while telling her they don’t mind salty soil or salt spray. Their fallen leaves create a carpet of brown discs in the general vicinity of the tree, making their own mulch. I roll up my pant legs and tuck my head inside of my shirt. The beach sand is bright white, blinding, it’s not just the sun I need to shield myself from. Rama stands with her hair blowing in the wind, arms outstretched, a sandal on each end, soaking in the sun.
We walk right up to the edge of the water, where the sand becomes damp and compact. The sprawl and development here becomes a harmless line on the horizon, dwarfed by the sky and the ocean. Rama smiles at me through her cat eye sunglasses. I move up close to her, we both face the ocean.
No wonder people make such a big deal about it, it’s amazing to look at. We’re so close to the ocean in the city too, but you never get to see it. It puts things in perspective. It makes me lose my train of thought.
I dig my foot into the sand and draw a line parallel to the surf. It fills with water. Rama asks if that’s the groundwater, or else what is below. Oh that was it. I tell her that scientific analysis indicates a basically transgressive Holocene sequence with lagoonal sediments occurring seaward of the islands. Underlying the lagoonal deposits in all areas is a 1 m thick relict Pleistocene unit that has been flooded, reworked and vegetated by intertidal to subtidal organisms.
Haha, you dork!
She bends down and starts making drip castles at the edge of the hole I’ve dug with my foot. I sit down next to her and start to help. When she was a kid, she could never dig too deep when making sandcastles on the beach. Water always seemed to fill the hole. Is it because of the limestone groundwater? What’s actually below us here?
I tell her it’s an interesting question. Even at the beach, we can’t help but ask questions. It’s also the topic of the next stop on our tour. Funny how it works out that way. Basically, we’re sitting on a large bar of sand. Far below it is the limestone shelf, but yeah this whole island is basically made of sand.
That’s crazy!
It is crazy, but basically your intuition as a child was right, you could keep digging down into sand for a long time. That is if the water didn’t seep in. But it seeps in because the water table is so high. Or because we are so low.
Our little sand city city starts to take form. I am making a castle with turrets and Rama is making a tasteful suburban development with detached single family sand homes. She says that the sand is beautiful, so clear and white and fine. I tell Rama that this specific sand, the powder white sand of the western coast of Florida, is made up of quartz crystals, produced by the weathering of continental land masses like the Appalachian mountains and washed down rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. Combined with the sparkling quartz crystals may be shell fragments, coral limestone fossils and organic matter, silt and clay coming from the rivers, and muck and peat derived from local decomposition of organic matter. Every beach tells a geologic story!
Look at you, Rama says, when you get going you can be a real know-it-all.
Haha, well I don’t know it all, and neither do scientists. Like, for example, we know what’s beneath us if you keep digging, but we don’t know how this all got here in the first place.
What do you mean?
You might not have noticed, but we are actually on an island now, a long narrow barrier island. A thin trip of land that runs parallel to the mainland. (جزيرة الحاجز) The one we are on is called treasure island. Florida is home to the most diverse and interesting barrier island system in the world, they are a huge reason why Florida has such great beaches, and such great areas for resorts. They are lined up along these long barrier islands with water on both sides. But the weird thing is we don’t really know how they come to be formed.
We don’t know why?
We don’t! Based on the areas of the world where they’re formed, we can guess that they form in places that are tectonically stable, and around smaller marine basins such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. We also know that they occur where there are relatively small tides and ample sand supply, just like here.
Scientists have different theories: offshore bar, spit accretion, and submergence. No single theory can explain the development of all barriers, which are distributed extensively along the world’s coastlines. Scientists accept the idea that barrier islands, including other barrier types, can form by a number of different mechanisms.
I want to keep going. I tell her that although we aren’t sure exactly how barrier islands form, scientists are certain that these barrier islands are bound to change, and to disappear. They shift, and grow, and disappear. On their own, they are mutable as the tides.
We turn to face the horizon of buildings again. A line of silent development spreading across the entire horizon. Nowadays the barrier islands of Florida have almost all been heavily developed. Hotels, condos, once upon a time Aquatariums. The sand has been drilled into with foundational pillars, covered over with cement. But underneath it all is really just sand. Maybe the engineers know something I don’t, but it seems pretty tenuous to me.
Tenuous?
Like, it all seems so eternally drab, like the condos and the streetlights have always been here, but I have to imagine with one good storm, the whole island would disappear underneath them.
You’d love that.
Love what?
Oh you know, the destruction, mankind paying for its prolificacy.
Ha. I mean I wouldn’t miss it. But it’s not so much the destruction of the human that I care about, I’m interested in the renewal of the natural. Every sign of it is a reassurance. If you think about it outside of the scale of the present, outside of the world we’ve built to try to block it all out, nature is relentless.
والعالم لا ينقض بل يتجدد بالنار
I have been letting myself indulge in science needing out in front of Rama, now she’s listening to me indulge in philosophy.
A big wave comes and destroys our drip castle city all at once. We stand up quickly to keep from getting wet. As the wave washes back out I stop a piece of debris from washing away with my boot. I reach down and pick it up and hand it to Rama. It’s a crab claw.
رفقائي
Rama had some more questions about barrier islands, but what she really wants to know about are these friends I’ve promised to introduce her to. She keeps asking me about them as we both keep our eyes out for the giant pelican. Perhaps not the world’s biggest, but worthy at the very list of a picture. I don’t remember exactly where it is but it’s somewhere on this quick flowing road zipping down the middle of the barrier island.
Rama asks me when I met them.
-Who?
-Your friends?
-when I worked at this place in high school. It’s around here somewhere. We pass by various apartment buildings and multi-colored resorts, an outdoor bar, a seven eleven.
There!
Rama is able to quickly find a turn-around and pull us into the small parking lot wedged in between two apartment buildings. All of the spots are filled, with several people milling about, a man carrying a pet carrier, a woman with a cardboard box. Rama strums her fingers on the driving wheel in impatience. She eyes the handicapped spot. A woman comes out with a cardboard box and a clipboard, and unlocks her car with the key fob. Rama turns on her blinker, the woman drops the stuff off in her SUV and heads back inside. Rama groans. She eyes the handicapped spot.
Rama, that’s for disabled people.
Well, you have a bad sunburn.
She pulls in and takes the spot.
Before we go in, Rama wants a picture with the giant pelican. First Rama has me take her picture wearing my pith helmet, and then asks to get one of me as well. I climb up onto the little stone hill where they’ve perched the enormous fiberglass pelican.
Did you go to the same high school?
No
I can’t see the whole thing, get closer to the pelican.
Where did they go to college?
Like me, they never went.
The pelican doesn’t share much of its base, so I have to hug onto it as I mount its cement dias.
Okay, say cheese. Okay, one more, look at the camera, trying to maneuver around the fiberglass bird’s gullet, I knock my helmet off.
Rama picks it up and asks if they work here.
My friends? No, they live here full-time.
We walk back towards the main building, but the side gate is open so we can walk straight to the back. The yard is crowded with a collection of wooden sheds and huts. It is filled with screened-in huts and large enclosures made out of chain link fence. We stop in front of the first one and Rama looks in at an enormous Bald Eagle, sitting on top of a wooden post. It looks lazily at us. Rame reads the sign.
Roosevelt is an American Bald Eagle who came to the Seaside Seabird Sanctuary with a deformed wing due to an old gunshot wound. As a result, Roosevelt can’t fly strong enough to be released back into the wild.
Hi Roosevelt!
This is a different Bald Eagle than the one I knew when I worked here, that one’s name was Calvin Coolidge. But they have the same dignified bearing of a war veteran.
Looks like one got out, Rama says pointing at a night heron looking down at us from a roof.
Oh no, they just hang out here.
Rama holds out the pith helmet. She wants the official explanation.
Okay, so back when I was in high school, one weekend while exploring St. Joe’s Creek, I came across a Great Blue Heron. I knew there was something wrong as soon as I came up on it. Usually when you sneak up on a Great Blue Heron it will let out a loud croak and take off flying, letting you know it’s upset that you’ve discovered its prime hunting spot. I kept getting closer to it through the tall grass and it didn’t move. Its feathers were matted, and its wing was hanging as though it was broken. It was barely able to move. I don’t know how it had gotten all the way there in the bramble, far from the beach and the water, maybe it had been washed back up the channel during a rainstorm or high tide.
As I walked up onto the cement side of the ditch to look down on it, I thought it was already dead. It had its eyes closed, maybe even accepting death. But when I got close enough, it opened its eyes and looked up at me. I jumped over the fence of a storage facility and found a used cardboard box and took my shirt off and draped it over the Heron and picked it up. It was so surprising to feel a Heron in my embrace, they are such large birds, but birds are also so nimble. I put it inside the box and covered over it and took it home and put it in the car. My mom looked up where to go and drove us here. This hospital for injured birds and sanctuary for birds who can no longer make it in the wild.
A freely wandering egret strolls by us. Rama tries to pet it but it zooms away.
I remember very clearly the feelings I had the first time we came here to drop off the Heron. The nurse on duty took the box back into the examination room for a few minutes, and when she came back, she let us know they’d be able to fix the wing and rehabilitate the bird. I felt overwhelmed with joy. A type of newly permanent joy. The nurse told us the heron would stay here for a few months until it was fully recuperated and then be released back into the wild. I was overcome, I teared up in the reception room. I didn’t have any money for a donation, but I immediately asked if I could volunteer. My mom was surprised to see my like that.
We stop in front of a Turkey Vulture holding its wings out wide. Rama tells me Ruby is a Turkey Vulture that has been at the Sanctuary since 2016 and was unable to be released due to a previously healed shoulder fracture. We both wave back.
She was even more surprised when that next summer I volunteered to work at the clinic. Until then I had never really shown much interest in anything, as a kid I was mainly just rebellious and checked out. She could barely recognize me as I spent 4 days a week biking here and helping at the avian hospital, cleaning the cages of the birds that stay here in captivity because they’re too injured to survive on their own. I would even answer the phones. I had never felt so much enthusiasm. Not just being around the animals, the people here were the first I’d ever met who cared about nature. Before them I thought I liked St. Joe’s Creek just because it offered a chance to escape suburban life. Once they taught me about the scientific names for plants, and concepts like ecological succession, I began to love the creek itself, and any other bits of nature I could find. Before working here at Seaside, my only heroes were Ian MacKaye and Jello Biafra. One summer here, and I suddenly wanted to become a scientist.
We move over to a large sandy lot at a couple of Pelicans milling about. I point out one of them I recognize. From his wing. That is Mr. Jingles. Mr. Jingles is an Eastern Brown Pelican that cannot fly due to a fused elbow and wrist in his left wing. I continue.
The other volunteers were all studying to become environmental scientists or veterinarians. They were enamored with the older full-time veterinarians who worked there performing surgery on birds. These were successful people, but successful for caring for nature. I realize now thinking about it for the first time in many years that it was all so influential because it was the first time I had a model of success not rooted in just making money.
We greet a number of parrots and other birds who don’t have anything physical wrong with them. They were kept at pets and don’t know how to survive in the wild. One is a bluejay called “Curious” George.
I was inspired, but unfortunately, it was a little late for me. I suddenly went from being a student who didn’t give a shit in high school, to thinking the whole thing was a joke, to one who suddenly was taking all of the honors courses in biology and chemistry. I did great in all of my classes, but it was too late. Because I had been so checked out for the other three years, my GPA was too low to change. I only had one year of good grades to show. And like so many ambitious kids find out, you really can’t just become a veterinarian, it’s intensely competitive, even more competitive than becoming a doctor. You kind of have to go to a good school to even be considered for a veterinary program. Or at least that’s what my dad told me once the rejection letters from colleges arrived.
Bacardi, the green non-native parrot, screeches at me in sympathy.
So I was mad that my enthusiasm made to seem ridiculous. It also left me without any plans for the fall. Everyone else went off to college, or was never going to do anything with their lives anyways. And then there was me. I felt like a failur. I escaped by moving to the big city, first working in the kitchen, and then as a waiter, and now a bartender, service industry royalty. I’ve never stopped being interested in biology, but I feel like an amateur. I don’t know things like you do. Giving lessons at the community farm to kids is a nice part-time gig, and let’s me keep in touch with nature, I check out books from the library, but to be honest with you, I still feel embarrassed. Embarrassed that I never went to college.
-Embarrassed? You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about that. Rama hugs onto my arm. Some of the stupidest people I know are college professors.
-Ha. It’s just that, you know, I still have, I guess, some resentment, an inferiority complex about college. I don’t have the resources, or the social position, to now go back to school after all this time, and maybe that’s okay. But I still, like, get embarrassed being around your grad school friends. And, well, I guess around you.
-Oh they’re truly all idiots. And none of them have the curiosity that you do, and that’s all that really matters.
But then she chooses to be serious and honest too.
-But I hear you. It’s really helpful to hear you say all of this. To be honest, I have thought that there are some real class differences between us, but I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know your background. I haven’t known how to maneuver around them. Most of the time I forget you never went to college, I take it for granted that people don’t use words like ontology every day, but honestly if you never said anything I’d never know. But maybe that’s classist too.
She thinks about it for a second with the help of the ocean.
-But it’s not about what you know. It’s about how you care. You pay me such attention, you care about the weird things I’m into, but also you pay attention and watch out for me, around people I mean. And you’re into weird things too, you’re picky and judgmental, but it’s in the service of things you care about. You have your own moral code I think, and because you didn’t just inherit it from your parents you’re protective of them. Maybe being self-effacing is one of them, but I care about the things you’re into too, I mean I want to be. I want to know who you are because I like you. You’re a cool guy. Look, Janet agrees.
We look over at Janet looking back at us. Rama reads the sign.
Janet
Janet is a Sandhill Crane that is missing 3/4 of her lower mandible (beak). Due to this, Janet is unable to eat on her own in the wild and requires a specially designed feeder at the Sanctuary in order to eat on her own.
تيكي گاردنز
The sun has descended from the liver of the sky down to the pot belly of the horizon, belted by the single row of houses that now separate us from the beach. We pull into a gated beach access parking lot, a place where the public can park their cars to go to the beach. The parking lot itself is partially shaded by palm trees planted in the grass median. They cast long spindly shadows on the cement. I park us at the far end, looking out on a thicket wall of Silver buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus) and greenbrier vines and scrub palmetto and invasive pepper trees. But as Rama would say, the thicket is merely the veil from behind which the familiar city as phantasmagoria beckons to the flâneur. I narrate.
And now, as we finish our day, we come to the former site of what I believe is the platonic ideal (المثل الافلاطوني) of the mom-and-pop tourist trap. Indeed, started by a pop Frank and a mom Jo Byars who operated this place from 1964-1986, it typified the entrepreneurial eclecticism and middle-brow whimsy of the great American roadside attraction. Frank and Jo met in Tampa and got married at a beach motel, and soon Jo was selling her handmade jewelry out of a little souvenir shack right here where the parking lot still stands. Frank was there to support her, and he was the right man for the job, his motto was “Nothing happens until somebody sells something” and so it wasn’t long before the shack expanded into a house, a multi-roomed shopping center they called the signal house. But that was just the beginning
Rama peers into the brush. Yes, but what was it?
It was everything! The entire exoticizing imagination of the mid-century made real. In order to keep shoppers hanging around, Frank would start building a garden out back, which soon exploded into an entire tropical dreamscape of lagoons, volcanoes, and lots and lots of Tiki Gods. As this place became one of the most popular tourist attractions in Florida, Frank would add a bar, a restaurant, a miniature zoo, and even a floor show.
Rama is frustratingly looking into the brush. I console her.
But let us travel there ourselves, following along one last time with Ross B. and his family. They visit at just this time of day, decades ago. The sun looks over their shoulders as they pull up in the station wagon to a building made up of three pitched roofs, each gable (جملون) jutting out above them like the bow of a ship. Ross has never seen this style of building before. Maybe on television. He’s certainly never seen a building with a shield-shaped face like that painted on the side of it. Big orb eyes, gritted teeth, flanked on both sides by bamboo spears.
Ross looks out the windows of the station wagon to try to make sense of where it is that they have arrived. Next to them is a large plastic yellow sign, lit up like a lantern,
its letters resemble Chinese characters.
TIKI GARDENS
Florida’s South Seas
Island Paradise
I hand Rama the brochure, she grabs it from me. She tears it open like a Christmas morning
Present.
TRADER FRANK’S RESTAURANT
With Entertainment in the WikiWiki Lounge
THE SIGNAL HOUSE
Truly a phantasmagoria of shoppers’ delights!
So much to see, Frank and Jo have made a fantasyland for all ages. Ross’ parents are just as excited as he is. There is shopping, there is entertainment, they don’t know where to begin. His mother yearns to go see the various handbags and accessories in the Bou-tiki. There they can buy Tiki Gardens branded neckties, Tiki-topped cocktail drink stirrers, or a pineapple shaped wooden serving platters. She peers into the illuminated windows of the Polynesian complex as they walk towards the entrance. She squeezes Ross’ father’s hand. She tells Ross he can also find a souvenir here! Ross can’t believe his luck.
For his part, Ross’ father wants to check out what drinks they have in the Peacock Bar. They pause in front of a advertisement board just outside the front door and he reads the description next to a Tiki headed-mug
Kanaka Kapu – a chief’s delight
Tart and rich
Keep the mug to remember us by $2.50
Ross’s father squeezes ross’s mother’s hand. He tells Ross that he too can come to the peacock bar, they will serve him a tropical Roy Rogers. Ross just hopes to see some real peacocks. They also say there are parrots and monkeys!
They walk into the front entrance and are greeted by an enormous stone head, bubblegum light emanates from its gaping mouth. What is that, Ross asks timidly. Ross’ father says that that is a Tiki God. What is a Tiki God? The father reads the explanation posted on a sign (written by Frank himself) to his son.
“The legend of these giant Tiki God, worshipped by the natives of Easter Island and other Polynesian areas, is that big boned white men, reputed to be Danes, came to the islands centuries ago and were thought to be gods by the natives. These Tiki Gods are still in existence in Easter Island and other Polynesian Islands. Hence the name “Tiki Gardens.”
Hmmmm, well that doesn’t make much sense, Ross’ father thinks to himself, well we will have to just go see them for ourselves.
The polynesian complex is a maze, but they follow a young beautiful woman in a flower dress who shows them out to the gardens out back. There she shows them the entrance to the “Polynesian Adventure Trail.” But in order to enter, the family must first pass through the mouth of Oro, the Wind God. His furrowed shotcrete brow looks down on young Ross as he holds onto his mother’s hand. They all take a step forward, Oro doesn’t move. They continue walking, they make it through! And they have crossed Oro’s path without being swallowed. Or have they been? They are immediately consumed by darkness, is this the end? No this is merely the black lagoon and the mangrove swamp, the first obstacles on their perilous path. Past the Maori burial ground they can see open water, and continue along the seaside mangrove path to the Hukilau shack. White sands, mangrove knees.
At this point, I reach into my bag and pull out another map. It looks likes one that Rama would draw, the little points of interest as cartoon icons. She gives it a pirate’s’ scrutiny.
Okay, where is the Hukilau Shack?
Here, number 3 on the map.
And where is that in relation to this parking lot?
Just out there where the bramble meets the waters edge.
Let’s go!
She grabs the map and orients us by her phone GPS map, and we walk through a gap in the bushes where the exposed sand has allowed a little marsh elder to grow. We immediately disoriented as we bushwack through more bushes, but Rama keeps track of our little dot on the map on her phone. I roll down my sleeves to protect my forearms, and hold branches taut so that Rama can pass through. We get to the water where it cuts in in a narrow muddy canal.
This must have been the lagoon! I take a look at the map to remember, then begin to narrate again.
A slight pause before surmounting Fire Mountain – the highest promontory in Pinellas County! Ross and his parents mount the shotcrete crag and Ross wishes he was tall enough to see down into the smoking crater to see the glowing lava but his father is lost in thought. Is he in awe of Ku the War God. No, he is entranced by the incantations of the Peacock Bar. He can’t wait to try the Tiki Typhoon – A delightful Blend of Luscious Island rum and imported juices. For her part, Ross’ mother is thinking of their visit to the Treasure House, where she will pick-a-pearl and where Ross will be able to choose his own souvenir from the buckets full of sand dollars and conch shells and cowrie bells by the pound.
In the present, Rama and I push through some sea grapes and some more buttonwood to try to keep up with Ross’ family. I see a mutant hydrangea growing in the much and point to it. Probably a leftover artifact from Tiki Gardens! I continue to narrate.
Ross and his family are interrupted in their thoughts by coming upon the Sun Temple – Ross looks up in awe, he’s never seen a shrine before, they’ve only ever been to church. It is a small trapezoidal altar emblazoned with a sun design. A woman in a bright flower dress stands in silence. Should they pay their respects? Ross walks up the miniature staircase festooned with flower offerings up to the altar laid out before a golden bearded god-face. Decorated earthenware, conch shells, and a few spare American coins from roadside visitors. Ross takes out the plastic necklace he got from Treasureland and lays it carefully on the altar.
Where the Sun Temple once stood is now, as best as we can figure, a Sabal Palm. Rama puts her palms together and bows. We then skirt around a shallow pond up against the edge where the parking lot meets the bramble, and then back into the overgrowth. We try to keep up with Ross and his family as they walk out onto what is in the present an eroded, overgrown canal.
Ross and his family walk out onto the first islet of a Tiki God occupied archipelago. Long Ears, the Picture God, the Fishing God. Each one snarling and scowling and baring their teeth. But Ross is not afraid anymore, he has made his offering to the Sun God, and their path is now blessed.
Ross jumps up and down as he sees the parrot bell tower in the distance, each rung adorned with rainbow-colored macaws. As Ross’s mother thinks about whether a collectable spoons, a souvenir plate, or an an oversized matchbook will best serve as souvenir, Ross looks ups at the avian tower as the Macaws look back. They look at the pigeons and the harlequin birds and the toucans and Ross’s father answers questions about their beaks and wings and thinks of how he’ll reward his paternal wisdom with A Banana Delight – an unforgettable creation with Hawaiian rum and Crème de Banana.
They come to a clearing where there is a cutout board for taking souvenir pictures. Frank and Joe are there to meet them. Ross’ dad wants to shake the hand of the people who built this whole place themselves. How did Frank build all of these Dickey Roofs and shotcrete totems himself? Ross’s mom inspects the festooned wrist of Joe Byer. Frank invites Ross’ parents to take their picture in the face cut-out board. Ross’ father hands him the camera and shows him how to use it. When he looks through the viewfinder his father has become a strong man, and his mom is a luau dancer. Frank and Jo ask Ross’ parents if they’ve made a reservation at Trader Frank’s restaurant yet? And don’t forget to make a cash offering to the God of Fortune on your way back to the Tahiti Hut for South Seas shopping!
All of this used to be where the parking lot is now, and I help Rama climb over a short chainlink fence so she can stand in its approximate location as we finish the summoning of the family tour.
Before finishing their tour, they pay their respects to one last God, the God of Fortune. Ross’ looks up at the snarling face and reinterprets it as a smile. Ross’s father presses his palms together and makes a ceremonial bow. Ross does the same. Then, from behind the statue, stalks a bird with a long tail drawn behind it.
Oh look Ross! It’s a peacock.
The enormous bird swings its tail around behind it, looks at the family, now blessed with fortune, and it opens its tail, an enormous fan of color, illuminated in the last rays of twilight sun.
It is now twilight in the present as well. I tell Rama, it is time for all of us to join the Torch lighting ceremony. We walk back over to the car and brush the leaves and twigs off of ourselves and get back into the car. You can no longer hear the distant roar of the ocean. It’s silent. I reach into my backpack and I pull out the tape recorder, and set it on my lap. Written in sharpie on the cassette tape is “exotic sounds of Tiki Gardens.” I hit the play button.
“Aloha and good evening ladies and gentlemen it’s now twilight time here at Tiki Gardens and again it’s time for torch lighting so all of you folks in the various shops if you care to join with us in our ceremony if you will kindly step out into the little garden we’re about to begin.”
This is the voice of Trader Frank, echoing through a crackling microphone from his spot in the broadcast booth. His voice carries the past in it, he speaks like an old Vaudeville MC, a way of speaking that has also gone away.
“Now the peacocks have come over they are perched atop the various buildings you can hear them in the background.”
Through the car speakers we hear them, peacocks perched atop totems, towers, palm trees.
“So to get you in the mood for your trip to the south sea islands here’s Ernie playing for you a medley of beautiful Hawaiian tunes on the Wurlitzer and here’s Ernie.”
Suddenly the slow, melting, haunting sound of a wurlitzer comes on, interrupted only by the occasional call of a peacock.
“Your best vantage point to witness our ceremony will be on the dock facing this broadcast booth. All the activity takes place right in the center of the garden facing the broadcast booth.”
I look over and Rama has closed her eyes, transporting herself, a smile on her face.
“Aloha ladies and gentlemen we are broadcasting live direct from beautiful exotic Tiki Gardens right here from the heart of the Gardens from our broadcast booth here’s Ernie Shreez on the Wurlitzer bringing you a beautiful medley of Hawaiin tunes we’re bringing torch lighting we do this each evening at twilight so we extend to you a most cordial invitation to join us just as the sun goes down right here at beautiful exotic Tiki Gardens when we bring you the ceremony of the lighting of the torches Aloha.”
The wurlitzer continues to play, and I close my eyes as well. I see Ross, sitting at his parents feet on the dock, a conch shell in his lap. His mother sways back and forth to Ernie’s instrumental version of the popular Hawaiian song “going to a Hukilau.” She sings softly to herself.
Oh we’re going to a hukilau
A huki huki huki huki hukilau
She makes the dance with a brand new pearl bracelet on her wrist. Ross’ father dances too, one hand clutching onto his Kanaka Kapu souvenir mug. The young beautiful women in flowery dresses slowly stroll across the grass with torches in hand, lighting up the garden in a fiery glow, the Tiki Gods coming back out of the darkness, Oro and Ku and Kin Ka Jou.
Princess Karloa singing the unforgettable Hawaiin wedding song. She begins to sing in a trembling voice.
“This is the moment I’ve waited for. I can hear my heart singing soon bells will be ringing.”
She sings from the past, she sings in the present. My eyes are closed, I don’t remember when we are, I don’t remember where we are. I am in the wurlitzer ether, I am in Polynesian paradise. I only come back to the present when I feel Rama’s breathing on my upper lip as she leans towards me and places her lips on mine and kisses me slowly in the still air inside the car.
