NickBlack Art - THE KAHALA HOUSE

KAHALA HOUSE

"This beautiful white colonial Kahala home with it's wide open windows, raised an east coast family of eight in Hawaii's paradise. The lush manicured grounds would entertain celebrities and the "who's who" of the world at cocktail time. Packs of little kids from around the avenue would gather during the day in the back yard to play Hawaiian Style football games ending in a splash in the ocean across the street at the park. And behind the closed gray shutter doors of this island home, America's Cold War in the Pacific was hotly debated and contested at the dinner table"

colonial

The House

This is a story of a house at 4910 Kahala Avenue. The white southern mansion was built on a canal in the early 60's. There the manor stood for three decades until the 1990's when a new owner tore it down and built two Kahala residents in its place.

When the structure was finally built when I was about eleven, my mother and I walked through the new doors to an open air celling to floor plate glass window living room facing the beautiful Koolua mountains, I asked my mother why the downstairs was so open. She said with her arms raised with a slight smile. " Party............... lots of parties!"

The architect for the new Kahala residence was a guy named Hogan. He was good. With Cobey's knack for design with a set idea in mind, the both of them came up with a down south mansion antebellum look. Six tall pillars, two stories, boxy architecture with balconies, shutter doors all painted white with gray trim. These were the features on the manors exterior with framed full monkey pod trees scattered on the green landscape. This was no Ossipoff / Dickie kama'aina house design.

The Kids

When you cross over the green railing concrete bridge going toward Diamond Head on the avenue coming from the Kahala Hilton, you can see clearly the whole back yard of The Kahala House. If the yard is not empty with just the dog Kengo, then it is full of kids, lots of kids. Doing kids stuff like fishing with the round crab nets in the canal, pick up soccer games, basketball, volleyball without a net, chasing each other in tag or whatever, climbing everything, riding wild on stingray bikes all the while in swim shorts and bare feet. They were called by many names like rascals, the Kahala crew but the name that stuck most to each of them as a gang was "Lords of the Goon" because the kids called a section of the canal by the bridge - a lagoon. They played endlessly

Some of the Kahala kids like Billy, Tommy, Hughie, Donny, Boogie, Joey, Freddy plus Bruce, Matt, Todd, Hunter, David, Pat, Peter, Loch, Allan, Scott, Kevin and the others where a young generation on the rise. There was one girl in this haole / hapa haole mix. That was the admiral's daughter, Liz. They called her "Lizard". She could take the center's snap & throw the football better than any of them, plus she could beat them all up when she felt like it, sometimes wearing a dress from after school. All this and she still stayed clean & pretty. This drove the little guys nuts.

The football games got bigger. About twenty kids were showing up in the back yard so the games started to spill over across the street into Waialae Beach Park by the sea. One day there was a something new in the tradewind breeze. That was the day Liz showed up in her new Jams flowered bikini bathing suit to play. The young fellows didn't pay much attention because Liz did stuff like that. But a new sweet fragrance was in the air inside the huddles. The smell of cheap Old Spice deodorant that one of goons was wearing. The youngest of the gang, Hunter questions ".....what's that weird smell and why is Lizard always throwing the ball to Tommy all the time and no one else." The older boys were coming of age and knew there is nothing more sexy than a girl in a bikini who could throw a football like the 49er's Joe Montana.

Schwinn bikes were replaced by old second hand Chevys in the driveway. The ocean started to take over as the new playground instead of the back yard. Lounge chairs were placed where there was once first base. The guys started to expand their surfing & skin diving territory to other places other than Hiltons & Black Point for bigger fish & bigger waves. They started playing real sports on real teams. The Kahala House was turning more into a place to eat, rest, recuperate from long practices at school, nap and watch TV in the library. They did this even during the summers when paddling for the outrigger canoe regatta's were on. Then the family youngest: Brian and Bruce, B&B - started having the parties. Lots of parties. So much so that they starting to have a party on, of all nights, New Years Eve on an annual bases. This big party started to get out of hand with lots of people showing up more & more every year. Just like the earlier pick up football games of the late 1960"s. " But man were these parties cool! "

As the years slowly passed, the kids and the house