|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
December 4, 2011
Published as Family History in a
Gramma Letter dated December 1, 1998.
© 1998 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
|
| | |
Boy & Bird, 1983
© 1983 by Bud Grossmann
|
BACK-FENCE DISCUSSIONS
Tuesday, December 1, 1998
Dear Gramma,
I always got along fine with my next-door neighbor, Mr. Floro Rojas, despite our occasional “misunderstandings.” Mr. Rojas came to Hawaii from the Philippines. I spent much of my life on the U.S. mainland. Mr. Rojas and I speak different brands of English and operate sometimes out of different cultural backgrounds.
I’ll tell you two tales from a few years ago, when Fran and I were living next door to the Rojas family, on a mountain ridge in the part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. Our home was one of seventeen sturdy dwellings clustered upon a two-and-a-half-acre lot on a slope overlooking the valley and the sea. The hill was steep. When we drove up the driveway, we watched sky the entire time without lifting our chins. Fran and I were at the top; the Rojas family was in the next house closer to the ocean.
One time, I asked Mr. Rojas’s advice about getting rid of a low-but-spreading banyan tree whose roots were loosening the rocks of a wall beside my parking area. He told me, first, to measure out some Roundup herbicide using an associates can. Then he went on with detailed instructions.
When Mr. Rojas finished, I needed to clear up one point. “I’m supposed to use an associates can?” I was not sure what he meant by that.
“Yes, pour da poison een associates can,” he repeated. He held up his thumb and forefinger to indicate the proper quantity.
I still wasn’t sure I had it right, so later I asked Frances about it. She’s lived in Hawaii a little longer than I. “Honey,” I said, “have you heard of a standard measure of some sort called an ‘associates can’? That’s how much Roundup Mr. Rojas says I’m supposed to use on the banyan roots.”
“Certainly,” replied my bride, the Local Girl. “He means put it in a sausage can. A Vienna sausage can. We have one in our kitchen cabinet, of course. Throw it away when you’re done. I’ll get a new one from my mother.”
On another occasion, friends of ours moved from a house in Manoa to a condo in Liliha, and they had to give up their six Leghorn laying hens. Chickens are a common sight (and sound) in Kalihi—Mr. Rojas had a few bright-colored birds of his own—so Frances and I agreed to give the Leghorns a place to live.
You might remember this, Granny. I immediately wrote to you and Grampa with the happy news: I was embarking upon my first experience with poultry since my teenage years, when I’d lived with you on your Wisconsin farm. You wrote back and offered a suggestion for keeping costs down. I should find out, you said, whether our neighbor’s hens laid dark eggs or light. If the eggs next door were dark-shelled, perhaps Mr. Rojas would let me put my birds in with his, and I would not have to build a chicken coop of my own. We could apportion the cost of feed, and we’d have no trouble telling whose eggs were whose.
I proposed the idea to Mr. Rojas, but he shook his head. It wouldn’t work. “My cheeken only por da cheeken pie,” he said.
That surprised me. “Chicken pie?” I repeated. So you raise them only for the meat? You don’t get any eggs at all? Well, then, couldn’t we share the coop and the costs, and we’d know all the eggs came from my hens?”
“Cannot!” Mr. Rojas said again, chuckling at my naiveté. “My cheeken only por da cheeken pight!” He emphasized the t. “Me, I only get pighting cheeken, dis kine bird! I raise um por da coke-pight, dees kine roostaire!” He said, “Eef your cheeken going eensai my cage, Bud, my roostaire going keel your bird, por sure! Get no more egg por anybody!”
When I told the chicken story to Frances, I didn’t have to ask her to help with a translation.
Love,
Buddy
|
I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my
others). Write to me at the following address. Please
be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and
mention what page you are writing about.
Thanks! BUD GROSSMANN
|
Top of this page
|
|
This page was updated Sat, Dec 3, 2011, 11:45PM CST
|
© 2011 by Bud Grossmann
|
|
|
|
 |
