Getting to the beach with my grandfather in his Model T Ford was a huge task. In the summers, my grandparents looked after my sisters and me. I think when I was seven and my sisters were five and twelve, the thought of going to the beach and having a picnic was on our minds all the time. We would plant the idea in my grandfather’s mind and on some days he would ask my grandmother to pack a picnic lunch. YES!
That was the first part of the plan. Success!
My grandmother would mumble something in an annoyed tone, but she would put the rice on and start frying spam. She would pickle some cabbage. Beat some eggs, fry them with slices of Vienna sausage and cut them into bite size pieces. The whole house would smell of “picnic”!!! In about a half hour she would start packing the lunch ever so neatly into a cardboard box. We had a table cloth, napkins, forks, chopsticks, plastic cups and a pitcher of ice water.
Meanwhile I was changing into my bathing suit and running around talking in a very loud, excited voice looking for my inner tube and beach towel. I have no recollection of what my sisters were doing. They were probably quietly holding their bathing suits, towels and inner tubes watching me get overly excited.
We would pile into the back seat of the car. Me with my inner tube on, bouncing up and down on the seat, holding on to the cord behind the front seat and making believe I was riding a wild horse. I have no idea how my sisters would fit into the back seat with me. I was too busy bouncing and swinging on the cord.
We would reverse out of the driveway and I would try not to scream too loudly. My grandmother was never excited to be going to the beach. She had gardens to look after, trim, clean…not waste time going to the water. The car smelled of fried spam and musubi (riceball). My grandfather would drive about ten minutes down the road. As soon as he saw a dirt road that looked like it it didn’t lead anywhere, he would pull over. He didn’t speak much English but he would smile broadly and say, “LUNCH!” We would yell, “NO Jitchan (grandfather), drive some more! Go Jitchan, no lunch, beach!”
He would get the car back on the road and we would drive another five minutes. He would spot somewhere he could pull over and he would announce…“LUNCH,” and we would scream again…“NO! Beach, Jitchan, beach. Go!” And off we’d go again. Eventually, the smell of lunch would get to all of us. The beach was forty-five minutes away from their house. I don’t remember ever getting to the beach with my grandparents or having lunch at the beach. We would always give in and eat our lunch sitting in the car stopped on the side of the road.
Full of a great lunch, Jitchan would turn the car around and go back home. No lunch to take to the beach now and ready for a nap. The ride home was quiet. All the excitement and bouncing around was exhausting.
In the next few days we would try again. Never making it to the beach didn’t discourage us from trying again and again. I would think my grandmother would get tired of packing a lunch for the beach and not getting there, but she never complained about not seeing the ocean. We never caught on that we didn’t need our inner tubes or towels either. Lunch in the car by the side of the road always tasted delicious. I love the memory of my grandfather pulling over on the side of the road for lunch. I think of it every time I go to the Big Island. I see places where we had our picnics in the car and I laugh, seeing myself sitting inside an inner tube eating lunch in the back seat of Jitchan’s Model T.
