This is another my mother’s series of brief vignettes of life in Hawaii when she was young. Most of these were written in the last decade of her long life. She passed away in January 2013, just a few months before her 99th birthday.
Waikiki street vendors of long ago
In the 1930’s when my sister, Marguerite, and I were apartment dwellers in Waikiki, we listened every Saturday for the “flower lady.” She was a little Japanese woman who carried a large basket filled with bunches of flowers and walked slowly down the block calling out in a rather melodies voice, “fla-WAH, fla-WAH.”
Although I have retained a clear mental picture and the sound of her voice, I don’t remember what flowers she sold besides the carnations which were our favorites.
We discovered there wasn’t just one “flower lady” in all of Waikiki, there were several, each with her own territory staked out. To me, they all looked alike, all small middle-aged Japanese women with the same call to potential customers in the same tone of voice: “fla-WAH, fla-WAH.”
Then there was the manapua man that I remember best in the Kuhio Beach and Kapiolani Park area. He was a small wiry Chinese man who carried his Chinese ready-to-eat buns with pork centers in two large cans attached one at each end of a sturdy stick about five feet long balanced across his shoulders. He made his way slowly calling out in measured tones, “ma-na-pu-wa, ma-na-pu-wa.”
I have an earlier childhood vignette of the candy man who strolled the beach area adjacent to Kapiolani Park. Hanging from a strap around his neck and shoulders, and tied around his body just below the waist, was a tray like a small tabletop on which he carried his chunks of candy. I believe it was taffy in subtle shades of beige, pink and white. When he made a sale, he cut and packaged the purchase on his little tray.
Helen Y. Lind
29 Oct. 2003
(age 89)Note: 1941 photo of Helen Yonge Lind and her sister, Marguerite.
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Speaking of flowers and manapua: 21 years ago, when I was just starting to learn Hawaiian, I came across the word “manapua.” Having only recently arrived from Boston, not having grown up in Hawaii, I had no idea what the word referred to. But I had already learned that “pua” is “flower.” And I had learned that “mana” is power (especially spiritual power). And I knew that in Hawaiian, a modifier comes after the noun it modifies. So my conclusion was that “manapua” means “flower power” which brought to mind images from the 1960s and 1970s of anti-war protesters walking up to a line of troops guarding a federal building holding rifles in front of them, and the protesters put a long-stemmed flower into the barrel of each rifle. Flower-power indeed! At the next class meeting, when I asked the teacher about the origin of the word “manapua” she explained that it is a contraction of the phrase “ma’ona pua’a” meaning “filled with pork.”
As a side note, I’ve never been able to get a good answer to the origin of the word “kama’ilio” which means “to converse.” Because when viewed as kama-‘ilio it seems to mean “puppy” (offspring of a dog), or when viewed as ka-ma’i-lio it seems to mean either a horse’s illness or a horse’s genitals. Fascinating language!
On the other hand, the Hawaiian Dictionary by Pukui/Elbert says that it is the contraction of “mea `ono pua`a,” i.e. delicious thing (cake etc) and pua`a (pig, pork), and translates it as “Chinese pork cake.”
If it meant puppy or dog it would have a kahako (macron) on the first i, but then in common typesetting the macron may have been dropped (as is the macron over the “o” in kahako above!).
Has anybody seen kama`ilio spelled with a macron on the first “i”?
I remember the manapua man carrying his “product” exactly as your mom described when I lived near Hobron Lane in the early ’50’s.
Kama’ilio and manapua: Bao, wow!wow!
I’ll leave now.
I am hungry for Manapua! Who makes the best?
Even as late as mid-1972, in the area of Waikiki known as “the jungle” there was, perhaps the last, manapua man who walked through with the cans on a shoulder pole, calling out just like your mother described!