“Fla-WAH!”

Do you remember the cry of the flower lady as she plied her trade along the streets of Honolulu’s neighborhoods?

My mother was over 90 when she typed up her recollection of the women who sold flowers on the streets of Waikiki back in the 1930s.

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 melodious 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.”

And I recall that eerily melodic call in Kahala when I was growing up in the 1950s and early 60s. The flower lady wasn’t around too often, but often enough to be a familiar part of our lives.

That’s the background to these two photos that I ran across recently. I took these in 1970, just outside the front door of my parents’ home along Kealaolu Avenue in Kahala.

They show my mother buying flowers from a flower lady who had come up the street in front of the house. By this time it had become an unusual thing, so I grabbed my camera and captured a few pictures. It was a timeless tableau.

Click on either photo to see a larger version.