Another oldie: Meda and I opening presents in our apartment in the Circle Jade building near the corner of 9th Avenue and Waialae Ave in Kaimuki.

This was most likely late in 1973 or early in 1974. I’m judging that based on my hair, which was a similar length in a TBT photo from the same time period posted last week.

I don’t see signs of Christmas, so maybe it was Meda’s birthday, which would have been in January. Or perhaps back to my birthday in August of ’73.

Note the graduate student lifestyle. A folding table and chairs made up our dining set. The bookcases of wood planks on concrete blocks. A few things on the walls, a hand-me-down lauhala mat on the floor, with pillows that we used when laying to the floor to watch television on our tiny portable tv.

It was an unusual apartment, with floor to ceiling glass louvered windows that let in lots of light, and unfortunately also allowed lots of rain to be blown in during bad weather.

Oh, can you find the cat?

The presents: A timbale iron, which consisted of two molds that you would put on the stove and fill with a batter. We both have vivid memories of the time I got a phone call mid-timbale, and our cats running up and down the hall crying as smoke starting filling the kitchen from the burning timbale. The bigger box was a home winemaking kit, a plastic container and some grape mix and yeast, along with instructions for adding water and turning the whole thing into wine. We managed to quickly contaminate the whole thing as we managed to drop some piece into the mix, then got tongs to retrieve it and somehow dropped them in, and failed in an attempt to fish both out using long chopsticks. The wine was, in short, a rapid failure.