Adventures In Pupukea (500 words)

We rode that old MGB with the top down, the wind and sunshine on our faces.  We took that road right after Three Tables and before Foodland up to Pupukea Heiau.

Michael maneuvered the MG along the bumpy dirt road. To the right, Waimea Bay glittered as waves caught the sunshine. Trade winds played with my hair.

As I pushed my hair out of my face, I turned to him. “I felt a car pass us, and it was an old car, an old white rambler.”

Laughing, he said, “No car passed us. The road is too narrow. We just went over a big puddle, must be condensation from the engine.” I turned in the seat. The MG’s tire tracks were in the mud, but no vapor, no other tire tracks.

By this time, we were higher up the road to the Heiau. The dank smell of bushes was more noticeable.  The road continued to wind uphill where the trees were immense.  In the gloom of the shadowed light, the air had a chill to it. Dark clouds gathered over the Heiau.”We have to turn around!” I shouted as I twisted in the car seat, looking back down the road. “We cannot go up there.”

“There’s nowhere to turn,” He said.  He slowly drove until we saw a bend in the road.

With increasing urgency, I repeatedly said, “Hurry! Turn around! Hurry!”

Michael maneuvered the MG back and forth until we were pointed in the right direction.  Nothing was said as we drove down the mountain.  We parked at Three Tables and looked out at the ocean.  I apologized for not taking him up to the Heiau.  He smiled, “We’ll go another time, a better time. Are you okay?”

I laughed, “Sure! I’ve recovered. Let’s eat!”

“Good. There’s one more thing. A little old man in white rode down with us, sitting in the back. I saw him in the rear-view mirror.”

Years later, I told Glen Grant that story when I went on his Ghost Walk Tour. More years later, I called his Chick’n Skin radio show and told him the story again. He had been hoping to talk to me.  Someone else had a story about a white rambler up Pupukea.

This lady said she was driving up to the Pupukea Heiau when she saw an old white rambler in a ditch alongside the road. An old Hawaiian woman flagged her down and asked her to help move the car.  The lady said she’s not that strong. The old woman persisted, “Come, try.” The lady tried to talk the old woman out of it. She’d take the old woman to get help.  The old woman was so insistent that the lady came out of her car and pushed that old car. The car moved out of the ditch!

Grant said he later found out that an old Hawaiian woman went up to the Heiau every day to take care of it. She drove an old white rambler.