I lived in an area of Honolulu that was nicknamed Portageeville due to its heavy Portuguese population. Being part Portuguese, and always seeing many Portagees, this also meant a few things: 1) good food; 2) lots of time to "talk story", and 3) within that conversation was a discussion about a car, be it a new car found, car parts, or the car in the yard, or parked on the sidewalk, or one seen near somewhere else. Truth be told, the area I lived was very diverse, like most parts of Honolulu. In fact, the street next to the house I lived in for years had a lot of Japanese and Chinese residents. I know this because I went to school with most of them, and I wanted to go out with each and every one of them when it was "time", which meant 9th grade or in high school, which at the time started at 10th grade. My dad died before I was to turn 8th grade, and my family left after my last day in the 8th grade, so my chances of "make chance"? Went from hopeful to non-existent. What you see in this picture is the apartment we lived in for a little over a year. There was a park in the back where I played all the time, and where I rode my Schwinn bike for the first time. I panicked, hit the tree, ffell off. But I was on the bike, and went back on. For the next five years, it was like I never went off that bike. But this apartment building, small but content. I remember where the mailboxes were, where the laundry room was, and climbing on the top where tenants were not supposed to be. I was a kid, I was curious. As for the parking lot, this is where I did a good share of skateboarding because there was a slope. Riding down slopes meant, at least to my dad, that it was safer than riding on the street, as a car might hit me. Forget the fact that I might ride in the parking lot, fall or go right into the tree, this was okay for these were "lessons learned". I was on the bottom floor, I want to say it was apartment #107 or #108, but it was in the back corner. We had a glass door in the back that I honestly don't remember hanging out, because the apartment in the back was considered what would be called "hood". This is where the "heavy stoners" lived, where the drug addicts lived and sold, and my mom would always say "when you go to the store and you have to cross the gate, DO NOT under any circumstances go anywhere near those apartments." It didn't stop me from walking through that gate, nor did it stop me from going closer to that building, nor did it stop me from actually **touching** the apartment. In fact, I looked inside of an apartment once and who was inside? A kid I had seen in the park who went to the school up the street. It was not my school, and that meant "rival school". I went to "the school of royalty", the other school was where everyone else went. it was stupid keiki time shit passed along from our parents, and we lived under those rules. But in that living room was the family of that kid, all of them watching TV in the living room, everyone on one couch, with a lot of cups and an aroma that I recognized. I didn't go in, but I was looking inside of that forbidden apartment. OOOOOH!!! I rode my first moped from these apartments, from an uncle that used to work at a place in Waikiki where mopeds were rented by tourists, because "local people cannot afford that, only the Japanese or haoles can ride moped." We would eventually move out of this apartment and move a block down to the house that would be my last place of residence before moving. Since then, I've read articles over the years that this area of Pauoa has become more run down, where residents will pile up trash in an open field and just watch it grow. From what I can determine, some people now consider this area "ghetto". I never used that word as a kid, I don't think anyone in Hawai'i used it the way it is used now. Then again, when someone said "that's where the local people live", on an island where everyone was local, that was code for "not as wealthy as the other people". I look at this place, and I walked, rode bike and skateboarded here hundreds of times. If I were to turn to the right, I'd be able to go up the road and head up to the Punchbowl Cemetery. Lots of fond memories. NOTE: I clearly remember my dad playing Earth, Wind & Fire's ALL-N-ALL and Kenny Loggins' CELEBRATE ME HOME album in our apartment, so... 1977.