This morning I was driving to work while channel surfing on my XM Satellite Radio when I hit the 70’s on 7 channel. It was playing the Theme to Hawaii Five-O and some more memories came flooding back to me. Not that I was ever a big fan of the show. In fact, I have only seen five episodes of the show and I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I saw them.
Sometime in the mid-1980’s, my family was going to take a week of vacation up at my uncle’s house in Coxsackie, NY. On our way upstate we stopped in the Bronx to pick up my grandmother (my mother’s mother). Unlike most of our vacations in Coxsackie, NY, this one was just going to be my immediate family along with my grandmother. We saw our grandmother a lot while I was growing up but since my mother is the youngest of seven children there was always a lot of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends around during our weekly visits to the Bronx. So this week long trip was really the only time that I can remember spending time with my grandmother with just our family.
It was a pretty quiet week. We spent most of the week relaxing, watching TV and rolling about $4 million dollars worth of pennies that my uncle kept in a big jar in the corner of his living room. While our little sweat-shop-penny-rolling operation was going on, my grandmother picked the television shows that we would watch. This was actually a good thing for me because I think that I get my love of old sitcoms from my grandmother. But the one show that she liked watching that I had never seen before was Hawaii Five-O. Each day we watched an episode of Hawaii-Five-O and rolled pennies. My grandmother knew everything about every guest star that was on the show (usually either the victim or the criminal involved with whatever crime that the HPD was trying to solve that day). She knew their names, what other shows and movies they had been in, who they were once married to and countless other trivial facts about these people on the TV. I was very impressed with this because up until that time, I thought that I knew a lot about television. All in all it was a great week and a great memory to think about while driving to work today.
The second memory that came to mind listening to the theme song to Hawaii Five-O took place about two decades later. It was my first week in Hawaii and I was a brand new electrician stationed onboard the USS Santa Fe (SSN-763). A couple of my new shipmates took me out to dinner and then to a club in Waikiki. We were having a good time and the DJ started playing the theme to Hawaii Five-O. All of a sudden, all of the female bartenders and waitresses (all good looking and all wearing skimpy outfits) jumped up on the bar and started dancing and the male bartenders started pouring free shots. I remember thinking that this was a great way to start my four years in Hawaii.
Sometime in the mid-1980’s, my family was going to take a week of vacation up at my uncle’s house in Coxsackie, NY. On our way upstate we stopped in the Bronx to pick up my grandmother (my mother’s mother). Unlike most of our vacations in Coxsackie, NY, this one was just going to be my immediate family along with my grandmother. We saw our grandmother a lot while I was growing up but since my mother is the youngest of seven children there was always a lot of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends around during our weekly visits to the Bronx. So this week long trip was really the only time that I can remember spending time with my grandmother with just our family.
It was a pretty quiet week. We spent most of the week relaxing, watching TV and rolling about $4 million dollars worth of pennies that my uncle kept in a big jar in the corner of his living room. While our little sweat-shop-penny-rolling operation was going on, my grandmother picked the television shows that we would watch. This was actually a good thing for me because I think that I get my love of old sitcoms from my grandmother. But the one show that she liked watching that I had never seen before was Hawaii Five-O. Each day we watched an episode of Hawaii-Five-O and rolled pennies. My grandmother knew everything about every guest star that was on the show (usually either the victim or the criminal involved with whatever crime that the HPD was trying to solve that day). She knew their names, what other shows and movies they had been in, who they were once married to and countless other trivial facts about these people on the TV. I was very impressed with this because up until that time, I thought that I knew a lot about television. All in all it was a great week and a great memory to think about while driving to work today.
The second memory that came to mind listening to the theme song to Hawaii Five-O took place about two decades later. It was my first week in Hawaii and I was a brand new electrician stationed onboard the USS Santa Fe (SSN-763). A couple of my new shipmates took me out to dinner and then to a club in Waikiki. We were having a good time and the DJ started playing the theme to Hawaii Five-O. All of a sudden, all of the female bartenders and waitresses (all good looking and all wearing skimpy outfits) jumped up on the bar and started dancing and the male bartenders started pouring free shots. I remember thinking that this was a great way to start my four years in Hawaii.
Those were the two memories that I had this morning driving into work. A quiet week with my grandmother and dancing beautiful women with free booze. Altogether a very pleasant drive into work this morning. Somehow I think that my grandmother would approve.
