June 16, 2023|0 comments
Category: Opinions
By Bill King I had wanted to visit there since the days of my youth. I never imagined or believed it would ever happen. Now, when the days of my youth are a dim dot in my rear-view mirror, I have made it there. Not only has my dream come true, but I have now been twice.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of visiting far-away lands and exciting places…places like Fort Payne, Scottsboro, or Albertville! Fort Payne was only nine miles from my native town of Rainsville, so I made that trip many times…at least a dozen! That trip always excited me as a boy. As I write this column this morning, I’m sitting on a screened-in back porch, on the island of Kauai, in Hawaii. I’m listening to the sounds of exotic birds and breaking-ocean waves as they make their way to the black-and-white mingled sand stretched out in front of me. As the sun rises, the former kid that occasionally shows up inside this old man is excited to be here.
I look forward to the day ahead. I wonder what breathtaking beauty I will see today. As I look up from my laptop, I cast another amazed gaze across the Pacific Ocean, and I hear one of the numerous feral roosters crowing, “Good morning” in Alabamian or “Aloha” in Hawaiian.
Jean and I made our first trip to these islands 25 years ago. That trip was a combination vacation and mission trip. We spent half of our time during that first trip working with First Baptist Church of Waimea, on the Big Island. The pastor, Ted Goslin, and his wife, Leah, were gracious hosts. Sadly, we lost Ted to cancer this past year. We spent the other half of our time like vacationers, touring the Big Island and Oahu. Of course, we visited Pearl Harbor, where we stood on top of the U.S.S. Arizona and wept. We vowed that one day we would return to visit other islands. That day came last week, 25 years after we made that promise.
This time we visited our third of the 8-major islands of the archipelago. I guess that means we have to go back at least five more times! This time, we spent our entire time, nine days to be exact, on the Island of Kauai. This time we were simply vacationers, and we played the tourist thing to the hilt.
We have discovered that Kauai and Alabama have at least one thing in common…chickens. When I was a boy in Alabama, we had a few laying hens. My Grandpa Wood was a full-time chicken farmer, as were numerous residents of Alabama, especially on Sand Mountain. Grandpa had five large chicken houses. On the island of Kauai, I didn’t see any chicken houses, but we did see plenty of chickens. They were everywhere, except in a house or pen. These chickens don’t actually belong to anyone. They are not kept up, and for the most part, they are feral. The Hawaiians ancestors brought them to the island. One legend says a hurricane blew across the island and destroyed all the chicken houses, and the owners could not gather their chickens back up, so they became feral. Now, they really are “Free-Range” chickens. They are all along the sides of the roads, in bushes, in business parking lots, and in the yards of people. Through tracking and estimating, there are as many as 450,000 running amok on that one island. They are a site to see.
There are also at least five Alabamians running loose on this island this week too! God sure has done an amazing job on the beauty of this place. I’ll share more later.
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