Beginning on November 1, 2024, which is the date of my mother’s first letter from her Hawaii trip 84 years ago, I am serializing day by day, the book,
Cecilia
King’s Extraordinary Senior Trip, which you can obtain from Amazon in either Kindle or paperback.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming nine-months in Hawaii 1940-41. You can order the entire book from Amazon in either paperback or Kindle format,
click
here.

May 24

Kilauea Camp –

Dear Daddy and Mother –

We just came in from an all morning hike that was perfectly wonderful! Exhausted, dropped to the club for lunch, and your letter was there (the last airmail one). I enjoyed
so much hearing about the Okla City trip – and especially about Carolyn’s house. But am so sorry to hear that
______ is leaving before I get to see him. Can hardly wait to see the new dress! I had all my clothes clean for this trip, but with no laundry facilities here now, they’re only a pile of dirty garments.

I must tell you about the fascinating walk we had this morning (we three girls, & the young groom) three miles, down, down, into the damp cool shade of a giant fern forest.
The most exquisite colors of green and red fronds – and piles of damp moss covered decaying tree trunks, beautiful dew covered moss beds with minute yellow flowers – so thick a carpet that we sank to our ankles in it. Weird waxy vines of vanilla, and lauhala
jungle vines climbing amid the ohia lehua trees, magnolia trees whose tender new white leaves looked like blossoms, lovely fragile lavender ground orchids, wild strawberries along the shady narrow trail. At the very end of the trail were the “lava trees” which
looked like black mummified tree trunks, the live plants having been covered with the hot outpour, and molded it around them. And the molds where lava had encased the tree, the wood burned out leaving a perfect likeness around what had been the roots & trunk
– now a hollow. It was simply a glorious morning, with the sun sifting through the leafy pattern of the ferns overhead.

This is the first day that it has passed noontide without pouring rain. We usually rush out to the tennis courts right after breakfast & sweep he yesterday’s rains’ swimming
pool away (while some soldier sings an accompaniment “If I had my way, dear, you never would work.” But soon the courts are buzzing with soldiers with brooms, rakes, grass cutters, cameras – and we have a full size audience when the tennis finally starts.
We play until the rain starts at eleven, then read the rest of the afternoon and night.

Most amusing is our striker, “Joe,” who cleans the cabin daily, makes beds, fires, and picks up and folds neatly the Day’s debris of tobies, skirts, shorts, shoes & coats. This
morning he was most distressed, peering under beds, tables & in corners for a toby mate which he calls “Ripey socks.” They gave us a different one for a few days who did nothing but give the beds a lick – so you can imagine what a joyous homecoming Joe got
this morning.

One day this week it rained from daylight to dark – and after hours of inactivity and being bored we paddled out for a walk in the rain. About a mile from camp at the
dumping grounds we ran into the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen around here – an immense earthquake crack (issuing steam) about sixty yards long – the bottom & sides of which were covered completely with a solid mass of Nasturtiums! Giant leaves & flowers
by the thousands – even crawling & encircling the tops of nearby trees – and completely enveloping the frame of an old car which was dumped in the

Want to receive TOM BUTT E-FORUM delivered to your email address?

Click here to sign-up to receive the E-Forum. Tom Butt is the former mayor of Richmond, CA, having served 27+ years until January of 2023, eight of those as elected mayor. Tom Butt is an architect and founder of the 50-year
old Richmond architecture-engineering firm Interactive Resources. He serves on the board of two Richmond nonprofits,
Rosie the Riveter Trust and
East Brother Light Station, Inc. Visit the
Tom
Butt website for additional information about Tom Butt’s activities and a digest of past E-FORUMS going back to 2000,
http://www.tombutt.com. Subscription to this service is at the personal discretion of the recipient and may be terminated by selecting “unsubscribe from
this list” at the bottom of this email. This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section
107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.