Aloha and greetings from the lovely island of Maui, Hawaii, USA!!! As I was contemplating the new and improved Texas Records website, I pondered over going forward backwards or backwards forward??? I resolved to go both ways and use the former later, and the latter sooner. Huh? Thus the greetings from Hawaii,
yes that’s right, HAWAII!!!
Actually it kinda’ goes like this. Starting in the middle of my self described bio update, I had another one of those darned surgeries. This one, being the lucky number 11 was however, a bit necessary as I had ruptured an umbilical hernia and had a possible strangulated bowel. In layman’s terms, my belly button popped open and my gut was caught up in the muscles above. Needless to say, I was rushed right into the hospital, and had surgery the very next morning. Well thank goodness that the bowel did not strangulate and all is well now. I still have my big belly, hard solid as a rock again, and I am once again working out and trying to stay in shape, whatever that shape may be.
In the meantime, while recovering from my surgery, in order to find things to do, I began to cover the Glenn Heights and Ellis County beat for Charlie Hatfield and the Ellis County Press. Then around the Christmas of 2006, we paid a surprise visit to our lifelong friends, Bert and Dee LaCombe. I sang at Bert and Dee’s wedding way back in 1981, a little Don Williams song they requested, “I believe in love.” So for their 25th wedding anniversary, they reaffirmed their vows in the same little Fort Lewis College Chapel, facing out into the snow capped San Juan Mountains. Liz and I showed up to surprise them and I again sang that same song at the wedding, with the same preacher, Larry Barnes, and almost the same crowd in attendance. Earlier that summer, Bert had “secretly” informed us that they were going on a cruise to Hawaii for New Year’s Eve and 2007. So once again we surprised them and showed up unannounced on the Cruise Ship. What a ball that turned to be with the ship anchored in Oahu harbor, we saw the most spectacular New Year’s fireworks show I have ever seen. We then sailed to the island of Kau’i, and the “little Grand Canyon.” From there we went to the big island of Hawai’i and the night time scene of red hot lava dripping like a candle into the ocean. Next day we found ourselves on the island of Maui, and two days of traveling the island. The last day we sailed back to Oahu, rented another car and drove down Pearl City boulevard and Duke Kahanamoko Highway, to Highway One and to the North Shores, and huge 20 foot waves. While on the cruise, I continued to practice my writing craft and penned a three part series for the Red Oak paper, entitled “Aloha Red Oak.”
As fate would have it Liz and I so fell in love with Hawaii, that she took a teaching position at a K 12 school in Hana, Maui and we ended up moving here on March 7th of 2007. We literally shut down the house, packed up a few necessary belongings, shipped a box, drove a car from Dallas, Texas to Long Beach, California, put it on a ship, boarded a plane, flew to Kahalui, Maui, rented a car, and drove the long 2 hour famous “Road to Hana,” all in less than ten days. We did something most at our age do not do and that was to uproot ourselves from Family and friends, Elks lodge, music and all to begin the adventure of a lifetime. I would be remiss and less than truthful to not say that at first it was very very hard. We miss our mothers and others so. There is no Church’s Chicken, or Jack, or O’jeda’s good Mexican food. There are no major stores of any type, only Hasagauwa’s General Store, and the Hana Ranch Store, both of which must charge outrageous prices just to stay in business. Gas is running around $4.20 a gallon right now, milk around $7.00, so needless to say we are glad our vehicles do not run on milk. So we live on monthly trips to Kahalui and Costco, Walmart, and Home Depot, and of course just a little fast food.
It has been even harder on my psyche that I had left behind the jungles, rain forest and monsoons of Vietnam for over 40 years ago now, having tucked that away in a dark closet of my mind. The jungles and rains of Hana had a way of bringing all of that back to me. I began to have nightmares and was talking and walking in my sleep, and all sorts of other nutty stuff. As we humans sometimes do (no man is an island) in describing ourselves and our frailties, we do not go deep enough into the truth as it can be quite hurtful to take off ones clothes in public and stand stark naked before our fellow man to be judged. It would be far from me however to take the lesser path and the easy way out, perhaps for fear that someone may think me crazy??? Well, as the famous Waylon song goes, “I’ve always been crazy but it kept me from going insane.” Besides, my shrink and good doctor, Dr. Sprenger tells me, we vets are not crazy, just emotionally challenged from prolonged trauma we seem to think we remember, and would but rather cannot forget. Hmmmmmm, sounds a bit crazy to me???!! How bout u???!! Nevertheless, not to exclude this from my bio, but neither to accentuate upon it, suffice just to say that the jungle affect is easing a bit, and the VA is finally doing their part to help me and my fellow vets.
Musically, which is why we are in this bio, I left behind a lot of unfinished business on the mainland, with a partially recorded album and songs going round in my head, but no new album. I left my good friend and producer, Buddy Stephens with half an album taking up microbits of space that he needed for other projects. Then while we were back on the mainland last summer, visiting our mothers, kicking out my daughter, (another sad tale to tell someday) and renting the house, my Nam buddy Joe DiTondo, who was on a 10,000 mile motorcycle tour, came down and spent a few days with us in Dallas. While there, we worked on and rewrote his song, “Government Travel Plan”, and that gave me the push I needed to finish, “Bein’ an American.” This new album is dedicated to every veteran who ever served in the Armed Forces, peace and wartime. It is a compilation of songs that speak to the heart of the country and pose the question, why can we not just drop all the prefixes and just be Americans. Also filled with the humor of “Take your Gas’n’shove it”, “Da Crawdad Song,” and “Ballad of Kate,” the album covers much of the gambit of how I see America, Americans and the trouble I see our nation in.
Now to bring you up to date on the latest in my enduring life in music, I have begun giving guitar and harmonica lessons. I now have four students, and I too am studying a new style of music for me, the Hawaiian style. I study every Thursday with Auntie Jo, and all the lovely ladies of the Halehulumamu. (senior citizens center) I have added the Ukulele to my repertoire of instruments, I also have begun to study and learn the Hawaiian language through the use of phonetics. We will be giving a Christmas concert on December 5th at the center on Hana Bay. I have brought a lot of recording equipment, recently purchased the full edition of “band’in’a'box,” and now have all the tools necessary to begin recording an album of Hawaiian songs. We are truly enjoying the people and learning their ways and food.
I will be traveling to Canada to my good friends Bruce and Ardyth Cummins, to go on the hunt. So I will have some good huntin’n'fishin stories for you all in the coming months. Liz and I will also be going to visit our mothers and sisters, and family over the Christmas holidays. We will also be fishing New Year’s day with Roger Hill, good buddy and fishin’guide on Lake Texoma, so another good fishin’story to come from that day. While there I again will be practicing my craft as a free lance writer, as I plan to write an article on police Chief Phillip Prasifka, and his life’s story. I will also submit for Charlie Hatfield’s approval the latest pages on “Aloha Red Oak.” Boy oh boy, Charlie, do I have a story for you. Until then, and whence we shall meet again, I leave you with the old Irish poem my grandfather used to say to me: “May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, May God hold you In the palm of his hand.”
May God bless you and yours, God bless our troops, and may God Bless America.
Mahalo nui loa, Harley Brown