From: Chapter Twenty-One

TOUGH GUYS WEAR SKIRTS

“They brandish’d Their weapons, distort’d their Mouths, Lolling out their Tongues and Turn’d up the Whites of their Eyes Accompanied with a strong hoarse song, Calculated in my opinion to Cheer Each Other and Intimidate their Enemies.”

––Lieutenant John Gore, Cook’s Voyages, 1769

... At the Center, we were warmly greeted by a group of Tongans dressed in grass skirts, feather headdresses, and shell beads. Visitors to the Cultural Center can try their hands at weaving Fijian baskets or swinging strings with balls at the end, Maori style, or squeezing coconut milk as Samoans do. Plus, it attracts its fair share of Elvis fans; there‘s an enduring rumor that Elvis lives on at the Center, in the guise of an overweight chief.

Elvis loved Hawaii, building his second home here while filming Blue Hawaii and Girls, Girls, Girls. Much of Paradise, Hawaiian Style was filmed at the then-new Cultural Center, with its double-hulled outrigger canoes full of dancing and singing Polynesians. The waterfalls that had served as a backdrop still flowed. His three Hawaiian movies introduced the songs “Return to Sender,” “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,” “Rocka Hula,” “Blue Hawaii,” and Elvis’s romantic rendition of “Ke Kali Nei Au” the Hawaiian Wedding Song, still among his most popular titles.

. . . At an open-air hut in the Maori village at the Center, we watched a man with a mallet and chisel shape wood planks into intricate carved sidings, which would soon adorn the houses of the faux village. After admiring the sculpture collection, I saw a koa spear and picked it up. Green-blue eyes stared back at me from the head with pencil thin designs carved into it.

“It‘s from this,” said the carver, holding out a piece of thin shell. Although of Maori heritage the man’s eyes matched the shell’s color. He introduced himself as Doug and showed me other fine sculptures––some old––from former village carvers including his father.

When he returned to the workshop to wrap the spear for me, a woman who introduced herself as “Auntie Vea” wrote up the bill. She said that she had worked at the Center since the Sixties and that she had known Elvis and even shaken hands with him. “He sweated so much his shirt was always drenched wet. You remember his famous Blaisdell Arena concert in 1973?” she said.

“ ‘Aloha From Hawaii’ broadcasted around the world,” I replied.

“Elvis donated most of the money from that concert for building the Arizona Memorial. And he had that home in Pupukea practically carved into the hill. Ah, Elvis! He was one of us,” Auntie Vea said.

After watching the grand flotilla of canoes full of singers and dancers, Paulette and I left the village. I didn’t see anyone who remotely resembled Elvis.