Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii - West Oahu: Honolulu Record Digitization Project

Honolulu Record, Volume 10 No. 7, Thursday, September 12, 1957 p. 5

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Gadabout

The way in which Waikiki hotel interests are beefing about the noise created by HRT's lumbering new diesel buses should make the Board of Supervisors think twice before they permit the transport monopoly from ignoring what HRT wants instead of what is best in the public interest.

King and Hotel business interests are sore about the new noisy buses, too. At every stop they belch smoke and fumes and really rock the surroundings, with the Waste of their noise.

Another thing: on wet days the buses run right along in the flooded gutters and splash water right across the sidewalks, in the process thoroughly wetting pedestrians.
 
If you enjoyed the floral decorations of the bandstand at the inauguration of Gov. Quinn, folks who contributed toward them are patients at the Territorial Hospital who sent in eight boxes of croton leaves.
 
Some Patriotic organization should donate a new Stars and Stripes to the Territorial Hospital. The flag now in use is tattered. It flies on a hill overlooking the spacious grounds. A patient hoists it every dawn, lowers it every sunset.

Bill Quinn, inadvertently of course, actually had a wee bit of a hand in opening the door to the governorship for himself at the last GOP convention. A resolution had been submitted in support of Gov. King which, according to Riley Alien, was so strong that if. it had been adopted, there would have been no room left for the national administration to appoint anyone in his place. But Randolph Crossly, the man who once missed the palace by a halt, is said to have got wind of the resolution and then prevailed upon the resolutions committee to water it down. Some time later, Quinn, who held an important post on that committee, was approached to submit the original resolution, but he argued that the original couldn't be located and nothing happened. You can't attribute his reluctance in the matter to any desire on Quinn's part to be governor, though, because there's been no indication he had any more idea than anyone else at that point that he'd be a possibility for, the job.

Judge Ernest Ing’s court took on a strange aspect one day last week when a girl faced several psychiatrists from Kaneohe to prove she is not incompetent to take care of herself and be allowed at large. They said she was. She said she wasn't. She is a former war bride from Italy, divorced and faced in the past with economic difficulty. The head-shrinkers claimed she ought to be put away—she argued otherwise and won. Judge Ing turned her loose. A few moments later, she was itching to give the medics a piece of her very irritated mind but was dissuaded by a bystander who told her she might be hailed before the Judge again and might not be so lucky.

Here’s the way one customer cured a filling station operator of falling for the savings stamp gimmick that has been both the hope and the despair of many merchants. The customer was offered trading stamps and refused; saying he didn't save them, but asked a question. Why wouldn't the filling station man give him that much credit in gasoline? The filling station man agreed, after thinking it over, that giving his customers credit in regular merchandise would be a better bargain for both customers and himself. There's one drawback—that being that everyone takes credit for items in trade In the place of business while there are a good many who don't bother to take the trading stamps. But it's rather a mystery why more businesses don't go in for the credit-premium idea and dump the trading stamps. Probably it's a job for a sharp public relations man and promoter who can explain for the businesses to the public just what they'd be doing.

Former Governors (Sam King not included) enjoyed themselves at the reception at Washington Place following the inauguration of Gov. Bill Quinn, it's said. One was reportedly in exceedingly good humor and high spirits. Guess which.
 
The Honolulu Liquor Commission, prompted apparently by William Barlow, attorney for the local liquor peddlers, has dusted off an old policy which, if observed according to standards often mentioned by commissioners, would block the granting of any more liquor licenses at all. That's the policy, adopted a year or so ago, that the saturation point for liquor establishments had been reached and no hew licenses would be given unless they were in "the public interest." Now the theory of the commission stated sometimes, is that the less liquor sold around town the better. So how can anyone come before the commission and claim it will be "in the public interest" for him to get a license— when it's quite obvious he wants a license to help him make money? The one obvious type of exception, to which members of local commissions and governmental bodies are unusually vulnerable, is that the license will help the tourist industry. It's not too hard to convince anyone the economy of Hawaii might be aided by letting tourists get as glassy-eyed drunk as they like so they will spend more money here.

Farrant Turner, secretary of Hawaii, will be remembered by a lot of Hawaiians as being the first official in a top position to speak out against the pineapple contracts the companies have got homesteaders stuck with on Molokai. Sam, Peters, Lynch Kekahuna and a lot of others on Molokai have been fighting to get a better contract out of the pineapple companies for years, but no important person wanted to take their side. Despite a provision of the HHC act that says homesteaders can't sublease. Nils Tavares when Atty. Gen., said the pineapple contract which appears to sublease land from homesteaders, doesn't really do that at all. Various chairmen of the HHC have virtually ignored the efforts of the homesteaders to get a better shake for themselves and so have governors, it remained for Acting Governor Turner to call the turn the others didn't have courage or desire to call. He said he thought the homesteaders are getting a pretty poor deal and set out to see how he could help them do better.

Sam King was not around when William Quinn was inaugurated governor. He went to the Mainland with Mrs. King on a vacation. He was so busy when Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton was here he had to be on the Big Island and couldn't stay here to talk to the secretary at all. Then one can't forget that King no sooner resigned than he also quickly appointed 16 persons to territorial positions—before his resignation was accepted. That meant his successor wouldn't get a chance to fill those jobs. Now, if King's supporters think they're going to run him for office in the next election, the first thing, they'll have to do is convince the voters King Sam deserves sympathy in spite of his "sour grapes" attitude. And that figures to be quite a job.

We are in receipt of a letter from a victim of Pat Yim, the fleecer, a man who never reported his loss. Having read the RECORD'S scoop on how King Sam freed the King of the Fleecers from prison, this reader writes that he believes fleecers like Yim should be kept somewhere so they can't get a crack at the public. Of course. there's one more thought that should go with that one—"You can't fleece an honest man." It doesn't fit all cases, though, despite the many gimmicks fleecers have for appealing to the larceny in the hearts of their victims. They also pull swindles on deals that look altogether legitimate. Yim, for instance, often "sold" things he didn't own, such as a house and lot in Palolo and Woody's on the Boulevard.

Harry Lyum, member of the C-C traffic safety commission put forth an idea that sounds good to us, though he didn't get much support for it from his colleagues. It was that the age limit for driving cars should be raised. He thinks teenagers should be limited and he takes his own experience as a sample.

"I know when I was a kid. I drove any kind of speed. I was just lucky nothing happened to me." he says.

But he doesn't believe in acting without giving, teenagers a chance to speak for themselves. So he proposed something like a public hearing that would make a point of inviting teen-agers in to get their views.

"I think we might get a lot of ideas from them," Lyum says.

So far his colleagues haven't been able to see it, and it's certainly no credit to them. Quite obviously, teenagers are one of our biggest community problems. Police Chief Dan Liu has given statistics that show teenage crime is definitely on the increase. Its obvious teenagers have problems of their own. What could be better than giving them a chance to air their problems? In fact, Lyum's idea might be carried much farther than the mere driving of cars.
 
Why not have a teen-age symposium at which the youth, of the city, or of the Territory, be invited and urged to speak their minds? Until adults know what the teenagers think, they can't do very much about helping them solve their problems, hence they can't expect to learn much about the big problems of the community.

If you have, or know of a two or three room house with a rent that's "reasonable," say some-thing under $100 a month, this column has a prospective tenant? —In fact, a very eager prospective tenant.
 
There’s lots of comment that Sam King, who can dish It out but can't take ft, showed lack of Hawaiian aloha and Republican kokua, apart' from sheer bad manners, by not delaying his departure on a mainland visit until after Governor Quinn's inauguration. When Republicans fall out, actions sure speak louder than words.

It is only common humanity to feed the hungry. If our hospitals are too big, too complex, too impersonal to do these small kindnesses for the sick, something is very wrong.