Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2003Fall

Shack Attack
Arist deWolff

Places don’t usually leave lasting impressions on me. I have spent many times at school in the classroom, and I don’t have any feelings of sorrow when I leave after class. I also work at a construction yard, and when I finish work at the end of the day, I don’t wish I could go back to the yard and cruise. I don’t hold any special feelings for that place. As for the shack where many of my younger days were spent, however, I have very strong feelings. The shack is part of my life, not just a little old run down shack in the heart of Palolo Valley; it is part of me and who I am.

The shack was not always the place my friends and I would go. My friend Damien and I would usually just venture off into the bushes and check out little red and green lizards and try to find the black and yellow colored bird who used to sing so sweetly to us all the time. Damien has been a good friend of mine ever since I met him at Kalani High School. He had an interesting mix of ethnicities; his father was a cool-headed full Korean and his mother a crazy, always energized, Danish woman. I think this mix is where Damien gets his complex personality. He was a good kindhearted kid, and everytime I saw his radiant smile, he brought a smile to my face. He was a physically fit kid, muscular and stronger than an ox. He had forearms that made Popeye look like a schoolgirl and a head that made the Homo Erectus fossil skulls look miniscule in comparison. He probably got in this peak condition from all the farm work he did for his family. If you ever saw Damien, you might think he was an old man already because of the intense scarring on his arms and hands and because his physical condition made him look a lot older than he was. Damien was extremely logical in the way he worked; he did things systematically. I always watched him work when I went to cruise with him. Sometimes I would help, and other times I would talk story while he picked Luau (Taro leaf). Watching him work made me think of the times I used to work for my uncle on Kauai Ranch and how hard I had to work. I always respected Damien for the hard work he did for his family, work that most other kids would not even dream of doing. What I liked best about Damien was his “don’t worry, be happy” attitude towards life. He loved to laugh and have a good time. Damien and I spent most of our times during those earlier years roaming the jungle and cruising the shack without a care in the world.

Damien had often talked about a shack that his dad had built in the middle of the forest for a tenant to live in. I remember the first time we walked up to the shack nestled under a canopy of trees on a hillside. The vegetation was lush around the shack and Ti leaf trees cluttered my view. When we got closer, I noticed a lanai that connected to the shack on the makai side that was directly adjacent to an old fire pit made from large and small lava rocks placed in a circular shape. The pit held remnants of old burnt Hau tree branches that Damien’s father must have used for a previous fire. The shack was a single room house formed by plywood walls and tree trunk posts. Windows ranging from small to large let light in from all sides of the shack. There was usually not much light, however, because the canopy of trees offered so much shade. I could swear the temperature around the shack was ten degrees cooler. When no one lived there, mosquitoes ruled the shack. The wetness and lushness of the valley made a good mosquito breeding ground. When Damien and I could not take the buzzing around our ears and the bloodshed, we built a small fire in the fire pit to smoke out the mosquiotes and drive them away. After the fire was made, Damien and I looked at each other and wondered aloud how the shack would look with a makeover.

I was so excited I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about all the possible ways we could make the shack better. We started the next day. Meeting early in the morning, we made the five to ten minute walk off the main road into the jungle and headed up to the shack. We had brought with us large trash bags, brooms, hammer, and a stereo so we could listen while we worked. It’s funny that this shack in the middle of the forest had running water and electricity. The electrical outlet was supplied by a long extension cord that spanned the valley and had its beginning at another shack on the other side of the valley. When we first got to the shack, the power did not work. So Damien went to find the dysfunctional spot. As he followed the extension cord through the very quiet valley, Damien would stop about every five minutes and yell, “Does it work yet?”

“ No!” I would yell back. When he finally found the faulty spot in the cord, the stereo started playing full blast. I jumped because the loudness startled me. Then I heard
Damien yell, “Fuck!” I wondered what he was swearing at. When he got back, he explained that he had been running his hand down the cord and found a spot where a rat had chewed through the cord. When he touched the bare wires, he got shocked. I looked at him in disbelief, and we both started to laugh hysterically. But Damien never said it hurt or that he thought he was going to die. He would just say, “Ho, that was crazy” and continue with the task at hand, never skipping a beat, the shock being just a little setback on his tasks for the day.

After we had fixed the extension cord, Damien and I started to deck out the interior of the shack. We started by sweeping out the plywood floors and dusting all the shelves. My mother and I had recarpeted the house and we had lots of extra carpet that Damien and I thought would be good to use in the shack. Soon we had an old dirty shack with white carpet in it. To help with the interior, we put Heineken and Budweiser girl posters over every wall. We would adjust the posters so that when you walked up the two stairs into the shack, you had a view, from right to left, of the best looking girl to the worst looking girl. We still needed seats for the shack, however, and lucked out on a venture up to Tantalus when we noticed some passenger van bench seats that had been abandoned. We loaded them up in my truck and brought them to the shack. They were very comfortable and could seat four, so we had enough seats for people if they wanted to come over. We positioned them facing each other, one on the mauka side and one on the makai side of the shack. While Damien and I were cleaning and fixing the shack, we would ocassionally take rips off a three-foot purple bong that we kept hidden behind the biggest poster of all, which was on the mauka side of the shack against the far right corner over a row of shelves that could not be seen even if you looked right at it. Those shelves served as a crucial hiding spot for things that Damien’s father might not approve of. Taking rips of the bong as we cleaned was relaxing, and to be so stoned up in the valley deep in the lush forest was almost spiritual. Having no one around but animals and trees was one of the shack’s best qualities.

After we had finished with the shack’s renovations, we were free to invite people over for beers and barbecues, to talk story or just cruise. Damien got angry when people thought that, because we were in the valley, it didn’t matter if they took their shoes off before walking on the white carpet. To let them know that it did matter, Damien would take the slippers of those who dirtied the carpet and give them a swift toss into the thick bushes where you’d be lucky to find them again.

Damien and I have many fond memories of the shack. After we had finished working on it and had people over to see our creation, we felt that we had accomplished something. We had turned an old rundown shack into a partying clubhouse that we could throw ragers (parties) in. The shack is something I will never forget, and the times spent in the deep forest around friends were priceless. Unlike a special rock or locket, the shack holds the memories of a thousand laughs and hundreds of hours of friendship within its plywood walls. It was an unforgettable place where the walls seemed almost to live through us when we visited the shack. I will always remember when we used to say, “Ehh, we go to the shack.”