JOHNNY

Johnny and Valdez had left Manila to work the pineapple fields on the west end. A company rep promised ten dollars a day and free lodging. "Lodging" meant sleeping on a bamboo mat in a room with ten other men. After thirty years of bending their backs, a luna decided they weren't keeping up. Dole Pineapple gave them each a month's pay and evicted them from the plantation barracks in Kualapuu. Johnny and Valdez had lost touch with their roots and couldn't return to the Philippines. They settled for pick-and-shovel wages on the east end. Gramma gave them my father's hand-me-downs and it was strange seeing them in his old Harvard shirts.