Maui

Lunch

~ Lee Swanson ~ 4 Comments

One day, probably soon, someone will ask about our trip to Maui. And someone will ask what I liked best about it. And you would think that would be a hard question.

We had a great rental condo, with a view of the ocean and easy access to the beach. We walked in the sand to a bakery for coffee and pastries for breakfast. The temperature was in the 70s and 80 every day, a little windy a couple of times, but balmy in every sense of the word.

On my birthday, we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant on the beach. We found other great places to eat and drinks with umbrellas and pineapples stuck in them.

The road to Hana was as advertised if for no other reason than to say that we had done that, been there, didn’t buy the t-shirt.

We shopped, we relaxed, we did what we pleased. Even retired people need to get away and chill. And as much as we enjoyed all of that, and enjoyed each other, none of it was the best thing about the trip.

The best thing was lunch on Friday. The food was fine. But that’s not the point. One day on Facebook I said we were in Maui, and a friend named Tom Petersen saw it and posted “we’ll be there on Thursday.” I emailed him and we knew we had to get together. Because Tom Petersen is not just a Facebook friend.

In 1976 Tom hired me, despite my rather thin qualifications, to anchor the weekend sports and report news three nights a week at KWWL TV in Waterloo, Iowa. I worked the second shift as a reporter, and, let’s face it, there’s not a lot going on in Waterloo, Iowa, after dark. Not in 1976 any way. So while I was hanging around the newsroom in the evening, I started fooling with the scripts. Tom was not only the news director, he was also the anchor, and he had stuff to do. And it was just the two of us, a photographer, the weather guy and sports anchor. So when I asked if I could rewrite some things and edit some tapes, he told me to go ahead and see what I could do.

It wasn’t long before I was producing the ten o’clock newscast for him. It was as much fun as I’ve ever had in news. He trusted me. He didn’t even proofread the scripts before he went on air. He said he liked reading through it on the air and figuring out where it was going. So from time to time, I’d try to trip him up. Never could.

Once he told me people had stopped him in the grocery store and quoted a story from the previous night’s newscast to him. You can have the awards; in a world where the words are gone as soon as they are spoken, having them remembered is a high compliment. I still remember the story.

I stopped reporting news and sports and was producing two newscasts a day. It was what I was supposed to be doing. I was a poor excuse for a reporter. But I could write for other people. I write reading better than I read writing. And I had a sense for how to put together a newscast.

Tom made that possible. Somewhere along the line we went from boss and employee to friends. After about three years, he did the unthinkable for a boss. He encouraged me to move on. He got me an interview at a station in Dayton Ohio, and I was offered the job. I was too insecure to take it. Tom let me learn. The next time he arranged an interview for me, I was ready.

He left KWWL for Detroit and when I left shortly thereafter, he flew back just to help me pack. Tom would later go to WGN radio in Chicago where he did morning drive and became news director. When you Google him, the word “legendary” pops up. And he’s in the WGN Walk of Fame. Google doesn’t know that he’s my friend. But I do.

Plain and simple, I wouldn’t have had a career in television news had it not been for Tom Petersen.

I wouldn’t have a nickname either. The first time I turned up in the newsroom, driving into Waterloo with a U-Haul trailer behind my car, he looked up from his desk and said “oh look, it’s Leo Swanberg.” Swanberg didn’t stick, thankfully, but Leo followed me to four more television stations and forty two more years, so far. I am still Leo to my closest friends in broadcasting. It’s what the grandchildren call me. 

Though we’ve stayed in touch, it’s been about 27 years since we’ve seen each other. It was, you might imagine, quite a lunch.

Hawaii

~ Lee Swanson ~ 3 Comments

We don’t travel much. But this week, we’re coming to you from Maui. That’s a good thing. We flew here in Alaska Airlines. It’s a little odd, I’ll admit, to tell people “we’re taking Alaska to Hawaii.” Does Sarah Palin know about this? Does she even still live in Alaska? Can she see Hawaii from her house?

While you ponder that, I’ll move on. We upgraded our tickets from Economy to Economy Premium. Economy used to be called Coach, and Economy Premium used to be called “lucky enough to get a seat in an exit row.” They should go back to calling it Coach, because there’s nothing particularly economical about airfare. Now, on other airlines, upgrading may not be a wise use of your money. Their “premium” seats should be called “Economy and a Smidgen,” because while you get just enough extra legroom to take your knees out of your chest, you get nothing else for your investment.

Alaska tells you that, because you spent extra money to get a seat, you get to sit in it longer. Congratulations, you can wait in your row of seats in the plane, instead of in the row of seats in the terminal. We got to get in the plane right after the first class passengers. And the active duty military. And the children under two. And the adults traveling with children under two. And the people with walkers, crutches, wheelchairs, bone spurs and band aids. And the people with service animals. And the pilot’s brother-in-law. There were a lot of people ahead of us. But, we got there.

The other benefit Alaska affords you for spending what you can’t afford to get extra legroom, is free drinks. You feel really good about asking for a bloody mary that you don’t really want, but will order because it’s free, until you realize that you spent $109 for a place to put your feet and order a bloody mary. (You can get the same thing in a bar for about $100 less, usually with more leg room and a stalk of celery). You can’t possibly drink enough to make that worthwhile. You can’t. Me, on the other hand…

We landed on Maui, where the airport is in Kahului. The airport code for Kahului Maui is OGG, which just points out how difficult it must be to come up with three letter abbreviations for airports. It is way harder than the two letter postal abbreviations for states, which are hard enough.

Question: does one land in Maui, or on Maui. One clearly lands in Denver, because landing on Denver would be a disaster. Landing in Denver is no treat; the airport closes at the first sign of snow anywhere on Earth, and you could find yourself waiting at the gate for days or weeks. But again, in Maui or on Maui? I’m pretty adamant about “in” rather than “on” when it comes to boarding the plane. I definitely want to get in the plane, not on the plane. It gets really damned cold if you’re on the plane at 30,000 feet. Not to mention the difficulty with hanging on.

Anyway, we get out of the plane and we are in/on Maui. Every street, highway, road, and alley in Hawaii has a Hawaiian name. Seems fair enough, except that every one of them starts with the letters K and A, and after that are completely unpronounceable. Ka is apparently the Hawaiian word for street, highway, road, and alley. There are a lot of words here that mean more than one thing. Aloha means “hello,” “goodbye,” “love” and “please seat yourself.” It’s really one of only two words you need to know when you visit Hawaii. The other is mahalo, which means “do you want your receipt?”

There aren’t really towns here. There are just areas where people live, which the government calls “census-designated places.” They would be towns if they had mayors. Legend has it that a native Hawaiian set out walking with a bag of food, a t-shirt and a bobble-head doll. When he couldn’t walk any farther, he stopped and built a hut. The next day, a businessman bought the hut, the food, t-shirt, and bobble-head, and opened an ABC Store. The Hawaiian man gathered more food, a bottle of wine, coconut oil lotion and walked on. That night he built another hut and another ABC Store sprang up. This continued until there were gatherings of stores, and people, all over the island.

We’ve gone to Hawaii several times, but it’s been many years since we’ve been in/on Maui. If you haven’t been, you’ll be relieved to know they drive on the right, though slowly. And almost everyone speaks perfect English. If you’re now hoping I’ll say something that hasn’t been said four trillion times before about getting lei’d in Hawaii, you will be disappointed. There is no joke about a lei that hasn’t been said at least four trillion times.

We came because we were offered the opportunity, and, why not? Once we looked at available dates the trip just happened to coincide with my umpteenth birthday. Though I am in my early umpteens, I recognize that the best thing about the umpteens is that you never get any older than that, though eventually they won’t let you drive.

So as for Maui. We are not seeking out a luau, because, we’ve had bad food at high prices before and, honestly, it’s not that satisfying. It was better to walk along the beach to a bake shop and get malasadas. Malasada is the Portuguese word for beignet, which is the French word for fritter, which is defined in most dictionaries as a waste of time. But tasty.

We did take the road to Hana. It is along the coast and was formed by following the wild chickens. To hear others talk about it, I was under the impression there was some reason to go to Hana. There is not. Gertrude Stein could have been talking about Hana instead of Oakland. It gives meaning to the expression “getting there is half the fun.”

And we spent a fair amount of time doing nothing of any significance at all. And that suited us. So please don’t ask if we did this or tried that and, if we didn’t, we really missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. I think we’ll bear up under the disappointment just fine.