Mrs. Constance (Connie) Ortiz Aquino - interview 3/27/01
PO Box 613, Hanapepe, HI 96716
NOTES taken by Carol Bain.(transcript updated by Mrs. Aquino 4/20/01)
Connie O. Aquino lived and worked at historic address 1940-1946; 1966-1973; now lives in Waimea, Kauai, HI. Connie first moved to Kauai in 1933. She remembered the place at 3865 Hanapepe Road was a Chinese bakery/noodle shop called Sum Kee Heong.
Connie was born in Honolulu and the oldest child of her mother, Leonila and her father, Delfin. Ortiz. Her father was musical and talented. He taught her all about music. They could all play by ear. The family was so talented they entered contests and traveled all around. “Most of my family played by ear. We all came from musical family. My mom used to teach me to play ukulele. My father (Mr. Ortiz?) was very musical. He taught us all to play. During the first Filipino immigration, he was ad man for Filipino talk story and theaters. Here in Hawaii in the 1930’s all the Hawaiian islands had vaudeville.” The theater in Honolulu is where Connie first performed and their group was called “The Ortiz sisters.” They traveled all around the islands performing.
Connie and her husband (Mr. Aquino) started the billiard parlor as a business in the late 30’s. She had to think of something to earn a living as vaudeville was slowing down. “We, my husband and I, looked at the town...it was a slow, dead little place; that part of Hanapepe was kind of dead at that time.” They decided the large building that had been the chopsuey and noodle store owned by the Chang family was a large enough space and that Hanapepe could use a billiard parlor and some recreation. Her husband, Mr. Aquino, gathered used wooden “slates” to make pool tables. One old Japanese carpenter, Mr. Nozaki, in Hanapepe did all the work to build the pool tables through Mr. Aquino’s instructions. There were assistants, but Mr. Nozaki was the main carpenter. “We could see the potential. We had the place not even a year when the war broke out. Then it got very busy. The soldier boys had no place to go. So they came to our pool room and the theater across the street was really the only recreation.”
“Mr. Aquino also had ping-pong on one side. Anything to create some excitement. When we had more billiard customers, we start building another couple of tables. Slowly ping pong got pushed out.”
In 1946, after the war, Connie wanted to move to Oahu and told her Mother about it. After Connie’s dad had died, her mom had re-married to Eusebio Malapit who was a Public Relations man for Grove Farm. Mrs. Malapit wanted to stay and run the billiard parlor as a business. She knew it would make good money, enough to send the younger children, who were in high school then, on to college for their education. Eusebio Malapit continued to work at Grove Farm in Puhi while Leonila Malapit ran the pool hall.
According to tax records, Connie’s step-father, Mr. E. Malapit, took out a 20-year lease from the property owner, Hung Sum Chang. The lease began in 1951 @ $1,080.00 per year and as lessee agreed to pay taxes on property during that time. (Lease fee paid later to Mrs. Edith Hiu Chang after her husband passed away -- confirmed according to property tax records)
Connie Aquino had a little baby grand piano in the living area and other instruments too from the vaudeville days. These remained in there after she left so the family continued to have them in the building. “The pool hall was jolly place. We used to come home (from Oahu) to visit my parents (who now lived at the pool hall) on holidays and always made music. The Kawakami Store was right next door and they must have heard all us playing at Christmas, the building was so close.”
The doors opened every day at 8 a.m. and closed at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.depending on how busy it was. “I had sandwiches and pastries but not a full kitchen. No alcohol. I had one or two busboys to help, but it was just me running the place. When my husband got home from work he helped too at night if necessary. Sometimes things got exciting. Sometimes the Kapa`a boys would come over to Hanapepe and make trouble. Things like that happened.”
Not sure what color the building was painted...maybe green. “It was always a shabby-looking place.”
Customers to the pool hall included the stevedores from Port Allen; these were often Portuguese and Japanese. Mostly young men from this side of Hanapepe. Servicemen still came in; they were nice boys. Some came from as far as Kaumakani and Mana. Some Hawaiians. Lots of Filipinos from the plantations, Eleele Mill, McBryde Mill, would come into the pool hall to play. Older people would play cards too, like‘knock’ rummy. All types of pool: 9 ball, straight, 15 ball, apple, and they would call shots.”
The billiard parlor was profitable enough to support the extended family and put younger siblings, including youngest son, Eduardo Malapit, through college. Connie’s younger sister, Filiza Cuizon, also lived on the property beginning in the mid-1950’s in a home built at the very back where she and her husband raised five children.
When Connie Aquino returned to Hanapepe in 1966, she agreed to run the business for her aging mother. Victor Aquino, Connie’s husband, noticed the pool hall was busy late in the evenings after supper, but very slow in the late afternoons. He took the initiative to approach the court house (to confirm that underage youth could enter the pool hall legally), and talked to parents and schools to set up an after-school teen club. Teen-agers, mostly boys, would come in after school and hang out until the movie theater opened or football game started in the evenings. “He even had little membership cards for them. I would make sandwiches and snacks. Sometimes parents would call to look for their boys or ask me to feed them. The parents always paid me the next day. It was the honor system. I never had to ask them because they always came in to pay the next day. Those days were like that.”
There was always a parade each year in Hanapepe and it came right by the pool hall on Hanapepe Road. Santa Clause would throw candy at Christmas; and also parades later like football; Pop Warner. Right after the war, or maybe at the end around 1944, there was a parade for a war hero returning. (thinks the name was Hasegawa)
“The theaters back then played different types of movies on different nights. Monday night was Chinese; Wednesday night was Japanese show; Every Friday night was Filipino night at the theater, so it would get busy then before the movie started. Before a football game it was busy, because a bunch would reserve a pool table before, meet and play until 8 p.m. and then go together to the football game.” (So the pool hall was a gathering place to meet up before going onto another social event.) “This was good for the young people. Now they have no place to go.”
Drugs hit the community in the early 1970’s and that was the reason Connie decided to quit the business. Also, her husband wanted to leave the island but she returned again to live in Waimea.
Connie remembers other large trees on property, maybe guava, but the banyan tree is the only one remaining. She remembers the wooden benches and old shoeshine chair on the porch of the billiard parlor. She remembers the alley on one side with the K.C. Kai store on the right and the Daikuku Inn on the left. The Daikuku Inn was a retail store which also sold ice cream and snacks and later was bought by Ajimura.
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