By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Readers have asked for more of the stories I've written about. So here are some added tidbits on Hawaiian cowboys, Henry Kaiser and the McKinley High School auditorium.

• How the McKinley auditorium came to be built: McKinley historian Gaile Sykes says students at the high school had to stand out in the hot sun for assemblies after the main buildings went up in 1927. The campus' trees hadn't been planted yet.

One day several girls pretended to faint as a protest. The newly formed PTA took the hint, lobbied the Legislature and by 1929 McKinley High School had the biggest auditorium in town. It became the home of the Honolulu Symphony.

• Where the grand piano came from: Sometime in the 1930s, world-famous pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski played a concert at McKinley. He brought his own grand piano but decided not to take it back, so he practically gave it to the high school.

It was put to use for many years by visiting artists but finally got dilapidated and is now in storage. Sykes says it will take about $10,000 to restore this historic Steinway.

• Henry Kaiser and his medical plan: Former Kaiser publicist Donald A. Duffy in Washington, D.C., writes that Kaiser didn't bother to make a marketing survey to determine the feasibility of competing with Hawaii Medical Services.

But he instructed his architects to design the Kaiser Foundation Hospital so it could be converted into a hotel in case his medical plan failed to take root in Hawai'i.

• Kaiser's cement plant: Kaiser was also determined to build a cement plant on O'ahu but the Dillinghams and other residents wouldn't sell him land. So Henry began scouting for a baby aircraft carrier he could anchor offshore and put a small cement plant on the deck.

Confronted with the possibility of having a cement plant in the ocean, local landowners decided it would be better to sell Kaiser some land. Anyway, that's what Duffy said.

• How early Hawaiian cowboys made a living: Legendary cowboy Eben Low testified that the first cowboys made their money killing wild cattle for their hides, not herding them.

They lived in tents for weeks along gulches where there was water and fodder for their horses. Up at 4 a.m., coffee and pancakes over a campfire. Maybe a glass of gin to keep out the 35-degree weather. Then off to rope the steers.

Once a cowboy had jerked a steer off its feet, he hamstrung the animal with his skinning knife, skinned him and threw the hide over his saddle, then cut some tenderloin from the carcass.

If it was a fat cow, he might cut the rest of the meat up in strips to be dried or jerked to share with friends when he returned to town. The rest was hung in the fork of a tree for later use or left on the ground for wild dogs to devour.

Hawaiian cowboys didn't wear gloves, so their hands became numb when they had to recoil an icy rope after missing a throw.

Correction: Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski played at McKinley High School's auditorium in the 1930s. His name was misspelled in a previous version of this column.