By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

When does something become an antique? It seems only yesterday that Kini Popo and I sailed down the Ala Wai to prove that members of the Waikiki Yacht Club may have migrated from Kapahulu.

Now they're advertising photos of the event at the Hawaii All-Collectors Show 2002 at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall, July 26 to 28, along with the rest of the antiques.

The culprit in this nefarious scheme is Channel 9, KGMB-TV, celebrating its 50th anniversary and the pioneer days of television in Our Honolulu: Biddy Boxing, Sheriff Ken, Checkers & Pogo, Bob Sevey. Kini Popo, Carl Hebenstreit, was Hawai'i's first big TV star.

"See a collection of historic studio photos, many seen for the first time in over 40 years," says the news release. "Witness Duke Kahanamoku on the set of the Sheriff Ken Show and Kini Popo with Bob Krauss on an around-the-island hike through the wilds of O'ahu."

To think that somebody remembers!

It was an unlikely partnership. At that time, KGMB-TV belonged to the Star-Bulletin. The Advertiser owned KONA-TV, the second station on the air. I guess television was so new that the newspapers didn't consider it competition.

Anyway, Popo and I got to like each other. He was the most sophisticated of the early radio-TV stars, and a gentleman at the same time. I think it was Wayne Collins, producer of Popo's morning show, and a TV newscaster, who came up with the idea of Kon Kini.

The movie "Kon Tiki" had been a smash at the box office. It was about a voyage by balsa long raft from Peru to prove that Polynesians came from South America instead of island Southeast Asia, where, of course, they did.

Popo and I decided to prove that members of the Waikiki Yacht Club, in the dim, distant past, may well have migrated down the Ala Wai by raft from the low-rent district in Kapahulu.

We borrowed a wooden skip on which forklifts carry stacks of cartons, loaded it with a case of beer and set sail.

To our amazement, the banks of the Ala Wai were lined with thousands of people. Morning disc jockey J. Akuhead Pupule threw rotten tomatoes at us. We made the front page.

The following year, in 1955, we tested the proudest tradition of Hawai'i, its hospitality, announcing that we would walk around the island without taking along food, money, sleeping bags — only a few strings of beads to trade in case of emergency. We would depend on the hospitality of friendly natives.

It became an eight-day, islandwide picnic. Schools let out to watch us go by. We were loaded down with food and beer. We learned the difference between TV and newspapers. Most people waved at Popo, usually from jalopies. If a Lincoln Continental tooled up to serve chilled martinis, they were for me.

Gov. Sam King greeted us at 'Iolani Palace.

We called that expedition "Windward, Ho!"