By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

I know Sonny from Kapolei, and he's no Fred Hemmings.

You know him, too.

Sonny from Kapolei may not be real, but he's emblematic. He's the long-suffering everyman who has heard it all and heard just about enough.

Fred Hemmings called Mike Buck's radio show last month pretending to be "Sonny from Kapolei." In a heavy pidgin accent, he asked Buck's guest, Evan Dobelle, his whereabouts the night the UH regents fired him as university president. Ironically, he was accusing Dobelle of duplicity.

"Evan Dobelle was very adroitly playing the 'I love Hawai'i' local card so I wanted to call in as a local boy," Hemmings said.

Hemmings, a "local boy" himself, didn't just give a fake name, he spoke with an accent more "local" than his usual speech pattern.

So while Dobelle argues that he is local, Hemmings is local-er but the fictional Sonny from Kapolei is local-est.

Ah, the politics of pidgin, where the skilled practitioner can, for personal gain, ratchet up or dial down the degree to which they're insiders or shapeshift to be something that they're not.

So who is this Sonny from Kapolei, Rosie the Riveter poster boy for the fed-up, downtrodden kama'aina? The spokesperson for all da boyz who are plenty pissed off but, nah, no like say notting?

Picture him:

Sonny owns his house, but he bought it when a working man could afford a house. It's a good-size place, enough room to make party in the garage even when he parks his fishing boat, Ku'uipo, in the driveway. But his grown kids and his in-laws live with him because they can't afford rent at anyplace decent, so the house is pretty cramped. And he has to work the second job so no time to make party or go fishing. Ku'uipo has been in dry dock for years.

Sonny's wife makes him go shopping with her at the big-box Mainland retailers in their area, but he feels guilty about it. He stops by Tanioka's to buy poke and boiled peanuts. It doesn't even out the $300 shopping trips to The Other Guys, but it's something.

He's keiki hanau o ka 'aina who hardly recognizes his 'aina anymore; who gets mad enough to show up for protests but cannot take the time off from work; who roots for the UH Rainbow Warriors (still calls them that) even though he's never set foot on campus, and who dreams of his granddaughter playing for Dave Shoji, though it doesn't look like she's gonna' have the height.

He's "salt of the earth" who has managed to stay salty despite many rainstorms and systematic attempts to water him down.

And Sonny would never, ever call a radio station pretending to be somebody else because, as he tells his granddaughter, if you're gonna' say something, you gotta' stand right by your words.

Lee Cataluna's columns run Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com