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By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Just last week, Erasmus Patacsil painted both the front and back doors of his plantation house bright red.
"Red is for good luck," he says. "And red makes you brave, so you can fight back whatever happens."
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
The red door symbolizes the efforts of Patacsil and other Poamoho Camp families to stay in their homes. In January, the union representing the pineapple workers at Del Monte received a notice of eviction from the company. Del Monte is not renewing its lease for the land. The 63 homes on the 34-acre site were to be empty by June 30 and razed soon after that.
Poamoho Camp resident Erasmus Patacsil looks over old newspaper articles about the pineapple industry. Like many Del Monte workers in the company-owned town, Patacsil chose to keep living in Poamoho after retirement.
Patacsil's friend, fellow Poamoho resident Teodoro Agduyang, teases Patacsil about the red door — the only bright red door in the camp.
"You believe too much, eh?" Agduyang jokes.
Inside the house, Patacsil's wife, Remy, keeps a shelf of religious statues, each with its own type of blessing for the house, and lei-draped images of the Virgin Mary. A string of garlic hangs from the screen door, put there to keep bad spirits out.
"Me, I only go church when somebody dies," Agduyang says with a chuckle, "But my wife, she tells me the priest is even praying for Poamoho."
The prayers may be working.
A solution that would keep the Poamoho families in their homes is being discussed with Del Monte and representatives of the landowner, the Galbraith Estate. The ILWU isn't ready to disclose details of the plan, but Local 142 representative Tracy Takano says an announcement could be made soon.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
"It's about 85 percent now that we can stay," Patacsil says. "Eight-five percent hope, but not guarantee."
Chloe Pojas, 6, of Wahiawa, visits relatives on Nui Avenue in Poamoho. Most of the camp's homes were built in the 1930s and have corrugated iron roofs.
The fear of an uncertain future still hangs over the camp, but it's not quite as dire as it was four months ago.
"The day the eviction notice came out, one resident told me there were no rental listings that day for anywhere in Wahiawa," Takano says.
Even if there were, it would be almost impossible for Poamoho families to find housing to fit their current budgets.
Regular workers pay around $266 a month for three-bedroom, one-bath homes in Poamoho. Pineapple pickers make about $27,000 to $30,000 a year; lunas make closer to $45,000. The residents pay for water only above a certain level of usage. They pay their own electricity and phone bills. All home repairs are taken care of by the plantation. Del Monte carries insurance for the houses.
"Maybe we could have bought a house," Patacsil says, "but instead, my children went to college. If you save money for your children's education, that's your house."
"The junkest house for sale right now is about $280,000," Agduyang says, "and I don't even know that neighborhood."
After retirement, workers and their families can stay in the homes at the same rent for a year. After that, it goes up to $666 a month — still a bargain, but almost three times more that what they were paying before retirement. Some families move out of the camp then, but most, like Patacsil and Agduyang, stay, unwilling to leave the familiarity and gentleness of the Poamoho lifestyle.
"I think if I had to live downtown, I cannot breathe," Agduyang says.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Poamoho is the kind of place where kids can leave their basketballs in the park when they get called in for dinner and be certain that their stuff will be there the next day when play resumes.
Remy Patacsil keeps a lei-draped shrine to the Virgin Mary in her Poamoho Camp home. Her children, who were raised here, now live on the Mainland.
It's a place where you cannot spend more than a minute talking story with someone without being offered something to eat, where grandchildren are trained to bring out trays of cold drinks to their grandparents' guests, where neighbors leave heavy bags full of homegrown fruit and vegetables on each other's porches.
There's never been any major crime here that anyone can remember. There hasn't been much minor crime, either. The biggest problem of daily life in Poamoho is when all the workers on the same dirt lane are on the same shift and come home from the fields at the same time. "Everyone wants to take a shower, and then, ho, there's no water pressure," Patacsil says.
"We love this place and we love the people here. We know them so well," Agduyang says. "I wake up in the morning, have my coffee, go outside in my garden, sweep, clean around the house, maybe help cook if somebody making party, that's all. If somebody sees you in your yard, they stop, talk story little while. That's Poamoho."
Residents love the little covered bus stop just outside the main entrance to the camp. If you sit there, they say, many times you don't have to wait for the bus. A neighbor will drive up and ask, "Where you going? I take you."
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Most of the homes were built in the 1930s, while two rows along the outer edge of the camp were added in the 1950s. Many have corrugated iron rooftops that amplify the drumbeats of falling rain. Others have shingled roofs and hollow-tile additions built to accommodate overflow members.
Rizal Tyrell helps 4-year-old Drayden-Dean Coyaso with crickets he captured in the backyard cane grass and stored in a plastic bottle. Residents say they treasure the friendships and lifestyle of Poamoho Camp.
That unmistakable plantation house smell is there in the soft wood, rusting clothesline poles and rows of potted anthuriums. It's the smell of home-cooked meals, of sunshine on ti leaf plants, of layers and layers of paint on the door to the wash house, of coming home tired and dirty but happy to see your family.
The houses built on concrete slabs are, for the most part, in better shape than ones built with wood floors.
"Some of the houses, the front steps are ready to go," Patacsil says. "Lucky there's only three steps to get into the house. If they're missing one or two, they're still OK."
If you don't know the simple joy of plantation life, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want so much to save such humble little homes.
It's about the houses, it's about the housing market, but mostly it's about a way of life that all but died a long time ago with the highways and high-rises of an urbanized Hawai'i.
"It's important for Hawai'i to have this community saved," Takano says. "It's not just a fight for housing, but a struggle to maintain a lifestyle. This is a valuable asset to the people of Hawai'i."
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com
