Posted on: Friday, October 22, 2004

One life lived, so many tales to tell

By Lee Cataluna
Advertser Columnist

Wilfred Toki has many stories to tell.

There is the one about the stone usu that his father made by hand with a hammer and chisel. The bowl, which weighed several hundred pounds, sat outside Toki's Salt Lake home for more than 30 years. Then one day, it was just gone.

"I figured Ojichan, my father, he wanted to go holoholo," Toki said. He was sure that some day the usu would come home.

A month later, he got a call from the police. A ring of yard-ornament thieves had been caught. "The police told me, 'We think we have your usu.' "

Hundreds of items were recovered, but Toki spotted the usu right away. "When I went in the room, first thing I saw the usu and just like my father was sitting there, bored, like, 'What took you so long?' I didn't say anything, but my wife said she saw the same thing."

The usu is home now, in the back yard instead of the front, in a place where Ojichan can watch his son continue the art of stonework. Toki says, "See, sometimes, it's good when something happens. Then you have a story to tell. If the usu wasn't stolen, no more story."

Most of Toki's stories are like that — gentle forces are at work so that everything turns out right in the end.

Toki spent his career as an artist and illustrator, creating logos and designs for ad campaigns. He spent his childhood in a plantation camp in Waialua, swimming in the river, fishing in the bay, hiking through the mountains. His father was a stone mason who apprenticed in Japan before coming to Hawai'i. He could split huge boulders with just a few taps of a hammer; he could make the rounded shapes of poi pounders and usu without a lathe; and, he was the man the plantation relied on to dynamite big slabs of rock.

"My father would go down in the hole, like if they were making a cesspool, and he would make a hole in the sheet of rock and put the dynamite inside and light it. But no long fuse. The hole was too deep to climb out, so he would tie a rope around his waist, go down, light the thing, and then signal 'Now! Now!' and they would pull the rope with a truck."

Years later, Toki took up his father's art. He uses his father's tools to make breathtakingly beautiful pieces inspired by candlenut lamps, fishing weights and poi pounders.

"I can do poi pounders all my life and be happy. The shape is so aesthetic. I can hold them in my hand. They all feel right to me."

And of course, each piece has a story, like the one he calls his "weather stone." "This one, before rain, comes dark. When get big rain, just like it sweats. And it's inside the house."

Wilfred Toki has many stories to tell, and now, at 68, he is a first-time published author. On Sunday in this column, Toki talks about his new children's books inspired by his real-life adventures.

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