But thousands and thousands of Mauians knew first hand what went on inside. A summer job at Maui Pineapple Co.'s big cannery was a first work experience for Maui teens. A permanent position was often a lifelong career handed down from generation to generation for adults, or an entrance to the good life in America for immigrants like Lolito and Basalisa Fernando.

After 80 years, most of that came to an end Saturday. Only the juice operation survives from the cannery, although the newer fresh fruit operation continues to grow. Maui Pine laid off 120 workers, including the Fernandos.

Most of the tearful goodbyes were said at a get-together Friday. A group of Filipina employees composed a farewell song in Ilocano, which Imelda Riopta of human resources and her husband also translated into English. (The cannery operates in five languages – English, Spanish, Ilocano, Tagalog and pidgin.)

It was like the breakup of an extended family, an ohana, said Eunice Garcia, who worked as a trimmer and is now the company archivist. Like many, she is second-generation Maui Pine. Her mother was a trimmer, too.

Sugar may have been king, but pine was the symbol of Hawaii for Mainlanders. A bag of sugar could have come from anywhere — Cuba or Colorado — but pineapple said "tropical island."

There were at least seven canneries on Maui, at Kahului, Pauwela, Hana, two in Haiku and two in succession at Lahaina. Lanai and Molokai had pine plantations, too, but their fruit was barged to Oahu for canning.

In its first 50 years, the Kahului cannery packed one billion cans — slices, chunks, tidbits — in a bewildering array of sizes and under hundreds of different labels.

It started, as so many things did in those days, with the Baldwins. Two of their businesses, Haleakala Ranch and Maui Agricultural Co., formed a partnership with California Packing Co.

CPC had farms on Oahu and Molokai and a cannery on Oahu. It undertook to build a cannery in Kahului in 1927, with an option to the Maui partners to buy it. They did so in 1934, shortly after combining various bits of business into Maui Pineapple Co. in 1932.

Pine was suitable for higher, drier lands than cane, although as a drive along Hana Highway shows, it does well at lower elevations, too.

Although old-timers like to think of Maui as a rural place compared with busy Oahu, both sugar and pine involved large-scale industrial plants.

Maui Pine's cannery had its own can-making plant. It generated its own power. A crew of carpenters kept busy making thousands of pallets. Dozens of mechanics were needed to keep the machinery in condition.

After the shutdown was announced earlier this year, Teri Freitas-Gorman, communications director at parent Maui Land & Pineapple Co., made a tour. She found a swastika symbol on one machine, purchased from Germany in the 1930s. And still in use.