The Persistence of the Green Condom

When I was living in Hilo (and was fifteen years younger) I had a 10-mile loop that I ran once on Tuesday, and twice on Sunday. It gained about 1200’ elevation, which meant a long grind uphill, but it lost that 1200’ – which meant an exhilarating descent.

Here are some memories of that route.

The street names: Wailuku Drive, Waiau Street, Waianuenue Avenue, Puuhina Street, Kaumana Drive almost to the Saddle Road junction, Akolea Road, Waianuenue, Peepee Falls Road (Um, that’s pronounced “pay-pay”).

The dogs: a yapper near the Hilo Door of Faith, a deep-voiced one farther up Kaumana Drive in a yard that’s not fenced, a couple more little ones, the parrot that barks like a dog (near Chong St), and then up Upper Kaumana eight or ten big mean looking bastards in fenced yards. I look at each gate to make sure it’s not open. One nice little one, though, and then the laid-back guy at Peepee Falls Rd, who only barks when I’m walking.

The landmarks: about half a mile out, the new version of the First Foreign Church, just beyond there is where my Hilo High girlfriend “C” almost lost control of her father’s cop car (in those days, and even today, Hawai‘i Police Department officers use their own cars) a.k.a. The Bad Ass Pink Chevy, scaring the crap out of us both, then, about a mile out, the hospital where my mother and father both died, on downhill to Rainbow Falls, where a falling rock put a scar on me I still carry, a couple of tenths farther to the ex-Hilo Memorial Hospital (where I was born, and had my appendix out (another scar)) , which is now the Hawai‘i County Adult Day Care Center) and where we took bodies after the 1960 tsunami.

That’s the end of the first downhill. Now it’s uphill 4.7 miles. Turn and go past the guy who was nailing hubcaps on his garage in the late fifties, and still is, and then it’s on past the Kaumana Drive Fire Station, the Crossing Guard lady (always good for a friendly hello) the Door of Faith Church (for sale) the tsunami warning siren (3 miles), Crivello’s Malasadas and Smoked Meats, up and up past the nicely-restored Ford Ranchero, the place where somebody spilled a lot of paint on the road, the dangerous blind corner at Akala Rd, the green condom, Kaumana Cave, the First Abandoned Sofa, the Abandoned Projection TV, the dead mongoose, the Second Abandoned Sofa (6 mile point, the peak, where I turn around),

the wooden bridge on Akolea Road, the place where in 1959 Jimmy Watt laid 180 feet of rubber with his father’s Oldsmobile 98, and – getting close to where I started – the old Excelsior Dairy (home of the most beautiful girl at Hilo High), Boiling Pots (where every year somebody misjudges the Wailuku River and drowns), down the hill past Mrs. Goo’s house (she taught at Hilo High, and yes, her first name was Fanny) and finally home.

I like that loop because it takes me through a lot of my life. The uphill is tough but the Second Abandoned Sofa’s waiting for me, and if it’s Sunday, then I’ve put Gatorade behind the highest boulder in the Kaumana Cave parking area (just past the green condom) and also in the Abandoned Projection TV.

Of all the landmarks I’m most fond of the green condom. Let me tell you about it. I saw it first in January and last in April. A condom that didn’t move for more than four months? Never mind rain? A couple of small earthquakes?  

Every Tuesday, every Sunday I’d clear the Ranchero and the blind corner – will it still be there? It always was.

Now, back in the fifties when we boys would be riding our bikes on Akolea Road (in those days it was affectionally called “The Burma Road”) we would see condoms. Because the Burma Road was a favorite parking place. Down at Hilo Bay they would wash up because in those days Hilo’s sewage was just dumped into the Bay, and were called “Whitefish.”

Certainly we felt stirrings when we saw condoms, because we know what they were (although we called them “rubber cocks,” which, looking back, might have been an inversion) even though none of us had yet managed to put one to its intended use.

So, the green one. The first few times I ran by it I did have those boyish thoughts – well, actually adult boyish thoughts – because I wondered how it got where it was. The parking lot, where it must have been put to use, was a good hundred yards uphill.

Did somebody keep it as a memento mori of the little death and then toss it out the window after pulling out of the lot and heading back down to Hilo? Who would have been driving? Or had the lovers been doing it in the forest and a car hadn’t been involved at all?

These questions kept me busy for a week, maybe two. Green condom, road, parking lot, sex, what happened?

But by the third week that latex tube had completely lost any sexual significance. Instead it was the raiser-of-different questions.

– Why do green condoms exist?

– Did the rain wash it to where I found it – but no farther?

– What, exactly, fastened it to the road and made it immobile?

– Why hasn’t it faded at all?

By the fourth week it was simply a landmark, catalogued and stored away.  If I was tired and felt like walking (not a rare event . . . keep that 1200’ climb in mind) I’d say, “Shit, I gotta walk, but only from the Dangerous Blind Curve to the Green Condom,” or I might say “No stopping until the Green Condom,” or – if I was feeling good – I might say “At the Green Condom, pick it up and hold it to Nice Little Dog,” and if it was going badly (for example, on the second loop on a hot day when the rats had gotten to my Gatorade behind Highest Boulder because I didn’t screw the cap on properly), I might say, “Shit, I’ve had it so I’ll walk to the water in the Abandoned Projection TV and then maybe I can run home from there without collapsing but at least if I do collapse I have my ID bracelet or somebody could take my GPS watch and use the backtrack facility and figure out where I came from so they’ll know where to send my body except if I make it to the part of Akolea Road where the friendly woman with the cockatoo on her shoulder who sometimes takes her goat for walks is walking she’ll help.”

I’d better admit that generally I didn’t think those thoughts as long run-on sentences.

By the time the Green Condom disappeared I was in much better shape than when I first saw it, and it was in worse shape. I didn’t make its portrait until April, so I can’t show it to you in the flush of its smooth, plump youth.

I was saddened by its loss. It had been a good and true friend. Always there for me. First and Second Abandoned Couches and Abandoned Projection TV were also friends. Dead Mongoose lasted more than a month. I thought something would eat it, but no.

I have not spoken of Abandoned Engine Block and its companion Abandoned Cylinder Head, newcomers who appeared just below Projection TV, but above Dead Mongoose. To my surprise Engine Block didn’t yield up its oil for a couple of days, perhaps retaining it in some hope it might turn over again. I had to run through it carefully until it soaked into the asphalt.

My friends the Abandoned Ones at the top of Kaumana Drive spoke to me of personal utility in a time beyond breakage and abandonment, as did the condom (which, I hope, broke only after use). But did their lives as running route landmarks justify what thoughtless assholes did – just pitch them out and drive away? It’s only another five miles to the County Landfill.

Not long before I left Hilo to come to Freeville, the Abandoned Ones shifted from inanimate to animate. The TVs and furniture were replaced by pig heads and guts, a dog, a cat, and then, astonishingly, a partly-butchered cow. Yes, a cow. I asked around as best I could, but no one knew about any missing cows.

Of all the mysteries up there, the cow was the greatest. I wouldn’t have been too surprised to find, say, a pile of cow guts, the kind of thing you want to get rid of but are too lazy to bury or take to the dump. But if you’re going to rustle a cow, then why not butcher the whole thing? Maybe the rustlers got nervous before finishing the job and decided to get rid of the evidence? Maybe they were butchering it right there but got scared away? I don’t know.

In my novel Mauka my two narrators run up Kaumana Drive, which meant they climbed it according to my memories, not my imagination. They didn’t notice a green condom, but they did cross the road at Kaumana Cave to get some water.

I don’t think I’ll ever run or walk up Kaumana Drive again, although when my ashes head up to Mauna Kea to rest beside my mother’s and father’s, I expect to be driven up that way. I’d better make a note about that.