{"id":420,"date":"2025-06-27T12:36:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T16:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2025-06-27T12:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T16:38:42","slug":"the-persistence-of-the-green-condom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"The Persistence of the Green Condom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019 elevation, which meant a long grind uphill, but it lost that 1200\u2019 \u2013 which meant an exhilarating descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here are some memories of that route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s pronounced \u201cpay-pay\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dogs: a yapper near the Hilo Door of Faith, a deep-voiced one farther up Kaumana Drive in a yard that\u2019s 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\u2019s not open. One nice little one, though, and then the laid-back guy at Peepee Falls Rd, who only barks when I\u2019m walking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The landmarks: about half a mile out, the new version of the First Foreign Church, just beyond there is where my Hilo High girlfriend \u201cC\u201d almost lost control of her father\u2019s cop car (in those days, and even today, Hawai\u2018i 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\u2018i County Adult Day Care Center) and where we took bodies after the 1960 tsunami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the end of the first downhill. Now it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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), <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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the wooden bridge on Akolea Road, the place where in 1959 Jimmy Watt laid 180 feet of rubber with his father\u2019s Oldsmobile 98, and \u2013 getting close to where I started \u2013 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\u2019s house (she taught at Hilo High, and yes, her first name was Fanny) and finally home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like that loop because it takes me through a lot of my life. The uphill is tough but the Second Abandoned Sofa\u2019s waiting for me, and if it\u2019s Sunday, then I\u2019ve put Gatorade behind the highest boulder in the Kaumana Cave parking area (just past the green condom) and also in the Abandoned Projection TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the landmarks I\u2019m 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\u2019t move for more than four months? Never mind rain? A couple of small earthquakes?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every Tuesday, every Sunday I\u2019d clear the Ranchero and the blind corner \u2013 will it still be there? It always was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, back in the fifties when we boys would be riding our bikes on Akolea Road (in those days it was affectionally called \u201cThe Burma Road\u201d) 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.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly we felt stirrings when we saw condoms, because we know what they were (although we called them \u201crubber cocks,\u201d which, looking back, might have been an inversion) even though none of us had yet managed to put one to its intended use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the green one. The first few times I ran by it I did have those boyish thoughts \u2013 well, actually adult boyish thoughts \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t been involved at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These questions kept me busy for a week, maybe two. Green condom, road, parking lot, sex, what happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by the third week that latex tube had completely lost any sexual significance. Instead it was the raiser-of-different questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Why do green condoms exist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Did the rain wash it to where I found it \u2013 but no farther?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 What, exactly, fastened it to the road and made it immobile?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Why hasn\u2019t it faded at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019 climb in mind) I\u2019d say, \u201cShit, I gotta walk, but only from the Dangerous Blind Curve to the Green Condom,\u201d or I might say \u201cNo stopping until the Green Condom,\u201d or \u2013 if I was feeling good \u2013 I might say \u201cAt the Green Condom, pick it up and hold it to Nice Little Dog,\u201d 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\u2019t screw the cap on properly), I might say, \u201cShit, I\u2019ve had it so I\u2019ll 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\u2019ll 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\u2019ll help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d better admit that generally I didn\u2019t think those thoughts as long run-on sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t make its portrait until April, so I can\u2019t show it to you in the flush of its smooth, plump youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 just pitch them out and drive away? It\u2019s only another five miles to the County Landfill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n

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(A dead cow on Keanakolu Road, my only dead cow shot)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my novel Mauka<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019 elevation, which meant a long grind uphill, but it lost that 1200\u2019 \u2013 which meant an exhilarating descent. Here are some memories of that route…. <\/p>\n

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