Hanabada Days: Trick-or-treat at a Honolulu condo

Photo: Bing AI.

I did not have the traditional Halloween many of you had in your Main Street American neighborhood.

I grew up in a condo along the rim of Honolulu Country Club—an Arnold Palmer-designed 18-hole golf course built on a part of the massive Damen Estate that once was a Hawaiian volcanic crater-turned-lake.

At that time, many of my neighbors at the 13-floor Sunset Lakeview were first generation Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) immigrants—retired small business owners, tourist industry professionals, florists and airport lei-sellers, even a handful of former tourism livery drivers who cashed out well.

We were a veritable United Nations at the condo.

I grew up learning phrases in Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Samoan, Hawaiian—and in Unit A604, Ilocano.

In Hawaii, you called everyone your parents’ age “Auntie” and “Uncle.” Everyone your grandparents’ age, you called “Grandma” or “Grandpa,” “Nainai” or “Yeiyei,” “Halmeoni” or “Halabeoji,” “Bá” or “Ông nôi,” “Kupuna,” “Tata” or “Nanay.”

At Sunset Lakeview—a complex of twin buildings—I had dozens and dozens of these extended family members.

The thing about first gen immigrants is that you only pick up bits and pieces of Americana and don’t quite fully understand what pop culture defines as proper holiday merriment.

What everyone understood was that on October 31 of each year—a hot and steamy day in Hawaii—the children dress up as not themselves and go house to house begging for treats.

AAPI folks have no aversion to entertaining people at their doors—especially adorable children.

What many didn’t completely understand was that it was okay just to give little pieces of candy—that this is enough to satisfy on this night.

What ended up happening—in hindsight as an adult Chicagoan now—is that I had a better version of trick-or-treat as a child than I thought.

One of my favorite condos to visit was the Nguyen family—actually one of several Nguyen families in the twin buildings. And he would give out freshly made spring rolls stuffed with pork and shrimp, shredded carrots and turnip, rolled in a steamed rice crepe, and served with a little plastic cup of a sweet and sour sauce.

Meant to be taken home in plastic wrap, I stopped at the stairwell before heading down to another floor, unmasked and devoured every inch of that spring roll with delight.

Several years in a row, one of our Samoan moms—who often said I was growing into a more handsome boy each time she saw me—made trays and trays of Spam and rice wrapped in sushi nori. Spam musubi is an iconic snack of Hawaii.

What made her’s special was that she seared each Spam slice in shoyu, mirin, and brown sugar—a homemade teriyaki glaze.

Once again, the saran-wrapped Pacific Islander delicacy—that tourists make fun of as “Spam sushi”—never made it home.

A Chinese shop owner nainai one year handed out a popular item from his Waikiki gift stall—veritably bought in bulk. It was a delicate fan made of sheathes of teak and scented like sandalwood.

I remember carrying that around on days with a stubborn humid-loving Kona wind for years.

Of course my brother and I would fling our trick-or-treat fans on other days and pretend we were little Japanese geishas!

A Korean ajumma who often hemmed pants for neighbors’ children as a side gig was fond of moving a chest freezer closer to her front door each Halloween.

For every child that came to her home, she would cry in glee at the adorableness of costumes and handed out ice cold Coca-Colas and Hawaiian Sun drinks.

With a normal Halloween on Oahu at 88°F and sticky—ajumma was serving the elixir of the gods.

Sadly, one year she was gone. Her nephew had put her in a nursing home. But imagine the smiles she impressed those nights at her home.

Not every delight was a tasty morsel or quenching liquid for me those Halloweens.

One of my favorites was the Hawaiian tutu at the penthouse of Building B. With the sun having gone down, I could see night from her front door to the windows and balcony on the other side.

It was the beautiful sight of Honolulu International Airport runway lights and towering floodlights at each gate—airplane tails and wings blinking green and red alternately as they taxied toward the reef.

Airports were, and still is today, magical for me.

Sure we got our mini Snickers and Reese’s peanut butter cups, individually-wrapped dollar store ding dongs and ho-hos, and those Red Vines I traded for Whopper malt balls—but we also had the odd manapua, frozen Melona fruit bars, Safeway ice cream bars, and even sticky pieces of sweet manju and mochi.

One year we got full-sized yo-yos and on another, surplus oversized generic trucker hats emblazoned with a patch screaming Aloha!

At 40 years old moving from aisle to aisle at my Chicago Jewel-Osco grocery store lamenting the price of candies today, I realized I took for granted what we from Hawaii call our hanabada days.

We really had it good back then.