Koamalu : a story of pioneers on Kauai, and of what they built in that island garden / by Ethel M. Damon. [Vol. 1, no. 2]

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KOA M A L U

muddy roads, declaring it was a good sign, and sure
enough, the day itself dawned clear and bright. Huts
and booths of all descriptions were erected. To one,
admission was charged to see an old woman pounding
tapa. Another showed Rebekah at the Well, dispensing
lemonade. A Hawaiian luau was served and course dinners of "haole kaukau," many of the Hawaiians patronizing the American meals with great gusto. An unusually
abundant crop of watermelons from the Rices' farm made
a most timely addition. Finally the band boys had their
dinner and left on the steamer at ten in the evening. It
was a great event for the whole island, and almost the
last in which so many Hawaiians took part.
At Lihue center the frame building of the old store,
moved over from its Koamalu site about 1876, had served
its time. For years it had been presided over by Oswald
Scholz, a person of individuality who rarely let a customer out of the store with cash change in his hand, so
fertile was he in suggesting merchandise which that
change would purchase. This admirable principle
brought disaster upon the head of small Willy Rice III,
when he returned to his mother one day with change in
the form of candy. At the time that the first Germans
arrived in Lihue their ideas of thrift had been quite confused when they discovered that no purchasing coin less
than twenty-five cents was accepted by Mr. Scholz as
commercial tender. During the years of 1890 C. H.
Bishop presided over the store and he was succeeded by
another shrewd business man, William Fisher, brotherin-law of Dr. Watt. Mr. Bishop had added just north
of the old store a large warehouse later used as the store
itself, the old building being finally torn down to make
way for a coffee shop and a tailor shop on the corner.
Up to about this time the functions of the post office
had continued to be handed down as a legacy to successive storekeepers, but after annexation this government