Nestled in our newly established camp, amid the camouflage of Keawe bushes and secret sandstone alcoves, we plotted our next move. Cher said that we should consecrate our new camp by doing something special. As the little brother, I always said yes to anything she said with the exception of letting her touch my baseball cards, which I have talked about earlier. The expanse on the coastline between Waianae and Maile was a treasure trove of sea shells, reefs, brush, and old concrete military bunkers constructed to ward off the inevitable invasion by Japan.
Cher pointed out a warm, unopened beer bottle on the side of the road and said that the warm, and probably flat, beer was the perfect ‘consecrator’. As the assistant to the President, I was given the task to open the beer bottle. If President Cher had known that I was a doofus when it came to opening warm beer bottles, she would have assigned it to someone else. She also didn’t know that when Grandma Nishimura asked me to heat up the water bottle I actually boiled the bottle . . but, that’s another story.
I tapped on the cap of the bottle with a sharp stone, and the munition promptly exploded. Another great idea from President Cher! Yipes! All I remember is the boom and the hole in my shin. I considered myself extremely lucky that I didn’t lose something more valuable like my Mickey Mantle baseball card. Anyway, I started running home and ran smack into my mother.
She said she knew something was wrong and had come running from the house . . at least a quarter of a mile away. Without a doubt she had to have left the house well before the accident happened.
That was one of the miracles.