JULIAN KEONE - HAWAIIAN

Julian Matthew 

Kaonohiulaokalani Hakoekoekalani 

Napuaikahikinaakalaikumukahi 

Keonehaliiokalaninuikalani 

Kamehamehakanaiaupuniohawaii 

 

Julian was a classmate of my KKUA newsperson Keala Kai (Judy Mugford), Kamehameha class of 1969. While we did the wake-up radio show, Julian was starting his day as a tour bus driver. I learned we had much in common after we "met" one morning when he phoned the radio station and asked, "You get one Lihue Butterfly?"  Was he asking about a rock group?  Was he pushing pakalolo?  Or was this character a collector of rare insects?  As it turned out, Julian proved to be more interesting than a combination of all three.  

I had met my first member of the Hawaii Antique Bottle Collectors Club, established in 1972.  Julian became its president within three years. His innocent phone call sucked me in to a 20-year circus of mud, glass, wheeling, dealing, digging, hustling, trading, cataloging and other activities. I was a full-on, compulsive, anal-retentive, maniacal, Virgo collector of old Hawaiian pop bottles.  I joined the club and attended my first meeting at Suzanna Wesley center in Kalihi.  

The diversity of my fellow lunatics was amazing.  They were detectives, waiters, executives, housewives, students, heavy equipment operators , ambulance drivers and the future chief of the Honolulu Fire Department, Attilio (John) Leonardi, at the time, stationed in Kahuku.  Aother leader of this gang was a hippie with long stringy blonde hair, who always clutched a thin volume entitled "Hawaiian Bottles of Long Ago" by Rex Elliot.  This man was Steve Gould, a Punahou graduate, who grew up in a house alongside the Waialae Golf Course.  When he was a kid, they built the Kahala Hilton across the fairway from his home. Inquisitive young Gould spent his spare time digging around in the muck and mulch where later would stand Hawaii's most elegant resort hotel.  The detritus of the construction site became the first jewels in Gould's antique Hawaiian bottle collecction.

Within weeks the Beatles, Beachboys and Byrds were pushed aside by my association with Keone, Gould, Leonardi and the other collectors who prowled Oahu in the wee hours searching the residue of the foundations of what is now modern downtown Honolulu.  I realized no one person could collect everything. Matson engineer Grant O'Donnell specialized in nothing but milk bottles.  Other collectors focused on multi-colored opium bottles from the Far East. Some folks pursued either gin, whiskey or apathocary bottles.  Within months, all my weekend non-football viewing time was spent roaring around Oahu in a T-Bird provided by Honolulu Ford. Julian was co-pilot and chief  bottle watcher.  Our assistant was teenage Raphael Sanders, Jr. His younger trainee was Jeremy "The Crab" Gardiner.  

It didn't stop there.  Julian, always the Hawaiian, kept pushing me--Imua!--towards Primo Beer containers and Coke bottles distributed only in the Territory of Hawaii.  In time I learned more about these things than anyone should ever have to know about anything.  But I was hooked. The bedroom walls of my Diamond Head manse were stacked with rows of antique Hawaiian soda bottles.  And I was reaching for my roots.  I would lay in bed, focus on a glittering 19th Century bottle, imagine what route it took to get here, through whose hands it passed, what lips it had touched, what flavor it contained and whether it caused gas.

The continuing obsession with my all-consuming hobby only become more detailed and ridiculously entangled. Once hiking into a jungle Valley on Maui in search of a rumored treasure, my guide, Cosmio Propellor, and I were almost washed away in a flash flood.  But by 1995 the world largest assemblage of antique Hawaiian soda bottles had been in storage for years. Keeping hundreds of glass bottles both visible and safe is much tougher than maintaining a stamp or coin collection. And my interest had waned.  My daughter's tuition at Northwestern University loomed.  A deal was done.  The accumulated empty pop bottles were redeemed for her freshman and sophomore years' tuition, plus room and board.  

Yesterday I saw Julian for the first time in 17 years.  We hugged, talked story, relived the good old days, recalled the other crazy characters who shared our lolo bottle addiction and laughed a lot. Time has taken its toll on both our bodies. We have not held up as well as the bottles. But the bond, oh yes, the bond remains as strong as ever, never to be shattered.

"IN MUD WE MUST"