Well Doc Mark asked about Jasmine and as it was, her mother was living when I nailed met her. At the time she was the girlfriend of this Hawaiian guy about 4 feet tall and 2 foot wide named Makiwapi Kahanmolochuchuwockajawocka. He was a legendary surfer though and everyone just called him "Lil Ethyl" because they couldn't pronounce or remember his real name and he had prodigious amounts of high octane gas! He was an inspiration to me for the rest of my life.

He had a bar on the beach called "The Big Waves" and in honor of his bar they named the surf out front of it "Big Waves." One day Lil Ethyl said I was no surfer but to try to ride that 50 footer anyway. Well I did and he then showed me how to Hang Ten and the first thing you know, I was put in charge of guiding new surfers and running Big Waves....the surf, not the bar. Yeah, like I was becoming legendary there too and one day I showed them a trick that only I could do. Standing at the back of my surfboard I whipped out my tool and threw it over the front! I called this "Hangin' One" and they were all mighty impressed. Lil Ethyl spent days and days out there trying to duplicate that trick and left me to tend to the bar and other things. The other thing I attended to was Jasmine's mother. Lil Ethyl was a bit suspicious though and he asked me, "Brudder, did you sleep with her?" I truthfully answered that I had not. I have never had any success in having intercourse while I'm asleep although I know it's popular in Rhode Island.

"The Big Waves" was a legendary place and it was the place to be seen no matter who you were. On any given day (given that Tuesday was a day) you could find Elvis and Jack Lord talking politics at a table while at another there was Don Ho and Lawrence Welk discussing the finer points of Bubbles.......that was Bubbles Tsunami, a legendary madam who ran a local brothel, known as "Bruddels" in Hawaii. But speaking of Don Ho...........

One day I was talking with Don about a song he was doing called "Tiny Bubbles." He was having no success with it at all and so I started singing it myself. I did my own version which was a big improvement and then recorded it. That one record sold over 2 million copies in Terra Haute, Indiana and from that point on everybody recorded my version including Don Ho who used it as his signature song. I made the one change that I thought would do the most good and changed the tune to the one we all know now. Previously it had been sung to the tune of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and it just seemed wrong. So thanks to me, Don Ho hit it big.

I returned to the mainland shortly thereafter and was the Grand Marshall at the "Hulman Classic" Parade in Terra Haute that next year. In the parade a little kid came up and tried to sing my version of the song but he kept throwing in "vrroom-vrroom-vrroom" sounds and I said, "Kid go watch the race today instead and maybe you'll be a race driver 'cause you sure ain't no singer." Being as legendary as I was the kid took my advice and went on to become a pretty fair racer named Jeff Gordon.

I tried to call back to Hawaii after the parade, but found that Don Ho was already booked to sing the same song in the same place for the next 25 years and that Lil Ethyl was in an asylum as a result of a shark attacking his whang as he was trying to Hang One and he was traumatized for life. I should have asked about Jasmine's mother, but I couldn't remember her name...............

Spaw