The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,25

we'll probably use some police cars or the fire department with loudspeakers and go down Alii Drive

recommending evacuation. But right now it's just an advisory.

HST: This is that same storm from the North? And it's going to get worse?

COP: At four this morning the high tides will be at their worst.

HST: The worst.

COP: Right. But right now it appears fairly calm.

HST: It does. I was just downtown -- it looked very calm to me.

COP: The waves in Kailua Bay are running five feet; Kaheo Bay, nothing -- no wave action at all.

HST: What was the size of the waves we had about two weeks ago? That's when we had some trouble up here. They came up to the porch.

COP: I really don't know, I wasn't working at that time, apparently, because I don't recall it.

HST: There was no alert. It wasn't that high. Maybe eight or ten feet -- I was just trying to compare. Well, we'll see, won't we?

COP: Yeah, as I said, right now they're just advising if you have any gear on your back porch or whatever, make sure it's secure.

HST: (laughs) Secure . . .

COP: And they will take steps to alert the populace near the beach.

HST: Steps? What kind of steps? Phone calls? Sirens? How will we know? Like I said, we'll probably be asleep.

COP: Well, as I said, they'll either use the loudspeakers on the police cars and fire department vehicles or they'll be using -- (PAUSE) -- they'll be using the Civil Defense siren -- which will wake you up, guaranteed.

HST: Okay, but we won't be taken out of our beds by a tsunami?

COP: No tsunami. Don't worry about that.

HST: Okay, thank you.

COP: You're welcome. Bye.

TITS LIKE ORANGE FIREBALLS

All work ceased on my side of the compound as the holiday season approached. I hunkered down for the pro football playoffs, betting heavily with Wilbur on the telephone and squandering away my winnings on fireworks. The Christmas season, in Hawaii, is also the time of the annual Feast of Lono, the god of excess and abundance. The missionaries may have taught the natives to love Jesus, but deep in their pagan hearts they don't really like him: Jesus is too stiff for these people. He had no sense of humor. The ranking gods and goddesses of the old Hawaiian culture are mainly distinguished by their power, not their purity, and they are honored for their vices as well as their awesome array of virtues. They are not intrinsically different from the people themselves -- just bigger and bolder and better in every way.

The two favorites are Lono and Pele, the randy Volcano goddess. When Pele had a party, everybody came; she was a lusty long-haired beauty who danced naked on molten lava with a gourd of gin in each hand, and anybody who didn't like it was instantly killed. Pele had her problems -- usually with wrong-headed lovers, and occasionally with whole armies -- but in the end she always prevailed. And she still lives, they say, in her cave underneath a volcano on Mt. Kiluea and occasionally comes out to wander around the island in any form she chooses -- sometimes as a beautiful young girl on a magic surfboard, sometimes a jaded harlot sitting alone at the bar of the Volcano House; but usually -- for some reason the legends have never made clear -- in the form of a wizened old woman who hitchhikes around the island with a pint of gin in her kitbag.

Whether Pele and Lono ever got together is a question still shrouded in mystery, but as a gambler I would have to bet on it. There is not enough room on these islands for the two most powerful deities in Hawaiian history to roam around for 1,000 years without coming to grips with each other.

King Lono, ruler of all the islands in a time long before the Hawaiians had a written language, was not made in the same mold as Jesus, although he seems to have had the same basically decent instincts. He was a wise ruler and his reign is remembered in legend as a time of peace, happiness and great abundance in the kingdom -- the Good Old Days, as it were, before the white man came -- which may have had something to do with his elevation to the status of a god in the wake of his disappearance.

Lono was also a chronic brawler with an ungovernable temper, a keen eye for the naked