This Month's Story

Years ago when I was working in Hawaii, I was lucky enough to become close friends who, among other things, was a slack key ukulele player. Once when we went out to dinner, we heard Don Ho singing in a large ballroom next to our small restaurant. Ho did well and we enjoyed the music drifting into our dining room. However, there was one song that set my friend on edge. Ho was singing a rather pretty song called “Tiny Bubbles in the Wine…”

My friend scowled, “That’s a direct steal from an old slack key Hawaiian song called ‘Pretty Pebbles in the Sea,’” he said. When we left the restaurant, he was still unhappy and later that night, he got his ukulele out and, as we sat by a small fire on his lanai, he played his older version of the song for me. It was indeed beautiful. Unlike Don Ho’s rendition, which was after all commercial and meant for a mainland audience, my friend’s rendition had a haunting quality that seemed to expand in the air around us, as if other people were listening in the dark.

“It’s not about pebbles,” my friend said as his notes drifted away in the night. “It’s about the people that make up the islands in the Pacific; its about the different peoples that are on those islands, especially about the differences in these people.” He played a few more chords of the song and then paused trying to place his words in an understandable sequence. “The beauty of a stream with pebbles at its bottom is the variation in the colors and shapes of the pebbles. This song talks about the broad reaches of the Pacific and about all of the ocean’s small islands. It tells about the fact that each island has its own distinct people and how beautiful they all are when viewed as a whole. To a Hawaiian, this is an important part of our culture and the way we do things and see the world.”

Later, I realized I had read the same philosophy in Hermann Hess’ beautiful book “Siddhartha” so the idea wasn’t isolated to my Hawaiian friend’s music. I heard it yet again years later in a small bar in Keflavic, Iceland. I remember commenting on the beauty of the Icelandic people to the bartender. He paused, thought for a moment and then answered me.

“That’s not really true. Look at the Icelanders around you. See, all of us look the same; no real dynamic change. We all look basically alike.” The bartender then pointed at the four Americans that had come into town with me and were part of the crew of the US Navy plane I was using. “You are all so different, always when we see Americans; we see differences, great differences. You look and act completely different from one another and yet you get along very well despite those differences. To me, and to the average Icelander, those differences are amazing. What I’m trying to say and may not be saying it very well, when we see Americans such as you and your Navy friends, its refreshing and to me and many other Icelanders, its very beautiful.”

I thought of all this as I was sitting waiting for the start of a Waveland Aldermen Meeting the week before the storm. What brought up my chain of thought was my overhearing a woman behind me who said she was a real estate agent. She was talking about property values and how they relate to the houses in Bay St Louis and Waveland. She claimed having a small house sitting next to a large house of greater value decreased the value of the larger house. “It’s a fundamental rule of Real Estate,” she said.

I was amazed at hearing such a remark and was happy to hear several people in her immediate vicinity instantly dispute what she was saying. These people claimed that what she was saying is not true for Bay St Louis and Waveland. They argued that our communities are unusual in this respect. If the neighbor’s property is kept clean and well maintained, the larger house maintains its value and may well increase in value because of the very diversity of the sometimes smaller, sometimes larger neighboring homes.

I had never thought of it that way and found myself agreeing with what was being said. We are lucky that so many of the small homes in the Bay did survive the storm. It is their differences that give the Bay and all of the Mississippi Coast its character.

Along Beach Boulevard, at least in Waveland where Stella and I lived before the storm, it was the height of the land that increased the property value rather than the fact that the house next to you is some expensive estate. Certainly my house did not decrease in value because a much smaller home was next to us.

As my Hawaiian friend said long ago, we are all pretty pebbles in the sea. Please, think of that when you go to vote this fall.