Away from It All: Molokai

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and shake your hand. If he’s in the mood, he gives the women a kiss on the cheek. For the past several years, Mitchell Pauole has been chosen Honorary Mayor of Molokai in an informal and unofficial community election. He takes his job seriously. He greets everyone at the airport, coming and going. He officiates at everything, in English and Hawaiian. He always shakes hands. No matter if you just shook five minutes ago. In my nine months on Molokai, that man must have shook my hand a thousand times. Mitchell Pauole was born on the island of Kauai. He came to Molokai in 1923, in his mid-thirties, to homestead some land at Hoolehua. He lived in a tent during his first three months on the island, offering church services even then. He and his wife raised nine children on Molokai. And he is without doubt the most dependably kind, courteous, and gracious man I know. Another person you want to see while you’re at the airport is the Gray Line girl, for this may be your only chance on Molokai to see a girl wearing a miniskirt. It was the idea of Jim McMahon, head of Gray Line Tours, to put miniskirts on his girls. This was considered a radical idea on Molokai, but he got away with it. Despite Jim’s forward thinking, any other girls you see wearing miniskirts around the island are, as likely as not, wearing short pants underneath them. The future of the Molokai Airport is in doubt right now, with state planners and various Molokai factions jockeying for position while they begin work on plans for a new airport—one that can accommodate a two-mile runway to handle big jets from the mainland. The state is eyeing one site in west Molokai and another potential site near the present airport. Ted Watson is holding his breath, because a big jet field out near the immense tourist development his company has in mind would be bad news. No tourist likes a 747 skimming just above the roof of the hotel where he’s trying to sleep in his sixty-dollar-a-day room. And the homesteaders are up in arms over any site near the


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