Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
I get a 'phone call from Dick Croul who is anxious to go fom his home in Los Angeles to Mexico City. When I become aware of his father's sickness I change my plans and fly to Honolulu.
Life in Rarotonga offers all of the amenities men think of as heaven. Lots of fruit, a leisurely way of life and a plethora of beautiful, accommodating females. I took several days off to walk around the island when it was still uncommercialized.
Fortunately the regular monthly boat to the island has come and gone but we are squeezed aboard a small boat and taken to Tahiti after a couple of weeks. If there are any young women about on Maiao-iti they are well hidden by the pastor. There isn't much to do on Maiao-iti. Each day the chief browns off two or three groups of four men each to gather wood or net fish or strip copra. The rest of the residents sit around and talk.
Lew was doing his tour of duty in the American navy in Hawaii. I meet him when he is acting as sound engineer at the high school football broadcasts and is my drinking buddy. He is instrumental in getting me to the Remembrance on the bombed remains of the U.S.S. Arizona battleship.
Tahiti was probably more fascinating a hundred years before we arrived there and will probably be changed a hundred years after we left. Pity! Modernization was already beginning to show its ugly face. Whether or not there will still be a Bar Zizou or a Chez Rivnac where we can cool our feet in the sand, or a Moorea Hotel with the same lax rules, it remains for someone else to see.
I spend two weeks with a family in Moorea after going there to take movies of a complete village dancing. Our cost is two jeroboams of wine.
I am given my old room when I check back into the Moorea Hotel in Tahiti. It immediately becomes the headquarters for Louise and a couple of her pals.They have a fetish like most Tahitians and shower two or three times a day. One night I spot Bendix at the wardroom on board the Nordlys. She follows me willingly to the hotel, notwithstanding the loud protestations of Louise. One night I see Louise at the Lido, a barn-like dance palace seven or eight miles from Tahiti. I foolishly become involved in a vicious contretemps with a muscular military type fom North Africa. I leave Tahiti with some reluctance. Louise crys when I leave.