Since I wrote my first "The Companies We Keep" book, many people have shared great stories with me about Hawaii people, places and companies. It’s often a couple of stories a week, and led to my second, third and, next year, a fourth book.
I was sitting next to Bill Green, who owned Kahala Shell, at a Smart Business Hawaii breakfast. He looked at the cover of the second book, which has a photo of Jack Lord, and told me he was Lord’s mechanic and had an interesting story. Here’s what he told me:
On "Hawaii Five-0" Lord drove a dark 1968 Mercury Parklane Brougham and later a 1974 Mercury Marquis, but in real life he had a white 1967 Cadillac with "FIVE-0" license plates. When it needed gas or repair, Lord took it to Green.
"Jack was a real nice guy to me," Green recalls, "but he could be gruff and scare some of my young employees. He was a macho, man’s man but a pretty good driver. He always dressed in white, with a big planter’s hat. He was 6-foot-2 and wore 2- to 3-inch heels on top of that, and was in good shape. …
"One of my customers at Kahala Shell was a young guy who came out here from Los Angeles once a year with his wife and kids. They stayed at the Kahala Beach Apartments where Jack lived and sometimes saw his Cadillac.
"The guy admired Jack Lord and was a big fan of ‘Hawaii Five-0.’ Two years after Jack had died, he came to the station and told me, ‘I think I’ve made a deal to buy Jack’s car. If I can buy it, will you get it running so I can ship it to California?’ No problem at all, I told him.
"A week later he had bought it," Green continued. "He gave me the keys and title. It was filthy because it had been sitting for a couple of years. It was hard to get it started. The gasoline was old, but I got it running and took it over to the shop. We cleaned it up, changed the oil and got it in decent condition. He paid me and took it to the mainland.
"A year later he was back in the islands and came looking for me. ‘I gotta tell you this story,’ he said. ‘I have these guys in Los Angeles who do professional detailing. I gave them the Cadillac and told them to make it look like it was brand new. Later they came back to me and said, "Look what we found under the seat of the car." It was a wedding ring, a plain, gold band — not a diamond, not exotic, just a wedding band.’
"The detail guys knew it was Jack Lord’s car," Green continued, "and that it was probably Marie’s ring. Technically it now belonged to the new owner. A lesser man might have kept it. But this guy made an appointment to have lunch with Marie at the Kahala Hilton, and he gave her back this ring.
"She was so grateful to get it back after all those years, she was just in tears. She told him she had lost the ring 10 to 15 years earlier. She wasn’t sure where she had mislaid it.
"Whenever his Cadillac would break down, Jack would bring it in and just be incredulous. ‘This has never happened before,’ he would rant. I’d explain that living next to the ocean was tough on cars.
"If we needed to work on it for more than a day, he would need a car to drive home. We had a few junk cars that we used for loaners. I’d give him one to drive. On one occasion it was a big old junky two-door. I said, ‘I can run you back to your place or give you this one.’ He took the loaner and drove it for a week while we fixed his car.
"One day a lady needed a loaner while we worked on her car, and I offered her the same one Jack Lord had driven last week. She looked at it and said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t drive this ugly thing!’
"I replied, ‘Well, Jack Lord drove it all last week.’
"‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case I’ll take it!’"
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Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep 1, 2 & 3,” looks through his collection of photos to tell interesting stories each Friday about Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
