Rearview Mirror is a voyage of discovery for me. At the end of the year, I like to review some of the things I learned.

The fried egg came to the loco moco later

I spoke at the Big Island Chamber of Commerce’s annual SBA Awards this year and spent some time afterward with Gloria Kobayashi, whose father, Richard Miyashiro, founded Cafe 100.

Cafe 100 began serving the loco moco around 1962 and now has nearly 30 varieties on the menu, but it was created around 1949 by the Lincoln Wreckers football team at the Lincoln Grill. When the owners retired, May’s Fountain continued the loco moco tradition and added the fried egg to the dish.

Kobayashi thinks May Goya deserves the credit for the loco moco we know today.

Hawaii men played with Harlem Globetrotters

The Harlem Globetrotters have come to Hawaii many times in their 90-year history. This year several readers told me they didn’t bring their usual opponent — the Washington Generals — with them, but organized local islanders to play against them.

Coralei Chun Matayoshi’s late father, Peter Chun, played on the team that always lost to the Globetrotters back in the late 1940s.

Clay and Gordon Tom told me that their father, Richard, played against the Globetrotters when they first came to Hawaii around 1937.

In 1941-42 Ah Chew Goo headed up an all-star team to oppose the visiting Globetrotters.

Hi son, Vince Goo, who coached the University of Hawaii women’s basketball team from 1987 to 2004, said, “Dad pulled a couple of tricks in the first game, and Abe Saperstein, the Globetrotters’ owner, told him he couldn’t do that again.” Tricks were for the Globetrotters, and they put them into their games. Seventy-five years later Goo’s tricks remain part of the Globetrotters’ entertainment.

A local man was president’s bike partner

Ray L’Heureux flew the presidential helicopter, Marine One. On a trip to Camp David, he and several others were invited to mountain-bike with President George W. Bush. L’Heureux was the only one who could keep up with him, even though he had never mountain-biked before.

Bush called him Frenchman and the two became close. “It was just he and I mountain-biking,” L’Heureux said. “The surreal part was, I wondered what this bucket-head colonel was doing behind the leader of the free world. I never took it for granted.”

WWII B-25 bomber flew at treetop level

On Friday, May 7, 1965, James A. Ashdown, 34, a former military pilot, told police later that “I had an urge to fly again” after drinking at several Honolulu bars.

Ashdown had flown the plane many times before.

He took off toward Waikiki and then on to Portlock at treetop levels. He buzzed his ex-girlfriend’s house in Hawaii Kai. Frightened callers began lighting up Police Department switchboards.

Returning to Waikiki, he buzzed Foster Tower and the Waikiki Circle Hotel 20 feet below rooftop level, said a startled policeman. Then he banked and skirted the Moana (Surfrider) before heading back out to sea.

But he was not done with Waikiki. Banking again, he roared over Kuhio Beach and past the Waikiki Biltmore hotel (now the Hyatt Regency). Guests looked down at him from their balconies, said the policeman.

Ashdown returned to the airport after 90 minutes and was arrested.

‘Tiny Bubbles’ was written for Welk, not Ho

Don Ho’s biggest hit, “Tiny Bubbles,” was not written for Ho, and when he released it, it was on the B-side of the record.

The song was written by Leon Pober for Lawrence Welk, who passed on it.

Reprise Records producer Sonny Burke introduced “Tiny Bubbles” to Ho. Burke gave Ho the lyrics, and he sang to a mainland-recorded backing track. “I didn’t like the song,” Ho said, “but I sang it one time and I walked out of the studio. A week later it was all over the country.”

“Tiny Bubbles” was released as a 45 rpm record and was the B-side of “Born Free,” one of Ho’s favorite songs.

The “Tiny Bubbles” album stayed in the Top 20 for nearly a year. The song made Ho famous on the mainland and expanded his opportunities there.

Harry Truman’s haircut

I wrote about the Armed Services YMCA on July 9. Alvin Yee told me that when President Harry Truman left the White House in early 1953, he came to Hawaii to spend some time on Coconut Island in Kaneohe, where he was photographed wearing an aloha shirt. I wrote about that on Dec. 19, 2014.

Truman paid a courtesy call to territorial Gov. Oren Long at Iolani Palace, where he remarked he needed a haircut. The governor referred him to the Filipino barber at the Armed Services YMCA, where the governor also got his haircuts. Truman and his Secret Service guard walked over to the YMCA where he waited his turn for a haircut.

Art museum fountain was donated by Morocco

Speaking of the former YMCA, Bob Hampton told me that the king of Morocco donated a fountain to Hawaii that is on the front lawn of the Hawai‘i State Art Museum

Morocco has a “sister state” relationship with Hawaii, Hampton said. In December 2012 we celebrated the relationship with a “His Majesty King Mohammed VI Week in Hawaii.”

The king donated the fountain and had the tiles and his craftsmen flown in from Morocco to install it. You can see it from the Hotel Street sidewalk.

So those are just some of the things I learned in 2017.

Bob Sigall’s latest book “The Companies We Keep 5,” has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.