When I was going to the University of Hawaii in 1973, my friend Julie Heinberg and I often drove to the North Shore in her “Rent-a-Wreck” car.

She always stopped on the way at a restaurant on Kamehameha Highway called Fast Food Wahiawa. I don’t know why they called it that, because it wasn’t all that fast. Conrad “Doc” Hofmeister and his wife, Eve, made the best sandwiches, served on whole loaves of French bread. My favorite was steak, mushroom, onion and cheese. It was sooooo good.

A reader named Mike, who asked me to omit his last name, said he grew up in Wahiawa and attended Kaala Elementary School.

“Before there were any fast-food franchises in Wahiawa (the first were Dairy Queen and KFC in the early 1970s), I remember such establishments as Topper Drive-Inn, Big Way Burger, Kress Dog Hut, Shans, Kilani Bakery, Dots and Marrone’s Pizza.

“There was not a lot to do there for a little kid,” Mike says. “It was and still is a small town. There were stores like Cornet, which was a two-level department store — street level and a basement — with a large grate in front that blew air up from the lower level. We used to get blown away running over it.

“The shopping center had a Kress store, a toy shop called Omochiya, and Foodland. There was also Okimoto Drugs, Wahiawa Sporting Goods, Wahiawa Electronics, Lynn’s Market, Big Way Supermarket and two movie theaters, the Wahiawa and Victory.”

Alvin Yee told me his late father, Yat Kwai Yee, worked as a busboy/dishwasher, while his grandfather was a bartender at a tavern in the Seto-Chan building on California Avenue.

“The tavern was heavily patronized by Schofield Barracks soldiers on weekends. The upstairs had rooms for rent, and my father, grandfather and three other restaurant workers shared a room from 1937 to 1940.

“Each month, Father would walk across California Avenue to the wooden post office building (recently torn down and replaced) to send money to his mother in China.

“Every few months he would walk down Kilani Street to catch the OR&L train to Chinatown.

“There’s a Judy’s Flowers at 174 S. Kamehameha Highway in the heart of Wahiawa. I met Judy Kamisugi about 15 years ago,” Yee recalls. “There’s a large mural painted on an inside wall of a girl making a flower lei with Diamond Head behind her.

“Judy said a Wheeler Field airman came by in the early 1950s and offered to paint something on a blank wall. He came back one afternoon with paint and brushes, and the next morning, the mural was there. She didn’t remember his name.” Her son, Grant, now runs the shop and uses the image on T-shirts.

Judy said that on Dec. 7, 1941, she was hanging up laundry when there was an aerial dogfight in the sky above her, and stray bullets were hitting all over. One struck the concrete sidewalk near her, leaving a hole the size of a rice bowl. That’s when her father ordered her to get in the house.

“She said a boy standing across Kamehameha Highway in front of Service Motors (now Servco) was wounded in the shoulder. There were three teenage boys a few blocks away who thought they saw a parachute coming down in the Koolaus, and so they armed themselves with a garden hoe and baseball bat to hunt down the enemy pilot. Luckily, an Army patrol caught these kids and sent them home.”

Yee also told me about an Army pilot, Lt. Kenneth Taylor, who attended a formal function at the Wheeler Officers’ Club on Dec. 6, 1941.

“He went into Wahiawa town to rent a tuxedo the day before, from what he described as ‘an angry Korean woman’ who warned him to take good care of it or he would be responsible for the damage.

“After the formal function, he and others stayed up most of the night playing cards. During the Japanese attack the next morning, he and his friend George Welch, in their formal clothes, jumped into planes and engaged the enemy.

“Several Japanese planes were shot down, and the two returned to Wheeler Field for fuel and ammunition. Several officers told them to hide their planes and take cover.

“Instead, they took off to face the enemy. A Japanese plane attacked Taylor’s P-40 from behind, shooting up his canopy and wounding his left arm and leg. As he was bleeding, he said his first thought was how that angry woman was going to react to finding blood on the tuxedo.

“Apparently, he could confront attacking Japanese fighter planes, but he was afraid to confront the angry Korean woman.” Yee is unsure whether the tuxedo was ever returned.

For shooting down at least six Japanese planes that day, Taylor and Welch earned Distinguished Serv­ice Crosses, and the Pentagon called them America’s first two heroes of World War II.

“Kimo Kahoano and Carole Kai hosted a TV series — ‘Hawaii Star Presents’ — that honored veterans,” Yee continues. “In one show they described how a Japanese fighter plane was shot down by Lt. George Welch in Wahiawa. It crashed into a house on Neal Street that belonged to Carole Kai’s mother, who was not home.”

I called Carole Kai, and she told me that her older siblings, Harvey and Doris Miura, were driving into town to meet their mother when an attacking plane shot at them. A bullet missed her sister’s ear by inches and put a hole in the car’s radiator. The car died just past Kipapa Gulch.

Harvey and Doris hitchhiked home to find the same plane had crashed into their home and burned it to the ground. The neighbors thought Harvey and Doris had been killed, and when they appeared, thought they were seeing their ghosts.

Randall D. McCord was stationed near Whitmore Village north of Wahiawa in the late 1950s. He often listened to radio station KAHU at 920 AM because at 6:05 p.m. each weekday they ran a show called “Sundown With Tina.”

“The program was aimed at the 25,000 homesick serv­icemen on the island,” McCord says. “‘Sundown With Tina’ came on the air to the sounds of a soft love song, just at the time of day when young men become lonely.

“Tina would play romantic hapa haole tunes, which have English lyrics with Hawaiian music, such as ‘Sweet Someone’ and ‘Blue Hawaii.’ Occasionally she would play popular songs such as Tommy Edwards’ ‘It’s All in the Game’ or ‘Are You Sincere,’ by Andy Williams.

“Interspersed between these lilting sounds, Tina would read pre-scripted love letters from home to her mostly male listeners in a very soft and alluring voice.

“She would almost sob into the microphone when intoning so-called letters from home to her forlorn listeners,” McCord concludes. “I must admit some pangs for a certain majorette in Centre, Ala., when listening to Tina’s pensive readings.”

Do you have stories of living in Wahiawa? If so, email them to me.

Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book 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.