Rolf Nordahl of the MacMouse Club and I were talking recently about Lemon Road in Waikiki, where he lives and works. It’s not named for the fruit, he told me, but for a family that lived there.
Lemon Road runs about 500 feet from Kapahulu Avenue, across from the zoo, to Paoakalani Avenue. It was named for James Silas Le-Mon, a French Canadian who came to Hawaii in 1849. To avoid confusion, he changed his name to Lemon.
He owned the Commercial Hotel downtown. He also purchased the block that today is bounded by Lemon Road and Paoakalani, Kapahulu and Kalakaua avenues for under $5,000.
James Lemon’s wife, Mary Ann Wond, was born on Kauai. They and their six children lived in a six-bedroom house on the Waikiki estate. Over time they added several smaller houses.
I found a 1985 interview with a grandson of James Lemon that paints a colorful picture of what Waikiki was like 100 to 120 years ago.
Lemon Wond “Rusty” Holt Sr. was 82 years old when he was interviewed by Michi Kodama-Nishimoto from Scholar Space at the University of Hawaii.
Holt said there were roughly 100 coconut trees on their property. They also grew apples, mangoes, bananas, avocados and cabbage. His mother had a lemon orchard and entered the fruit in the territorial fairs, where they won awards nearly every year.
Holt’s mother was Augusta Helen Lemon, and his father was Edward Holt. Rusty and his six siblings were all delivered at home by his grandmother Mary Ann, who had been a nurse and administrator at the Kapiolani Maternity Hospital for over 15 years.
The Honolulu Advertiser sports editor Ezra Crane gave Holt the nickname Rusty because he had brown hair.
A royal visitor
Rusty’s grandmother had attended Royal School with the future Queen Lili‘uokalani, who had a home near the Lemons. When she visited, it was Rusty’s job to find her favorite coconuts — haohao, he called them — with meat so soft it was edible with a spoon.
The queen liked the coconuts from two particular trees, and nobody dared touch them, Rusty remembered. His mom would make Hawaiian stew, and they’d eat raw fish that he had caught in the ocean across the street.
Riding streetcars
Horse-drawn streetcars ran from Kalihi to Kapiolani Park past his home beginning in the 1880s. They evolved into electric trolley cars in 1901.
At the end of the route, the motorman picked up his steering rod, took it to the other side of the car, put it down in the right place and started off again, Rusty recalled.
“My father used to give me 15 cents a day — a nickel going on the streetcar, a nickel coming home and a nickel for a package of chow fun for my lunch.” But Rusty was a growing boy and one package was not enough.
So he decided to spend two nickels for two packages of chow fun. But how would he get home?
Rusty learned to jump onto the trolley, avoid the conductor and jump off after two or three blocks if he saw him coming to collect the fare. Then he’d wait for the next streetcar. “Eventually I got home but I had two packages of chow fun for lunch.”
After a while, Rusty found the conductors and motormen liked haohao coconuts. “I got to be real close to them because I was the only one who could get them haohao coconuts, so there was many a free ride for me.”
The Makaha Holts
The Holt side of his family had a big estate in Makaha, and every year, cowboys would bring up to 3,000 turkeys to Honolulu. “They drive them along like cattle, all the way from Makaha to Honolulu,” Rusty said, and sold them for $1.50 to $2.50.
Friends never left
“My family, my brothers and sisters all had friends,” Rusty said. “Whoever came never went home. Louis Pomroy, who lived on Monsarrat Avenue, when he was 6 years old, came down to our house to play with me. He never went home. My mother raised him until he was 24 years old. He stayed.”
Four other friends like him came and stayed as well. That was common in Waikiki back then, Rusty said.
Luau memories
“Any holiday or birthday there were always luau,” Rusty said. “Everybody brought their own okolehao” — Hawaiian moonshine. “They had no tables, those days, but mats on the floor. I can remember mats being all over the house when we had luaus.
“People came. Family came. They ate. They drank. They passed out right on the floor and went home the following weekend.”
A princely fellow
Prince Kuhio and his wife, Elizabeth, lived nearby. “He was a real nice person. He was pure Hawaiian, and he spoke English like a college professor. He always dressed nicely in a shirt, tie, nice trousers, and his shoes were always polished,” Rusty said.
“The prince had a 16-foot solid koa surfboard. I don’t think I ever saw him take anyone else out surfing tandem, except me. I always went with him.
“Other kids would say, ‘Prince, why you taking that guy?’
“He would say, ‘Well, he can swim in if anything happens. He’s a good little swimmer.’
“When we got through, we would bring the board to his pier. The board was so long that he never carried it. He had a couple (pulleys) under his pier. All he did was put a hoist in the front and back. He pulled on the rope and up went the board, and it stayed there.”
Kuekaunahi Stream came down from Manoa and Palolo to the ocean, about where Ohua and Kalakaua avenues are today.
Rusty surfed with Joe Akana, a neighbor who lived on the other side of the stream. “All I had to do was walk about 20 feet with my surfboard, put it in the stream and paddle out under the bridge.” Akana did the same thing, and they surfed together most of the day.
When they were finished, they’d catch a wave and ride it back through the bridge to their homes.
An early education
Rusty went to the Waikiki school, which originally was mauka across the street from the Moana hotel. There were three rooms for grades one through three, taught by Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Ontai.
“My schedule going to Waikiki School was three days of schooling and the rest of the week surfing. When I finished the third grade, I don’t think it was possible for me to add 2 and 2 and make it come out 4, because it always came out 3.”
Gridiron fame
From the fourth grade, he went to Kamehameha Schools where the Bishop Museum is today in Kalihi. He studied vocational agriculture and was given a male pig and two sows to raise.
He sold the litters, and with the proceeds was able to pay his own tuition at Kamehameha from the sixth grade on.
Rusty joined several athletic teams and was a standout at football. The team set a scoring record in 1923 that still stands, defeating the Honolulu Military Academy 104-0. Hilo High School tied the record in 2019, beating Waiakea 104-0.
Later, at the University of Hawaii, Holt was a formidable halfback. He was a key player on Otto Klum’s championship 1927-1929 football teams. He was inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame in 1979.
Prime real estate
Following his years at UH, Holt moved to Maui in 1930 and became postmaster. He came back to Oahu in 1945 and took over the personnel department at the American Can Co. for 15 years. After that he worked for Kamehameha Schools.
The family estate was offered for sale in 1930 for $100,000, but no one wanted to buy it. They ended up accepting $86,000 for it. Holt estimated it was worth more than $20 million in 1985 when he was interviewed.
George and Emma Mossman’s Lalani Village occupied the 1-acre site from 1932 to 1955. It offered classes in Hawaiian music, hula and food preparation. Guests could see what life in Hawaii was like before contact with the West.
Lemon “Rusty” Holt Sr. surfed until his mid-70s. He died in 1999 at age 94.
Today the Waikiki Grand Hotel, Park Shore Waikiki, Aston Waikiki Beach and many retail stores are on that site.
So, the next time you are driving down Kalakaua Avenue, look into your rearview mirror. See if you can catch a glimpse of what Waikiki was like 100 years ago, in Rusty Holt’s day.
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