Health Hazards That Never Bothered Us as Kids

Growing up in Hawaii during the 1940s and 50s was a life unlike that of today.  We never worried about diseases, illnesses, and poisons.  Apparently, our bodies were able to withstand things that cause today’s kids’ health to go into tailspins.  Things have changed so dramatically over the past half century that we now have ailments, syndromes, and illnesses that were not even invented in those days.  Remember when General George S. Patton, Jr., slapped that soldier in the face because he suffered from shell shock?  Patton considered the soldier a coward.  Today, the military calls it post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Today, we are nothing but a bunch of wimps with numerous allergies and other disorders and syndromes.  I cover a list of these items in the ensuing paragraphs.

DDT Spraying.  In Kailua, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, the Kawainui Swamp was a breeding ground for mosquitoes.  During the hot summer months in the 1940s and early 50s, swarms of mosquitoes would infest the Keolu Hills community of Kailua.  Hence, ever so often, a DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane insecticide) spray truck would drive through the streets in Keolu Hills spraying DDT mist throughout the community.  We would run through the mist clouds and inhale the gas like it was no big deal.  However, since scientists have found out how bad DDT is to our food and health, they do not spray it anymore into the atmosphere.  However, the DDT never bothered us any at the time.  It must have been diluted.

Slop Man.  In those days, pigs were fed slop.  Slop is any food, rotten or otherwise, thrown out from the dinner table and/or refrigerator.  We placed a five-gallon bucket on a shelf outside of our house.  Anything thrown out from preparing meals or leftover from meals was put into this slop can, which accumulated for the week.  Flies would get into the slop can and lay their eggs.  Worms would grow in the slop.  The slop man would come by each week and take this can of rotten smelling slop and pour it into a large tank on his truck.

The slop man would take this slop and boil it to kill all of the germs and worms in it and, after it is cooled off, feed the sterilized slop to his pigs.  This is when pig’s meat tasted really delicious because the pigs ate slop.  Because the Board of Health does not allow pigs to eat slop anymore, the slop collecting business went under.  At any rate, there was not much future in it.  Now, pigs are fed grains such as corn, wheat, and barley.  That is why the pork meat is not as tasty today as it was in the old days.

The same applies to chicken eggs.  In those days, chickens ran around the yard eating all kinds of insects, worms, seeds, dog doo-doo, and whatever else they could find.  The eggs they laid were very tasty.  Nowadays, chickens are fed only chickenfeed made of corn, barley, and other grains.  Hence, their eggs are bland tasting.  Even chicken meat, like pork meat, is not as tasty as it used to be in the caveman days.

Eating Raw Foods.  For some reason, we never worried about trichinosis, worms, or anything like that.  I loved to eat half cooked meat and vegetables.  I remember eating bacon half cooked, pork chops half cooked, and chicken with red blood in it.  We ate raw eggs mixed in hot rice and soy sauce.  Of course, steaks always were bleeding, though I enjoy my steaks medium rare.  But I still would eat rare steaks and burgers.  We survived.

Worms.  Why, I remember my mom picking out dead fish worms from some delicious, huge mullets that my father had caught, and she had steam baked them in the oven.  It was no big deal then.  Worms have high protein content.  As long as they were cooked to death, they could not harm you.  It is just the idea of dead worms sticking in your teeth.  It is particularly disgusting when you smile and people can see dead worms stuck to the spaces between your front teeth.

Do you remember watching recent television movies called “Survivor”?  These guys ate maggots, ants, cockroaches, mice, rat, snakes, and you name it.  Most animals, insects, and plants can be safely eaten.  That’s how we survived when we were growing up in the caveman days.  We never worried about any of the germs and diseases that we are so scared about today.  Salmonella, listeria, e-coli bacteria, and campylobacter: What are they?  When we were growing up, we never bothered them, and they never bothered us!

However, today, it is a totally different story.  To wit, when we went to Hawaii for a one-week vacation at the end of March 1999, we stopped at the Costco store in Hawaii Kai (at the time, I did not know that my high school buddy Rodney Inefuku lived just a few miles away).  I bought two 3½-pound bags of poi, a half-gallon of Kim Chee, and a half-gallon of lomilomi salmon.  All by myself, I ate every bit of the seven pounds of poi, two quarts of Kim Chee, and two quarts of lomilomi salmon . . . all within seven days!  Nobody else in my haole-ish (haole is the Hawaiian word for “white”) family like that kind of food; so, “I ate the whole thing” all by my lonesome.

Yes, “I cannot believe I ate the whole thing.”  I ate it for breakfast.  I ate it for lunch.  I ate it for dinner.  And I ate it for midnight snack.  They were surely “dixilicious” ono!  I left the poi out on the kitchen counter instead of refrigerating it.  Hence, it started to ferment and to become sour.  Oh!  It tasted sooooo good.  I love “sawa” (Pidgin English for “sour”) poi.  Somewhat later, after we went home to California, my wife, Karen, bought me some frozen poi and frozen kalua pig.  After boiling the poi and heating up the kalua pig, I feasted on them.  Unfortunately, the kalua pig must have been spoiled, and it probably had salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, and/or e-coli bacteria in it.  Well, to make a long story short, I developed a severe case of Montezuma’s revenge (i.e., a severe case of diarrhea) on Saturday.

Thinking that my body was just not used to eating Hawaiian food, I ate the rest of the poi and kalua pig on Sunday.  Montezuma’s revenge all over again!  You would think I would have learned after running to the bathroom all day on Saturday.  Thus, I ran to the bathroom all day on Sunday also.  Some people are slow learners.  Well, I ate the whole thing, and the whole thing fought back!  When I was a kid, I used to be able to eat anything “no sweat.”  Nowadays, I have a haole stomach because, with a haole wife, all I eat is haole food.  “Stomach no can take it any mo.  Me wimp.”

Montezuma’s Revenge.  Every time I eat foods with a lot of hot chili peppers in it, I get Montezuma’s revenge.  Like, for instance, I had Mexican food for two nights in a row for dinner.  I usually put a lot of that delicious hot sauce on my Mexican food.  Oh, Montezuma’s revenge hits me two nights in a row!  The next evening, my wife prepared us some barbecue beef tips for dinner.  The barbecue sauce works a reverse reaction on my intestines.  Montezuma’s revenge is the result for the third night in a row!

If I eat a lot of Kim Chee, I get Montezuma’s revenge.  If I eat hot Thai food, I get Montezuma’s revenge.  If I eat Japanese food with that hot green mustard (called wasabi) and shoyu (i.e., soy sauce) on it, since my body is like a haole bod (i.e., “bod” is short for “body”) because my wife mostly cooks haole food, I get Montezuma’s revenge.  If I ever want to clean my system out, I do not need Ex-Lax or an enema.  All I need to do is to eat a lot of hot, spicy foods.  It works as a laxative to me.

Spotted Eggs.  We used to buy spotted eggs from the Chicken Farm in Keolu Hills and eat them because they were cheaper than the higher quality, unspotted eggs.  Hey, we were a family of nine people, so we had to eat on the cheap.  Spotted eggs are those with bloody spots within the egg yolk.  You know what that means; don’t you?  The egg was probably germinated, and a baby chick started to form.  But we ate those eggs, and we are still here.  In fact, they tasted pretty good!

Asbestos.  I remember when working on construction projects with my dad in the ‘50s, corrugated asbestos sheets were used for roofing and walls (sometimes).  We cut these corrugated asbestos sheets using an electric rotary saw.  In the cutting process, asbestos sawdust would fill the air.  We only wrapped a rag or handkerchief around our nose to keep large amounts of asbestos sawdust from entering our lungs.  It was no big deal then.  However, today, we don’t even use asbestos materials for construction.  A whole asbestos removal industry was spawned in the past couple of decades to remove the toxic stuff that was installed in the ‘40s through the ‘70s.

Just think, 50-60 years ago, it was no big deal to use asbestos.  Thirty and 40 years ago, I think we had finally progressed from wrapping a handkerchief around our noses to using a dust mask.  Wow!  How safe was that!  Today, people contract mesothelioma, which is a rare form of cancer almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure.  Some law firms make a profitable business and even fortunes conducting class-action lawsuits against deep-pocket companies who used asbestos building materials in the edifices that they had constructed in the past.

Lead.  I remember my dad making lead sinkers for fishing.  He would melt lead by boiling it in a cast iron pot and pour molten lead into wooden molds to make these cone-shaped lead sinkers.  We used those for cast fishing.  It was no big deal at the time breathing in those lead fumes that would rise from the molten lead pot.  We had no problems handling lead products.  As kids, we even put lead bullet heads, lead balls, and other kinds of lead products into our mouths.  We siphoned high lead-content gasoline from tanks and other containers.  It is a pleasant surprise that we are alive today.

Now, the Board of Health worries about the minute traces of lead contaminants in our drinking water.  That is the main reason why we do not drink tap water anymore these days.  Natural lead particles enter underground water streams and get into our reservoirs and ultimately into our drinking water.  Hence, we survive drinking only Sparkletts bottled water these days, and we do not drink any tap water whatsoever.

Mercury.  When we were kids, we used to break thermometers to get the liquid mercury out of them.  We would then put silver coins in the liquid mercury and rubbed it in with our fingers.  The silver coins would get very shiny like chrome.  Unfortunately, after time elapsed, the shiny coins turned to a very dull silver color worse than the shine of the original silver coins.  But, what we did not realize was that the mercury that we were handling probably was not very good for the health.  Fortunately, we did not do it often enough for the potentially poisonous mercury to affect us detrimentally.  After all, we have lived all these years and are still going strong.  Knock on wood.

Sunburn and Suntan.  When I worked on construction jobs every summer for seven consecutive summers during high school and a couple of years during college, I was severely sunburned the first few days while working outside in the hot sun for eight hours a day.  Never did I ever put on any kind of Sunscreen or suntan lotion.  Stupid me!  I would just tough it out.  Stupid me!  I received mega-doses of vitamin D and ultra-violet (UV) rays.

My back would get so sunburned that it would blister badly within a couple of days.  When the blisters popped, my skin would start peeling off as a snake sheds its skin.  After the first bad sunburn and peeling, my second layer of skin would get tough for the rest of the summer and would tan beautifully.  And, boy, did I get black!  But I was proud of my blackness.  I am really surprised that I did not contract any skin cancer (i.e., melanoma) as a result of all of my childhood sunburns.  I think the high level of pigmentation in my skin literally saved my hide.

Eating Pipipi or Sea Snails.  This is a really funny story.  We were on a Boy Scout trip to the island of Kauai.  We were fortunate to have harvested a whole load of pipipi (i.e., small mollusks or ocean/sea snails) from the wave-breaker concrete wall and the surrounding lava reef.  Pipipis are delicious when boiled and eaten after extracting the cooked snail from its shell with a straight pin and plucking it into the mouth.

Anyway, we were squatting there (you know, the Filipino squat) around the campfire boiling and eating pipipis like they were going out of style.  Yummy!  Up walks a group of haole malihinis (white visitors or newcomers to Hawaii from the Mainland and other places).  They gawk at us in sheer amazement.  A brave one asks, “What are you boys eating.”  In unison, we said, “Sea snails.”  The malihinis almost gag on the spot and departed in sheer disgust.

Escargot are land snails that crawl on dirt and dirty/dusty plants.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love sautéed escargot too, but pipipis are a whole lot cleaner and more delicious than escargot.  Pipipis have clean seawater constantly running over, under, around, and through them with each arriving wave.  If you want to stay clean and get all of your scratches and abrasions healed quickly, swim often in the ocean.  It keeps you clean.  You’ll know what I mean when making the analogy to pipipi.

The French initiated escargot eating.  But we kanakas (Polynesian people or Hawaiian persons from Hawaii) and Hawaii boys were eating pipipi way before the Frenchmen were eating escargot.  That delicacy migrated to the United States years later.  Hence, those mainland haoles who gagged at us that day are probably enjoying escargot today.  Go figure!

Conclusion

The bottom line of this discussion is that we are all wimps today.  In the olden days, us kids growing up in a third-world state were able to handle anything and everything.  We did not bother it, and it did not bother us.  Today, every little booboo is difficult for our children to handle.  Allergies are rampant.  Illnesses come so quickly and easily on everyone in society.  Health hazards that never bothered us as kids are now major illnesses, disorders, and syndromes.  We survive on over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription meds (medicines).  We must toughen up, or we will have a difficult time facing the tough times ahead.  When my kids get hurt, I say, “Good, that makes you tough.”  We must avoid the loser’s limp.

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