2012 Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop--Last Day

Final Shop Hop Day, Sunday, June 23:

For years I’ve wanted to go to Island Quilter on Vashon Island, but it never worked out. On the shop hop it was always a ferry ride too far from other shops.

In March, Island Quilter had a booth at the Sewing & Stitchery Expo. Shelves packed with bolts of Kaffe Fassett fabrics attracted me to the booth. I talked to the shop’s owner and she told me that Kaffe (rhymes with "safe") had held classes in her shop twice before. While he was there, he said they have the largest collection of his fabrics anywhere. She also said that they were trying to get him to return to teach another class. I made sure to sign up on her email list because if Kaffe comes back, I’ll be catching the ferry there. So, that March day a summer shop hop visit to Island Quilter became one of my top priorities.

Eye candy: just a few Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

My idea for Sunday, the last day of the shop hop, was to catch the ferry from Pt. Defiance to Vashon Island. John and I would go to Island Quilter. Then we’d drive to the north end of the island and catch the ferry to Fauntleroy in West Seattle.

There were two quilt shops in Seattle. John could do the city driving. He’s good at parallel parking under pressure. I usually get frazzled, fail and have to make a second attempt while a line of traffic waits for me. From there we could cut across Mercer Island, jump on I-405 and head up to Bellevue. Potentially we could push on further to Duvall, Bothell, and Everett.

Over breakfast and a map, I told John my plan. The only drawback was that I really liked Harbor Quilt’s block, but they were in Gig Harbor. Maybe we could go to Gig Harbor first, then double back to Tacoma to catch the ferry to Vashon Island and continue on. The ferry left every 50 minutes, so it would be easy to fit our plan in.

John proposed another plan. He was leaving on a business trip to California the next day and hadn’t packed yet. He didn’t feel like dealing with Seattle. His route took a different loop: go to Vashon Island, and get off the ferry at Southworth on the Olympic peninsula instead. We could drive up to a shop in Poulsbo, one of our favorite towns, and then stop in at a few more shops wrapping up with the shop in Gig Harbor, and then heading home. That sounded good. That’s the plan we went with.

The weather prediction wasn’t good. It was supposed to be cool and overcast, but lucky us, the forecast was wrong. The clouds did clear out and it turned out to be a good day to be on the road as well as on the water. Five minutes before the ferry started loading at Pt. Defiance, we were in line, a little shell shocked at the $25.90 fare. At least it was a roundtrip fare. The ferry wasn’t full so the “cruise” was relaxing.

We had no problems finding Island Quilter.  I was excited to finally be at the shop/gallery that had been a featured shop in Better Homes and Gardens Quilt Sampler magazine last year. The tall shelves of bright fabrics were arranged in a maze, but it was one that I didn’t mind getting lost in. John looked for the cupcake fabric while I basked in all their Fassett fabrics. The 2012 shop hop had unintentionally evolved into my personal Kaffe Fassett tour.

Island Quilter, Vashon Island, WA.

Half of the shop was a quilt gallery. I overheard the shop owner tell another customer that they had asked quilters to submit quilts from previous shop hops to display in the gallery. None came in. At the last minute, they went with the quilts that were now hanging in the gallery. I comforted myself with the thought that maybe nobody else had finished a shop hop quilt. Like me, they had the blocks, but hadn’t found the time to sit down and sew the quilts. (Out of nine shop hops, I’ve only made one of the quilts--the one from 2003, my first shop hop.)

I bought a Kaffe Fassett book and of course some of his fabric, got stamped, got the block, and then it was off to the ferry at the north end of the island. This time as we pulled up, the ferry pulled away, so we had to wait for 25 minutes, but that gave me a chance to look through the Fassett book.

When we landed on the Olympic peninsula, it became apparent that lots of other people agreed with our idea of visiting Poulsbo on what had turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day. It was crowded. We took at least three laps around the municipal parking lot before we got a space. On our way to The Loft restaurant for lunch, we passed by a Great Blue Heron who was wading in the water also looking for his lunch.

Great Blue Heron

View from the deck at The Loft restaurant.

We were seated up on the deck overlooking the waterfront marina. Unfortunately, the group seated next to us spent the whole time cataloging their various surgeries and health problems. We tried to turn our ears off.  John’s bucket of clams and my fish and chips were tasty, and the sun felt great shining on us.

Afterwards, we stopped at Sluy’s bakery and then walked over to Heirloom Quilts. While we were waiting to get the block, the stamping lady mentioned to the quilter in front of us that the shops closed at 5:00 today, not 8:00. Uh-oh! That meant that we’d better get a move on. I mentally crossed shops off the list that we were planning on visiting. We got stamped and ignored the stamp lady’s attempt to convince us to go to the Kingston shop. It was in the wrong direction.

John in Poulsbo, WA.

As we left her table, I told John to keep his eyes peeled because there would be a good chance of finding the cupcake fabric in this shop. We rounded the corner, and sure enough, there it was! We got the two yards needed for two aprons, and then hustled to the car to head to our next stop, Material Girls Quilt Shop in Silverdale.

By the time, we pulled into Material Girls we were in “stamp and go” mode. The sales people in the shop were feeling that way too in the waning shop hop hours. A group of them were chatting at the cutting table. We wandered around for a few minutes searching for the stamping lady before she noticed we were carrying passports and gave us our blocks.

Rochelle’s in Port Orchard was one of the shops that I sadly deleted when we lost three hours of shop hopping time. It’s a little way off the beaten track, and I really wanted to get the Harbor Quilt’s block with the chickadees. So we hurried south, Gig Harbor-bound.

Harbor Quilt's 2012 shop hop block.

        We got to Harbor Quilt with a half hour to spare. They had rearranged the store to accommodate a new long arm quilting machine. It was stationed in the back by windows looking out on the water. I didn’t shop, just stamp and go again.

Tacoma Narrows Bridges, Tacoma bound.

It had been a leisurely day out on the peninsula, in the beginning anyway. As we drove across one of the Tacoma Narrows bridges aiming for home, I tallied up the blocks I’d collected this year: four today, three on Saturday, five on Friday, and nine on Thursday for a grand total of 21 over four days. I had managed to hit 21 out of 54 participating shops, not too shabby for someone who started out without much of a plan.

Laura Keolanui Stark is gloating over and sorting through her shop hop booty. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

2012 Western Washington Shop Hop Days Two and Three

Friday, June 22, 2012:

               Sarah had to meet her boyfriend Andy at SeaTac airport at 1:30. From there, they were going to his house in Snohomish. So I decided I’d try to fit in a few shops that were fairly close by in the morning before I dropped her off.

My first stop was Parkland Parish Quilts, near Pacific Lutheran University. This quilt shop was formerly a church. The man stamping passports and giving out their block was sitting inside a confession booth. When I handed him my passport he asked if I had any sins I’d like to confess. I told him that I was guilty of neglecting my quilting. My other sin was getting off to a late start, so I didn’t spend much time there.

Parkland Parish Quilts, Parkland, WA

Yesterday the sun was shining on me the entire drive up north to Lynden and back home. It wasn’t shining today. The rain was back and apparently people had forgotten how to drive in it. I had planned on taking Hwy. 512 to I-5 south to get to Shibori Dragon in Lakewood, but the line to get onto I-5 was backed up so far I abandoned that plan and decided to take the surface streets.

I made it there despite road construction and getting confused because Lakewood streets form curvy triangles instead of blocks which would make an interesting quilt, but are hard to figure out in a car. Shibori Dragon specializes in Asian fabrics and wearable art with an Asian flair. I wished I had more time to look around, but I didn’t, so I got stamped, got the block, and got back on the road as fast as I could so that I could make the airport run with Sarah.

Carriage Country Quilts, Des Moines, WA.

I picked her up at home and got back on the highway. Traffic was heavy, but we made it to SeaTac airport on time. After I dropped Sarah off, it was on to Carriage Country Quilts in Des Moines. The shop is in an old house a few blocks away from the Puget Sound.  It was bustling, so I didn’t spend much time upstairs. The sale fabrics were down in the basement. Now, some of them are in my basement.

At the east end of Hwy. 516 in Kent, is a new quilt shop, Running Stitch Fabric. I liked that it’s located in the historic downtown section. They said that they had been open for 14 months, but this was their first shop hop. This inviting shop had lots of batiks, and I’m glad that they’re fairly close because we’ve lost shops in Auburn and Renton. I’ll remember to visit them when I’m up in that area.

Running Stitch Fabric, Kent, WA.

When I left Running Stitch Fabric at 3:30, I had thoughts of going to three more shops in Maple Valley, North Bend, and Buckley, but traffic was so heavy, I almost gave up and went home instead. It should’ve taken me 15 minutes to cover the 8 miles to Hwy. 18. Instead, it took me 45 minutes. At the last minute, I convinced myself to go to Taylor Creek Quilt Studio in Maple Valley thinking that while I was there, traffic on Hwy. 167 would ease up.  

I got to Taylor Creek Studio in a downpour. Parking is very limited so I had to park near another business. This used to be the tiniest quilt shop on the shop hop, not much bigger than my bedroom, but they expanded a little upwards, to a second floor. They were friendly, but I was feeling a bit like a drowned rat and I was trying to get home by 5:00, so all I did was get the block and get stamped.

Gridlock on southbound Hwy. 167.

Traffic was still horrible on what should’ve been a short ride home, but I made it home by my 5:00 deadline. That way I’d have time to make the apron for the bridal shower tomorrow. It was a shorter day than yesterday, but I collected five more blocks, and I got to visit a new shop.

Saturday, June 23, 2012:

One of Johnny’s college roommates, Marissa, is getting married and another former roommate, Renee, drove over from Tri-Cities and stayed overnight with us so that she could go to the bridal shower too. I whipped up the apron last night and just had to tack the finishing touch of a flower on it in the morning. When I ran out to buy a cookbook to go with the apron, the thought of squeezing one quilt shop in before the shower crossed my mind. Then sanity returned and I vetoed that idea.  

Cupcake apron for Marissa.

The shower was fun, and the bride really liked the apron. It had special meaning because Marissa was commandeered into my daughter’s cupcake baking frenzy for her boyfriend’s piano recital at WSU. Sarah was grateful for the baking, and also for the cleanup that Marissa did. That apron would’ve come in handy.

After the shower, I got right back into shop hop mode, at the mini level. This time John joined me. We left at about 3:30 and focused on nearby shops.

I hadn’t bought enough of the fabric that I lined the cupcake apron with to make two more aprons. I showed John a scrap before we left and asked him to keep an eye out for it.

We drove south on Meridian to Creative Quilter in Graham. I’ve taken classes at this shop so it’s familiar. They didn’t have the cupcake fabric, but on the clearance table they had two stunning Asian fabrics, so I got enough to make an Asian style jacket (featured in a Sewing Expo seminar). The owner of the shop told us which road to take to cut down to the Orting Valley.

Wild Rose Quilt Shop makes my top five list of favorite shops. They have a great selection of fabrics ranging from Civil War era reproduction prints to batiks, and from Moda fabric lines to playful flannels. I enjoyed doing their mystery quilt challenge twice, wondering what the quilt top would end up looking like each time. 

One of these days I’d love to round up some of my quilt buddies for a quilt retreat upstairs in Wild Rose Quilt Shop. It would be a dream getaway. John likes this shop too because he gets a kick out of the owner’s husband (actually he probably owns it too). He’s friendly and always wears cowboy boots, sometimes a cowboy hat too.

Our last stop of this shortened shop hop day was our hometown quilt shop, The Quilt Barn in Puyallup. We looked all over the shop for the cupcake fabric. I found some of the coordinating fabrics, but not THE ONE, and I didn’t find anything good in clearance, so I left with only a stamp and a block.

Three stores total on Saturday, not a huge amount, but it was still a worthwhile day of shop hopping.

Laura Keolanui Stark is labeling the blocks that she’s gotten on her Shop Hop poster with post-it notes. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop 2012

I’ve done so many shop hops, nine to be exact, that I have a casual attitude about them. My shop hopping technique matches my quilting technique: make this up as you go. Extreme flexibility is key. No time to plan because I just figured out that this is shop hop week! Yikes!

Poster of the quilt made from shop hop blocks.

Thursday, June 21: Last night I still wasn’t sure which shops I was going to. Sarah has to go to the airport on Friday, and I have a bridal shower to go to on Saturday, so I’d have to stay within a 20 mile radius on those two days. I wanted to go to a shop on Vashon Island, which involves a ferry ride that starts in Tacoma. I’d save that leg of shop hopping for Sunday and see if John wanted to join me.

Interstate 5, Western Washington.

So, my “big” solo trip day would be today. I could head north to the Canadian border or south to the Oregon border. I ate my breakfast and mulled it over as I drank a cup of tea. I love the shops up north in Lynden, and the shops up there are conveniently clustered together, more so than the southern shops. If I went up there, even though it was a long drive, I’d be able to hit a lot of shops, more bang for my tankful of gas.

I made a brown bag lunch, threw a banana, a bag of peanut M&M’s, and a bottle of Maroon 5 Snapple into a Kaffe Fassett shopping bag, along with maps and Googled driving instructions from two years ago. The weather was supposed to be sunny and warm, so shorts and a comfortable pair of shoes would do.

After filling up with $3.54/gallon gas, I jumped on Hwy. 512, up Hwy. 167, west on Hwy. 516, and then merged onto I-5 north.  There’s nothing like a road trip to clear the cobwebs out. My plan was to drive as far north as I could until 2:00 and then start hitting the quilt shops on the way back down toward home. Traffic was light since I’d left at 9:30 until it bottlenecked to a crawl in Seattle. Of course, this was when it became obvious that maybe the two or was it three (?) cups of tea I’d sipped wasn’t such a great idea.

               So when I saw Northgate Mall, I took the exit. When I came out of the restroom in Penney’s, I noticed some icy silver Nike running shoes for a good price. I could use some new Zumba shoes, the support in my current pair was shot.

               The clearance rack was next to the cash register. There was a pair of off-white, peep-toe pumps that might just work for Sarah. She’d been looking high and low for a pair of nude pumps to wear to a wedding this weekend. They were $15, and if she didn’t want them, she had very considerately grown to wear the same size shoes that I wear!

My new Nike's and Sarah's peep toe shoes.

I walked out of the store with two pairs of shoes, and an additional four pairs of flip flops (near the checkout) for a grand total of $72. I was set for summer! JC Penney was not listed as one of the 54 independent quilt shops on the 14^th Annual Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop, but it was my first stop and 20 minutes later I came out with my arms full and a smile on my face.

                Onward up Interstate 5 through Everett, and Marysville where the speed limit increases to 70 mph! I zoomed through Mt. Vernon and Bellingham, and in Lynden pulled into a shopping mall parking lot to eat my sack lunch at 1:30. I’d made it before my 2:00 deadline.

               My first official quilt shop stop was Calico Country, and I’d navigated the 150 miles without needing “no stinkin’ map!” This is one of my favorite shops. Whenever I walk in, it feels like I’m home. The gals working there are friendly, but they know when to leave you alone to shop. I headed toward the back room to get the official pamphlet listing all the participating shops with their ads which usually include driving instructions. I also needed to pick up my passport and get it stamped, and of course I needed to get their free quilt block.

Calico Country quilt shop, Lynden, WA.

               On my way to the back of the shop, my eyes had picked out a bolt of fabric with chocolates on it. Once I’d taken care of the passport issues, I went back to look at that fabric. There were two coordinating fabrics with cupcakes on them that were cute too. I lugged the bolts over to the cutting table.

               The lady there was wearing an adorable apron with ruffles. I complimented her on it and she did a little twirl. It was suddenly obvious that the fabrics I had up on the cutting table would be perfect to sew into that apron. I needed a gift for Saturday’s bridal shower. An apron would be perfect! I added two more coordinating fabrics with polka dots on them and she started cutting. She knew the yardage amounts by heart.

In the meantime, a line had formed behind me. I let two people with just a few items go ahead of me. The quilt shop lady and I were both getting a little flustered with all these people waiting. She’d called for backup. I practiced my three times tables while planning to make three aprons (for the bride, Sarah, and me) out of these fabrics.

While cutting fabric, the lady told me they’d really been slammed yesterday—the first day of the shop hop. Dang! I thought today was the first day! She also said they had already sold out of several of the official shop hop fabrics on the bolt. I bought a pre-cut bundle of them.

Lynden, Washington

I left the store and drove through a tree-lined tunnel to get to the next store, stopping to take a picture of a big windmill at the entrance to downtown Lynden. They are so nice up there. A truck actually stopped and blocked traffic for me because the driver saw that I was taking a picture of one of the town’s windmills.

Lynden, Washington

At Tangled Threads, I moved my Calico Country bag from the back seat of the car into the trunk. That’s when it dawned on me that the quilt store lady and I had been so distracted by the crowd of shop hoppers, I didn’t buy the apron pattern. In fact, I hadn’t even seen the pattern, so it wasn’t like I could look for it in another store.

I got stamped at Tangled Threads, then doubled back to Calico Country. When I told my aproned friend that I was back for the forgotten pattern, she apologized and we both laughed. Then she gave me instructions to get to the third shop in Lynden, Folktales.

Cupcake fabrics and the illusive apron pattern.

Folktales specializes in quilts with hand embroidered blocks. While I got stamped there, I overheard one of the ladies working there ask if she could leave to make a phone call. The owner told her that it would have to be a quick phone call because she had to leave to milk the cows . . .only in a small town like Lynden would you hear that.

The lady at Folktales gave me a map of the Tri-County quilt shops to help me find my way to the Bellingham shops and all the other shops down to Everett. With three stamps on my passport, I went to Fabrics-Etc. in Bellingham for a fourth stamp.

Even with the map, I circled the block a few times to find Fourth Corner Quilts. While I was there, I got a text from my friend Carol. She had to work during the shop hop, so all she could squeeze in were a few shops in and around Puyallup. She said they’d run out of the focus fabric and the red fabric, and asked me to pick some up for her if I found them. No luck in Fourth Corner Quilts.

From there it was just a few blocks to Two Thimbles Quilt Shop. When I got there, there weren’t any cars in the parking lot! Maybe they’d have Carol’s fabrics. Nope, they didn’t, because they weren’t participating in the shop hop this year. I, Ms. Casual Flexibility, hadn’t bothered looking closely at my passport. Oh well!

Leaving Bellingham, I appreciated this perfect weather day, sunny and in the low 70s. I could see snow capped Mt. Baker peeking up above the Cascades in the east as I drove south. It was the kind of day that I wish I could bottle up and save to uncork on a dark, dreary winter day. Yesterday was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. Around here, that means that the sun doesn’t set until after 9:00 pm. However, it was still getting late. I wanted to hit Seattle late enough to miss rush hour, but I also didn’t want to get home too late.

The two shops in Anacortes are good ones, but they are almost 20 miles from I-5. I wanted to stay close to that I-5 corridor, so I skipped them and made a beeline to Calico Creations in Mt. Vernon. I got stamped there, and they had the focus fabric for Carol. I was relieved. If I couldn’t find the red, that wouldn’t be too big of a deal, it would be easy to find a substitute, but the focus fabric, with its detailed birds was the whole point of the quilt. This shop was sold out of the light blue fabric with berries on it. I’d be on the lookout for some of that too.

               Cotton Pickins in Stanwood was my next stop. The owner of this shop always has a fun way to give you her block. She makes you build the ingredients in an assembly line. One year everything fit together in a cup with a little umbrella and straw so it looked like a tropical drink.

Next stop: The Quiltmakers’ Shoppe in Arlington. I made the mistake of thinking this shop was closer to I-5 than it was, but it was a beautiful drive, and the shop is worth it, especially since I found the red fabric there. It was almost 6:00 when I texted the good news to Carol.

This year's shop hop fabrics from In the Beginning fabrics.

The last stop of the day was Aunt Mary’s Quilt Shop in Smokey Point. This shop wins my award for best driving directions. I navigate mostly by landmarks. Whenever someone says north/south/east/west to me, I have to physically turn my body around to figure it out, which is hard to do in a car with your seatbelt on.

Aunt Mary’s instructions say: “Take exit 206 from I-5. Go east (toward the mountains) take a right . . .” While she cut some brightly colored Kaffe Fasset fabric for me, I thanked her and explained that I’m from Hawaii where two of the directions are makai (toward the ocean), and mauka (toward the mountains). She told me that she grew up in a port town, and they always aligned themselves using the water too.

I accelerated back onto I-5 southbound toward Puyallup. The only “excitement” on the return trip happened between Everett and Seattle. I was in the left lane, doing the speed limit, and snacking on a banana for dinner when a state trooper appeared in my side view mirror. I checked my speed and guiltily tossed the peel onto the passenger seat trying to look like I wasn’t up to any monkey business, not wanting to get a ticket for driving under the influence of a banana.

He pulled up alongside me and turned his lights on. What??! Seriously, is eating while driving against the law? I wasn’t swerving or speeding. Well, it turned out that the lights were because he was pulling over a car slightly ahead of me in the carpool lane. There was only a driver in the car, no passengers. Whew!

Mt. Rainier, back home in Puyallup, WA.

Nine quilt shops, 300 miles, two pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of flip flops, 3 potential aprons, and a whole lot of yards of fabric. It was a good first day of the 2012 shop hop!

Laura Keolanui Stark is shop hopping somewhere in western Washington. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Dad's Lessons

          I can’t even begin to count the things my dad taught me while I was growing up and all these years later, I’m still using most of it.

The first thing I remember learning from him was how to read. I must have been about 4-years-old because it was before I started school. I’d sit on his lap while he read the newspaper and pick out words that grew into sentences and eventually paragraphs. When I got old enough to walk to the library by myself, he always asked what books I’d checked out and sometimes he read them too. We talked about a Johnny Unitas biography that I checked out, a book about the Battle of Britain, and many others that I brought home.  It was our little book club, before book clubs. My love of reading soon expanded to writing, which eventually led to a career in writing.

Dad holding Cynthia, with Bob and me, Ft. Benning, GA.

When I was in 9th grade,while Dad was teaching my younger brother (and some of his neighborhood friends) how to play basketball, I indirectly absorbed his lessons. He had gone to the University of Hawaii on a basketball scholarship, so he knew his way around a basketball court. I learned how to shoot a layup, that there weren’t any good excuses for missing a free throw (even blindfolded), and to pivot a lot while using your elbows and rear end to protect the ball when someone’s trying to take it away from you. No matter how hard I tried, I never could dunk or palm a basketball—just too short and small-handed, but it was still a lot of fun and I held my own playing intramural basketball in junior high school.

Three decades later in an aerobics class our teacher had us do relay races dribbling a basketball the length of a room, around a cone, and back. When it was my turn, as I dribbled across the room, I could hear my father’s voice coaching me, “Don’t think about running, your feet will take care of that. Concentrate on keeping the ball out in front of you.”

Dad and I up on Tantalus, Oahu, Hawaii.

          From his years as an infantry officer in the Army, he taught my brother, sister, and me to be prepared to move quickly. Sometimes it would be like the lightning round of a game show, “The house is on fire. I’m lying unconscious on the floor. How would you get me out?” or “OK, you’ve got a half an hour to ship out. What do you take? Go!”

Grandpa and Grandma with Johnny and Sarah, Puyallup, WA.

    In 1993 parts of those two scenarios came into play. A chicken farm in back of our house caught on fire and the hot red flames quickly spread to the woods on the other side of our fence. With Sarah sitting in a backpack, I turned the sprinklers on in our yard and threw some clothes onto our bed wrapping them up in the bedspread (a trick passed on from my Dad’s mother when they hurriedly evacuated from Pearl City, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 shortly after the bombs fell). Johnny gathered up his favorite toys while I grabbed our photo albums, and threw it all in the trunk of our Toyota Corolla. While curious onlookers ran through our yard to watch the flames and barbecued chicken scented smoke billowed behind our house, I pulled out of the driveway with our kids and a carload of possessions.

Although the fire got close, our house escaped untouched. I hadn’t had to use my father’s other fire advice: that if you’re in a building that’s on fire (or under fire), never go up. The higher you climb, the less chance that you’ll survive if you have to jump out a window. I thought of that when I watched desperate people with limited options jump from the Twin Towers as they burned and crumbled on 9/11.

My dad, Larry Keolanui

Maybe the most influential lessons learned from Dad weren’t intentionally meant to be “official” lessons, but the stories that he told us about when he was growing up have stuck with me. One of my favorites still makes me laugh every time I hear it.

The class clown in his elementary school decided to make a prank call to scare his teacher on Halloween night. The next day his classmates heard about what happened. He had dialed his teacher’s phone number and when she answered, he threatened in his best creepy, Bella Lugosi voice, “Mrs. Marsland, tonight you die!”

I’m sure her student pictured her cowering in fear, but she was a seasoned teacher. She didn’t skip a beat, “Michael Wilson, you stop that right now!”

He stammered, “Um, I just wanted to wish you a Happy Halloween Mrs. Marsland,” then hung up.

Lessons learned: never prank call a teacher, and you better be able to think on your feet because the tables could turn on you at any time.

This morning I talked to Dad on the phone and something else he taught me was reinforced—honesty. One of his stories had made a lasting impression on me. I called to double check some of the details for this blog. This is how I remembered the story.

In Hawaii, some of the private schools host carnivals to raise funds. When he was in high school, my father and a group of his friends went to Punahou School’s carnival. They were enjoying the rides and food, including shaved ice which is like a snow cone. A big guy walked up to one of the girls in the group and shoved the shaved ice that she was eating into her face.  Her date, who was much smaller, turned to his buddies and asked, “Do I have to punch him?”

They unanimously agreed that he had to fight the guy, and pushed him toward what he knew had to be done, “Yeah, you can’t let him get away with that!”

I can’t remember if he was pummeled, or somehow managed to become a triumphant David against Goliath, but that story gave me a ruler to measure men’s masculinity with.

When I started dating, I’d ask myself what my date would do if someone smashed a shaved ice in my face. I have absolutely no doubt about what John would do, without hesitation. There would be a hefty price for a shaved ice smasher to pay. When Johnny started dating, I knew what he’d do, maybe before the guy’s hand lost contact with the paper cone holding the shaved ice. When Sarah started dating, I’d size up the boys who came to pick her up. Could he pass the shaved ice test? He didn’t necessarily have to punch the guy, but he had to do something about it. I don’t care what women’s lib says, I still think that on a basic primal level, men are supposed to protect “their” women: dates, wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters.

In fact, in the larger scheme of things, this lesson is something that applies not only to men, but to women as well. Granted, you can’t be a hot head flying off the cuff about everything, but, when someone does something that’s blatantly wrong, will you take a stand or will you look the other way? Dad’s story made me think, and I passed it on to my kids to make them think too.

Returning to the phone conversation with Dad this morning--to fact check the two stories, I asked him to tell me both of them. He retold the Halloween story almost exactly the way I had written it for this blog. But my version of the shaved ice story was different, much more dramatic.

In reality, the big guy at the Punahou carnival didn’t purposely smash the shave ice in the girl’s face. He accidentally bumped into her and unknowingly made the shaved ice spill on her. The smaller guy was Dad’s best friend. My dad chuckled affectionately when he explained that his buddy wasn’t a fighter, like my dad back then. Also, his friend wasn’t dating the girl, just standing by her. And lastly, although that day there was a lot of male bravado flung around about how they thought the situation should be handled, ultimately no fists flew.

So, even though all these years, I used my skewed version of the story to categorize people as fighters or wimps, this morning I learned a lesson in getting the facts straight, and I agreed with the wisdom of not over reacting to unintentional mistakes. This latest lesson was generously sprinkled with some humility. It’s really no surprise, I’m still learning from Dad!

Thanks for all the life lessons and my continuing education Dad! Happy Father’s Day!

Laura Keolanui Stark has always liked a good story. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.