This Bud's For You!
After re-locking the chain...effectively locking ourselves in, we continued on for about a half mile and stopped Matilda here.
"Hey Jacques, that seems like Bud's compound up there in the clearing"
Bud has an encyclopedic knowledge of, well, everything, but in this case it is all things plants, horticulture and permaculture. Bud is slowing down a bit, so Jeffrey has come on board to straighten up the place and propagate various plants around the property.
When he is not aimlessly wandering around or pissing away a day at the public library.
Bud worked at Kalani as well as the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens in Papaikou off the old Mamalahoa Highway.
Some of the vegetation includes several varieties of carnivorous plants in the lilly pool
We were given the grounds tour at a leisurely pace. Brendan, in the red shirt, saw my car Matilda parked on the road, and I assume as they don't get many visitors, our presence was cause for curiosity.
Brendan, right, is visiting his mom during the winter break from working on a fishing boat in Alaska. His mom lives in the next compound over.
Bud and Jeffrey, center, had spent the morning swearing out a restraining order against some lady neighbor (not Brendan's mom). From what I could gather, there is an ongoing dispute over the shared easement road leading to both properties and Bud thinks the road is fine and evidently the mystery jungle lady does not.
What to say about Brother Bud? I first met Bud almost four years ago at the Kalani Upper Smoker's Tent, where he became the inspiration for one the characters in Hans Runs Away to Join Our Cult
Sitting with Bud is like watching jungle television.
He is as comfortable discussing the Latin names for all his tropical plants as the obscure providences of written Sanskrit
as he is relating how he felt that he had come home while visiting Auschwitz on his recent trip to Poland.
Never run out of topical topics with Uncle Bud.
A few years ago, when I was a newbie, I wandered over to the upper smoker's tent where Bud was sitting by himself.
In his guttural cadence, he asked: "Ted, what is funnier than two dead babies?"
"Uh...Bud two dead babies is pretty funny in itself, so what possibly could make that already hilarious situation even funnier?"
"Two dead babies in clown outfits"
Bud lives totally off grid, with oil lamps for reading his mountains of books. He is a Buddhist monk that has chanted 10,000 mantras. His family in his jungle compound includes more than a few feral pigs and cats.
Soon three earnest fresh faced volunteers came over to comfort Bud because they had heard that one of his cats had died tangling with a mongoose.
"Oh, we are so sorry Bud, do yo want us to come over and make a burial shrine for kitty?"
"No thanks ladies, I just scooped it up with a shovel and threw it into the jungle and the pigs ate it".
The silence was palpable.
Bud likes to say that in the early 70's he decided to kill himself and jumped off the San Francisco Bay Bridge.....and he landed in the jungle of Big Island Hawaii. One time I was complaining about the lack of bathrooms in downtown Pahoa. He explained that there was a heroin epidemic in Pahoa in the mid-seventies. Apparently so many people were overdosing and subsequently dying in the bathrooms that they closed them all.
Like a wise shaman, he leaned over and with twinkling and glimmering eyes said in a between you and me conspiratorial type of delivery:
"Ted when you overdose and die on the toilet of a public bathroom in of all places Pahoa, you really have hit rock bottom".
Watch the video here: Fire Burns Pahoa Landmarks
Here Caroline enjoys a cocktail at Luquin's before tacos on one of her visits here. They plan to rebuild, so she is going to have to come back and go to Happy Hour with me in the new place.
Thanks for stopping by
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