the waring chronicles: hawaii

It so happens that Norm and Mary and Linda and I share the same wedding anniversary year. In 1987 we both celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. It so happens that we had a business trip to New Zealand in March of that year. Norm and I thought that we should take our wives along as a celebration of our anniversaries. After we finished our business in New Zealand we stopped in Hawaii on our way back to spend a couple of days celebrating the occasion. We thought it would be neat to rent a car and travel around the main island. On the first morning we were there Norm got up bright and early to seek out a rental vehicle. He found a rental agency in the lobby in our hotel lobby. Norm, being as thrifty as he is, found a rental unit at ‘Aloha Funway Rentals’. Not a national firm, but we decided to give it a try. The lot where the rental units were, was a number of blocks away from the hotel. We gathered the items we thought we would need for the day and started off to find Aloha Funway Rentals. We found it and it was not the most impressive business in the area, but in we went. The man who waited on us wanted to rent us a jeep with no top. The top was extra. Mary said, “what if it rains”? He said just bring it back here and we’ll put a top on it. I looked at Mary and her face was starting to turn red and the hair on the back of her neck was sticking straight out. Mary expressed her dissatisfaction with the arrangement. The sales person realized he wasn’t dealing with a country bumpkin. I have never seen Mary so upset and angry. The guy decided he had better come up with a different deal. He had a Mazda that was a number of years old and had over 50,000 miles on it. We took it, but I wondered if the car would get us to where we wanted to go and back. To make a long story short, this little gem got us to where we wanted to go and back. We had to return the car to a very dark and creepy neighborhood. There was only one light on at the rental business where we had to return the car that illuminated a box where we had to insert the keys in a tiny slot. We made it back to the hotel and that was our experience with Aloha Funway Rentals.