The kids are back in school so here's a lesson in what school was like in Makua Valley 105 years ago. It was a little whitewashed box of a school surrounded by six little houses and a church. At 11 a.m., the railroad train stopped to let off the haole schoolteacher.

This was the signal for the pupils to come in from swimming, their hair and bare feet still wet and sticky with sand. They competed to carry the schoolteacher's coffee bottle and lunch box. Girls wore holoku; one proudly strutted around in a pair of boots but no stockings. The boys wore Japanese shirts and overalls.

The previous teacher had ridden a mule eight dusty miles from Waianae Plantation to start school at 9 a.m. But this teacher arranged to begin classes later, when she arrived on train, and stayed until the last train left at 3:30 p.m. Her goal was to teach the children to speak English. What English they knew were swear words.

One white man who had gone native lived in Makua Valley. The rest were Hawaiians and some Chinese and Japanese. The school was just large enough for the teacher's desk and benches for 20 children. The church stood next door right out the window. When the teacher asked what kind of a church it was, she was told: "Just a plain Christian church."

Services were once a month. The first question a student asked the teacher was "Have you ever seen Jesus Christ?"

One of the teacher's first duties was to see if the kids had something to eat before they came to school. If they didn't eat, they fell asleep in class. Those who fell asleep were sent home to eat. They also got a licking.

When the teacher asked, "What did you have to eat this morning?" Abraham answered, "Crabs and salt fish." Mikala was more inventive, spinning out, "Coffee, pancakes, poi, fish, rice, sugar cane and crackers." This was a list of all the foods she'd be eating that day.

None of the kids had been to Honolulu. When the teacher described elevators, "like express trains going to the tops of buildings," all the kids laughed at the joke.

Coffee they gathered from old trees in the valley. They grew and dried tobacco at home. Poi cost $2.50 a week, crackers $1 a month, flour $12 a year. The teacher visited an 8-year-old at his house and found him under a kiawe tree frying griddle cakes over a cracker-tin stove. It was all he had for dinner.

The teacher noticed one peculiarity of the students — an uncanny ability to memorize. She read to them lines from Longfellow's "Hiawatha." They repeated the lines word for word.

Their one unmixed joy was singing. They knew innumerable hulas. If you want to learn more, read The Advertiser of May 31, 1901.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.