When the Maui Tropical Plantation opened near Waikapu in the early 1980s, it was a tourist attraction like no other on the island. Agrarian but tame, like a city garden. It provided the opportunity for visitors to take a gentle tram ride through abbreviated fields of local produce: a couple of rows of papayas, a stand of sugar cane, a plot of pineapple. Tourists got a glimpse of the way these crops are grown on the island without the having to brave the dusty, bumpy roads up mauka. Plus, there was a nice luncheon buffet at the restaurant.

Now, the Maui Tropical Plantation, and the similar Dole Plantation in Wahiawa, are becoming like museums, with exhibits of things that belong to a different age rather than a show-and-tell of how things work now.

It is no surprise that pineapple is going the way of sugar cane in Hawai'i. But it is still hard to take.

The layoffs announced last week by Maui Land and Pine all but seal the fate. If a company with the words "Maui Land" at the fore can't make money, what hope is there for shoring up the "Pine" part?

There is a love/hate relationship that Hawai'i families connected to pineapple have with pineapple. On the one hand, there is gratitude for the work that put food on the table and sent children to college, and pride in the sweat and sometimes blood that fell in the red dirt of the fields or on the concrete floor of the cannery. But that aloha is tempered with memories of pineapple rash that covered arms past the elbows; the sweet, caustic juice that burned the eyes and the nose; and that unmistakable scent that becomes cloying after an eight-hour shift. People who have grown pineapple often don't eat pineapple. It has a strong presence.

But that was part of the pride, too. If you worked in pineapple, you were a toughie who could handle the hot sun and the centipedes and the sharp blade-like leaves. If you worked in the cannery, you were tireless and focused, disciplined and tested. You knew how to endure. There is nothing cushy about those jobs.

Younger generations of Hawai'i kids will associate the pineapple cannery with going to movies. A "field" to them means soccer, not a place where food is grown. A summer job is boring hours behind the counter at Dippin Dots, not laboring under the sun or near a loud machine.

To think that sugar and pineapple are all but gone is so sad; sad for the land that may never be farmed again, but also sad for the generations who will not know the hard-won satisfaction of working the good earth.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.