One evening shortly after Christmas 1945, truck driver Gilacio Pascual was hauling taro from Hanalei to Kapa‘a when he was flagged down by a schoolgirl wearing a black dress with white trim near the old Ko‘olau Store on Ko‘olau Road.
One evening shortly after Christmas 1945, truck driver Gilacio Pascual was hauling taro from Hanalei to Kapa‘a when he was flagged down by a schoolgirl wearing a black dress with white trim near the old Ko‘olau Store on Ko‘olau Road.
The girl asked to be taken to the baseball park makai of Moloa‘a Camp (located on property that would later become the site of a dairy) and Pascual drove on with her aboard until he’d passed the hairpin turn in Moloa‘a gulch. It was then that he noticed she had vanished.
Worried now and somewhat frightened, Pascual then decided to stop and wait for her a while at the ball park in the hope she might show up, but she did not and he drove off.
When he later shared his story, several listeners reckoned that the girl was none other than Madame Pele, the volcano goddess.
But Eric Knudsen, KTOH radio’s “Teller of Hawaiian Tales,” said he doubted Pele had appeared on Kaua‘i in recent times. However, he noted that Pele’s first home long ago had been above Waimea Canyon at Pu‘u Ka Pele, meaning “Pele’s Hill,” a corruption of Puka Pele, which means “Pele’s Door” or “Pele’s Hole,” the place where she’d exited the netherworld.
Board of Supervisor’s Chairman William Ellis reminisced that as a young man he’d heard several stories of Pele appearing before Hawaiians in the form of a young girl or old woman and wished he had written them down.
And Sam Peahu, a driver for Nawiliwili Transportation Co., recalled the story of a Chinaman driving from Mana to Waimea in the 1920s who’d picked up an old woman on his way. When he neared Kekaha, the woman disappeared. Later, Hawaiians assured him that the woman could only have been Pele.
