ice cream shop

Although the grand opening of The Sweetest Days Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe was supposed to happen at 11 on Saturday, it was still shuttered well past noon. Still, there were 40 or 50 people milling around, waiting for the new store to open. When I asked a young woman bouncing a toddler on her knee what the problem was, she said the island priest hadn’t shown up yet. “And nobody get nothin’ until da priest come.”

Evidently on Lanai you don’t open a new business until it’s officially blessed. By someone, whether he be Catholic, Buddhist, Baptist, or a just a god ol’fashioned Hawaiian kahuna.

This is Lanai culture.

photo by David Lansing

Meanwhile, to keep the kids entertained, a clown on stilts made balloon animals. Finally, around one or so, the priest showed up. A Hawaiian choir sang “Amazing Grace” (not sure what the connection is to ice cream, but it sounded lovely). The priest tossed a little holy water around the doors of the shop and then Betty Lou and Emmanuel Dugay, the store’s nervous owners, cut the ribbon and Andy Mirafuentes, a local fisherman, currently unemployed, quickly stepped inside and ordered a chocolate-covered frozen banana, thus becoming the first customer in the much-anticipated ice cream store in Lanai City. As he held up the prized frozen banana in front of him, dozens of locals snapped his photo, yelling “Good going, Andy!”

photo by Macduff Everton

Then the choir burst into a boisterous rendition of “Joy to the World.”

Meanwhile, I, too, ordered a chocolate-covered frozen banana, thus becoming the ice cream shop’s second customer, right behind Andy Mirafuentes, thinking, as I took a bite of the creamy, chocolaty treat hand-dipped by Betty Lou, accompanied by a choir singing a traditional Christmas song, that I had finally found it: Hawaiian culture. Right here in downtown Lanai City.

And I’ll tell you what. It tasted pretty damn sweet.

Aloha.