During the first three or four decades that the Polynesian Cultural Center was open (1960s–1990s), we used to hire a lot of Kahuku High and community kids as part-time workers, especially during summer peak seasons, or even for some of the particularly skilled jobs, such as night show dancers. They’re that good, and it took a lot of help to serve more than one million annual guests in some of those years.
Derek Kalima Foley, who grew up in Laie, was only 14 the first summer he got hired to wash dishes in the Gateway restaurant — a LOT of dishes! — along with a crew of his Kahuku High School friends, including Alan Keil, Spencer Goo, and Zac Moffat.
They would come into the Gateway later in the afternoon as the dinner crowd was winding down and start to wash a “mountain” of dishes. Remember, in some of our busiest nights the Gateway would serve several thousand buffet dinners — not counting the Ambassador diners.
It was really quite amazing how many THOUSANDS of dishes went through that rather small dishwashing department, plus of course, LOTS of kitchen pots and pans.
Derek recalled their area quickly got hot and crowded. “The steam would be flying around so thick we could hardly see sometimes,” he said; but the local boys still made the job fun, and they all enjoyed working together.
Later, Derek transferred to the Pineapple Deelites department. The Center had been selling the very popular Deelites for decades. They made them by cutting pineapples in half, scooping out the fruit, crushing it, and then mixing it with other fruit chunks and partially refilling the half-shell pineapples. Of course, this was topped off with a scoop of sherbet — and here’s a trade secret: After much taste testing, it was determined watermelon sherbet complemented the fruit mixture perfectly.
Derek’s part came in as a “runner,” one of the agile young men who carried 2X3-foot trays containing up to 15 Deelites down to the Concession department salespeople on stage during night show intermission. Guests would line up for the tasty treats.
Derek said he took the job description “runner” literally: He picked up a tray full of Pineapple Deelites from carts at the top of the Pacific Theater, carefully balanced by actually tipping it slightly forward as he started hurrying down the stairs of the Pacific Theater, so his momentum kept it from falling.
“I never dropped a tray,” Derek said (although that accident occasionally happened to others).
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