Napili to West Saugerties

I have memories of visiting my grandmother at Xmas 1974, after she temporarily relocated her massage/reflexology business from Santa Monica to Lahaina. We stayed up the road a half hour, at Napili Beach (pictured above). Occasionally storms would come and wash away the sand, leaving the beach a naked ledge of hardened lava, and it would have to start all over again, a "resanding" that never took more than a few days. The recent Maui fire is another story. The island's beaches have remained, but what was swept away by fire will never return.

Like Santa Monica, grandmother had lots of younger friends dropping by, and they would bring with them their cassette tapes and play them in her player. Most were homemade mixed tapes, but one was store bought and kinda glowed, maybe for that reason. An album by the Band, and I had a hard time remembering that it was Music from Big Pink (1968), a title that didn't make any sense to me until years later when I was told "Big Pink" was the name of the West Saugerties, NY house (pictured below) where Band members Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel lived, and where Bob Dylan and the Band made The Basement Tapes (recorded in 1967, released in 1975). That made it easier to remember.