Iwalani Hodges interviewed Alan "Turkey" Love in 1986 for the University of Hawaii's Oral History Project. Love was 67 years old. This version \ has been shortened and edited. 

Alan Love, Hawaiian-Caucasian, was born in 1919 in Honolulu. He is the youngest of four children of Eugene and Annie Love. He has lived in and around Waikiki since 1927.

Love graduated in 1938 from Roosevelt High School.

An accomplished swimmer, surfer, and canoeman. Love began his career as a beachboy on Waikiki Beach in 1938. During World War II he worked on the Honolulu shipping docks and then served three years in the army. After the war, he was back on the beach. Love was then head beachboy for the Kaiser (and later Hilton) Hawaiian Village from 1956 to 1973. For the past 13 years, he has worked for the Waikikian Hotel.

Love has belonged to several ocean-oriented clubs such as Hui Nalu, Outrigger Canoe Club, Hawai'i Yacht Club, and Elks Club, of which he is still a member. One of Waikiki's most experienced beachboys, he continues to work the beach.

Okay. Let's start out by just talking a little bit about your parents, who was your father?

My father came over to Honolulu way back in 1908. He was in the service. And he never went home again. He stayed right here. Married my mother in 1909. Had the first baby in 1910. I was the last baby, 1919.

Three boys and one girl. Two girls died. One of lockjaw. She stepped on a nail and got an infection, which you don't get now. Lockjaw.

Eight years old. Now, you'd get those shots. There's no such thing as Lockjaw anymore.

How old were you when you moved to Waikiki?

Kuhio Avenue, between Ka'iulani and Uluniu.

Yeah. Say, you know something? This August, I got a note from my schoolmate to attend a get-together, a 50-year thing, for when Roosevelt won the '36 football championship.

Yeah. Yeah, way back. Fifty years. Terrible, yeah? (Laughs)

Half of the guys on the team are gone. When I read the letter of who's alive and who's gone, I didn't know half were . . . .

How did you get from your house to school?

Streetcar. Five cents to get to school. You know how I made money at that time? I used to clean the bathhouse on the beach, the Moana bathhouse.

Isn't that where the Hui Nalu club was located?

Right next door. I'd make five cents, ten cents, fifteen cents just to go clean the bathhouse. Every day after school we went surfing. And then, before I went home, I gotta go clean the bathhouse. I didn't have to, but if I wanted some money. I did that for three, four years. In fact, in those days, ten cents, that's big money, you know.

What kinds of things did you do as a youth?

Surf. There used to be a pier down there [Moana Pier]. Kids were not allowed to go past. I had to surf right next to the pier.

When you say "go past," you mean further out?

Outside. Yeah, kids in those days, we respected the older person, not like nowadays. So we stayed. We were afraid we'd get a kick in the rear or a slap in the face.

Yeah. And you respected them. You don't ask why.

Didn't they tear the Moana Pier down around then?

That was sort of a landmark, wasn't it, for everybody?

Oh yeah. Everybody used to go on that pier. Ah, it was just getting old, I guess. Or the guys Downtown wanted to get rid of it for some reason. Just politics. It's sad it's gone.

Wasn't there a little sitting place at the end where they used to play music?

Was it the beachboys that played music there?

Sure. I was just a kid, though, a young kid.

Who were some of the beachboys on the beach when you first started going there?

Tough Bill, Peter Makia, John D. Kaupiko . . .

Keaweamahi, yeah. His family used to own a lot of land.

By Hobron Lane? What happened there? How'd they lose it?

It was a tax deal. They didn't pay their taxes. Somebody paid the taxes and stole the land.

Did they have a pretty big property over there?

Oh yeah. Two or three acres at least. Back then, this was 1935 maybe, if you didn't pay your land tax, anybody can go pay the tax and it's theirs. Plenty of Hawaiians lost their land because of that law. My Uncle Joe used to have the land on the corner of Lemon Road, he had an acre there. He didn't pay the tax. Guy went downtown, a land tax man, he knew the property. He paid the tax. That's it. Gone. That's the law. Terrible, eh? That's only two people. There's a hundred other more, a thousand more who lost their land. Terrible when you think of it.

[Looking at photos of beachboys from the 1930s and '40s] In this one you look like the youngest person here.

How did you get to be with all these older guys?

There are about thirty guys in the picture, eh?

No. Probably 90 percent of these fellas didn't work on the beach. When they got through working Downtown, you see, they hung around the beach. Or on the weekends, they hung around. They surfed a lot and everything. But your true beachboys that made money off of the beach in those days. Like this guy [pointing at picture], Joe Akana, he worked on the beach. Sally Hale worked on the beach.

Oh, that's Sally Hale? Wasn't he captain for the Outrigger Club?

But most of these fellas just hung around. So actually, out of this group, there are only about four of 'em that really made their money off of the beach. The rest just hung around, they had other jobs.

After I got through high school, so 1938.

And what kinds of things did you do as a beachboy?

I've heard from other beachboys that you were considered the best canoe steersman in Waikiki.

You go by how many times you swamp a year. Maybe I swamp once every three years.

Ah, you get the knowledge of waves. I used to be able to spot a wave 1,000 yards out. I could see it swell.

That just comes from years of experience, huh?

I don't know. The wave came, I could see it.

Yeah. I raced in clubs for twenty years. Was captain the whole time.

Hui Nalu at the start. Then I shifted to the Outrigger Club.

Just out here [Waikiki]. We raced just two times a year. June 11th, July 4th, that's all.

Why just those two days? I mean, what was special about those days?

June 11th, what's that guy? Kamehameha. So it that was Kamehameha Day. July 4th was Walter MacFarlane Day. MacFarlane, back in the '30s and '40s, he was the president of the Outrigger Club.

Do you still belong to the Outrigger Club?

Yeah, I joined it back in 1942. Everything else in town was shut down [because of the war], and all my friends at that time were in that club, and I couldn't go in because I wasn't a member. So this camera I had, a brand-new one, I sold it. With the money, I joined the club.

When you were a kid, were other kinds of races going on besides canoes?

We had some outrigger races in the Ala Wai Canal. And surfboard races, too.

A hundred yards with boards. With the old-style boards, not the new short kind.

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