History

You are standing where the pay line formed. Look toward the smokestack, then come back to me. Ernest K. Craddick was paymaster of the Kapalima Sugar Company from 1921 until his death in November 1946, and in twenty-five years he was short exactly once, by a nickel, which he replaced from his own vest and recorded anyway. His will, filed with the circuit court in January 1947, ran four pages. Three of the pages were ordinary. The fourth set aside a sum for a bandstand and a program, and we will get to the sum when there is a reason to. The bandstand you see was raised by the company carpentry shop in the spring of 1948, forty feet from where his pay window had been.

Now the program, and you will hear all of it, because the band has to. Eleven songs, in one order, on the first Sunday of every month, beginning at 6:45 in the evening, which is when the pay window used to open. Four marches. Three waltzes. Two hymns. A schottische. And a closing number the printed card lists only as 'Evening.' Mr. Craddick chose them himself and attached the list to the will as an exhibit, in his own bookkeeping hand, durations noted in the margin. Played to the card, the program runs fifty-four minutes. The first performance was March 7, 1948. You may work out for yourselves how many first Sundays there have been since. The band does not have to. They were at all of them.

Here is the money, once, because there is a lesson in it. The bequest was $18,000 in 1947, held in trust at a bank that has changed names four times since without once misplacing the account. The principal is not touched. The interest buys reeds, valve oil, music stands, and paint for the rail every third year, and it still covers all of it, which tells you something about interest and something about paint. In June 1971, a bandleader we do not name substituted a newer number for song eight. A trustee was on the benches with the card in her lap. The probate court's ruling, In re Estate of Craddick, nine pages, held that a substitution forfeits that year's disbursement. It did. The band bought its own reeds until January. The program has not changed since.

The mill closed in 1979. You will notice what did not close. The bandstand is octagonal, thirty-two feet across, ohia posts on a concrete ring, built by the company shop to warehouse tolerances because that was the only way they knew how to build. Attendance on a first Sunday is described in the band's own minutes as 'steady,' and has been described that way since 1963, through the closure, and through two storms that took roofs on either side of the green and left the bandstand needing one coat of paint. People arrive at 6:40 and sit where you are standing now. They do not request songs. You know, by this point in the tour, what a substitution costs. When 'Evening' ends, everyone knows what time it is.

Local Legends

Residents maintain there is a twelfth song, sealed in an envelope in the trust's safe-deposit box, to be added to the program only if the mill ever reopens. The trustees deny the envelope. The bank confirms the box.

It is widely repeated that song six was played four seconds fast in October 1989, and that the trustee present said nothing but was seen writing.

Some listeners insist the program runs exactly fifty-four minutes regardless of tempo, weather, or personnel. The band's stopwatch log, kept since 1981, neither confirms this nor varies.

The Controversy

We will not be discussing the microphone. Since you have asked: in 1979, the year the mill closed, a county recreation officer proposed amplifying the program and offered a public-address system at no cost to the trust. The will is silent on microphones. The trustees ruled, in a letter of September 1979 that the band keeps folded into the front of the ledger, that silence in the will is an instruction like any other. The county withdrew the offer. The officer attended the next performance, sat in the fourth row, and reported that he had heard every note, which settled the matter as much as these matters settle.

Visitor Reviews

Gift Shop