(See story below)
Just pondering scenarios:
I wonder if that "pipe" story took place during a sightseeing tour Africa not Hawaii and the International Music festival was actually the "Muslim Festival in Mombasa."
Gramps supposedly gave that pipe to Obama Sr. for a birthday present. Obama Sr.'s birthday is in June. Did he give it to him in June of 1961? When else? Stanley Ann and Obama Sr didn't even know each other in June 1960 and she was in Washington in June of 1962.
At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told. They all had their favorites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use. I can still picture Gramps leaning back in his old stuffed chair after dinner, sipping whiskey and cleaning his teeth with the cellophane from his cigarette pack, recounting the time when my father almost threw a man off the Pali Lookout because of a pipe. …
“See, your mom and dad decided to take this friend of his sightseeing around the island. So they drove up to the Lookout, and Barack was probably on the wrong side of the road the whole way over there—“ “Your father was a terrible driver,” my mother explains to me. “He’d end up on the left-hand side, the way the British drive, and if you said something he’d just huff about silly American rules—“
“Well, this particular time they arrived in one piece, and they got out and stood at the railing to admire the view. And Barack, he was puffing away on this pipe that I’d given him for his birthday, pointing out all the sights with the stem, like a sea captain—“
“Your father was really proud of this pipe,” my mother interrupts again. “He’d smoke it all night while he studied, and sometimes—“
“Look, Ann, do you want to tell the story or are you going to let me finish?”
“Sorry, Dad. Go ahead.”
“Anyway, this poor fella—he was another African students, wasn’t he? Fresh off the boat. This poor kid must’ve been impressed with the way Barack was holding forth with this pipe, ‘cause he asked if he could give it a try. Your dad thought about it for a minute, and finally agreed, and as soon as the fella took his first puff, he started coughing up a fit. Coughed so hard that the pipe slipped out of his hand and dropped over the railing, a hundred feet down the face of the cliff.”
Gramps stops to take another nip from his flask before continuing. “Well, now, your dad was gracious enough to wait until his friend stopped coughing before he told him to climb over the railing and bring the pipe back. The man took one peek down the ninety-degree incline and told Barack that he’d buy him a replacement—“
“Quite sensibly,” Toot says from the kitchen. (We call my grandmother Tutu, Toot for short; it means “grandparent” in Hawaiian, for she decided on the day I was born that she was still too young to be called Granny.) Gramps scowls but decides to ignore her.
“—but Barack was adamant[8] about getting his pipe back, because it was a gift and couldn’t be replaced. So the fella took another look, and shook his head again, and that’s when your dad picked him clear off the ground and started dangling him over the railing!”
Gramps lets out a hoot and gives his knee a jovial slap. As he laughs, I imagine myself looking up at my father, dark against the brilliant sun, the transgressor’s arms flailing about as he’s held aloft. A fearsome vision of justice.
“He wasn’t really holding him over the railing, Dad,” my mother says, looking to me with concern, but Gramps takes another sip of whiskey and plows forward. “At this point, other people were starting to stare and your mother was begging Barack to stop. I guess Barack’s friend was just holding his breath and saying his prayers. Anyway, after a couple of minutes, your dad set the man back down on his feet, patted him on the back, and suggested, calm as you please, that they all go find themselves a beer. And don’t you know, that’s how your dad acted for the rest of the tour—like nothing happened. Of course, your mother was still pretty upset when they got home. In fact, she was barely talking to your dad. Barack wasn’t helping matters any, either ‘cause when your mother tried to tell us what had happened he just shook his head and started to laugh. ‘Relax, Anna,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to teach the chap a lesson about the proper care of other people’s property!’”
Gramps would start to laugh again until he started to cough, and Toot would mutter under her breath that she supposed it was a good thing that my father had realized that dropping the pipe had just been an accident because who knows what might have happened otherwise, and my mother would roll her eyes at me and say they were exaggerating.
“Your father can be a bit domineering,” my mother would admit with a hint of a smile. “But it’s just that he’s basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes.”
She preferred a gentler portrait of my father. She would tell the story of when he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in his favorite outfit—jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard-print pattern. “Nobody told him it was this big honor, so he walked in and found everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxedos. The only time I ever saw him embarrassed.”
And Gramps, suddenly thoughtful, would start nodding to himself “It’s a fact, Bar,” he would say. “Your dad could handle just about any situation, and that made everybody like him. Remember the time he had to sing at the International Music Festival? He’d agreed to sing some African songs, but when he arrived it turned out to be this big to-do, and the woman who performed just before him was a semi-professional singer, a Hawaiian gal with a full band to back her up. Anyone else would have stopped right there, you know, and explained that there had been a mistake. But not Barack. He got up and started singing in front of this big crowd—which is no easy feat, let me tell you—and he wasn’t great but he was so sure of himself that before you knew it he was getting as much applause as anybody.”
My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair to flip on the TV set. “Now there’s something you can learn from your dad,” he would tell me. “Confidence. The secret to a man’s success.”
“yep could be”.. SAD went by the name stanley ann dunham in early 1961,when she returned from kenya (supposely), back to hawaii is when she used the name anna obama- (documented.).I also read somewhere that Elisibeth Mooney liked to go dancing with barack sr.. - ( would have to find it again).It seems barack sr love to sing and dance, but alot of that was at the african festivals.-but anyway awesome point..
Lets say SAD had a “lou” marriage in africa.. It would have to be documented somewhere huh? There is no docs of her being married in hawaii. If we could find that, it would prove she was there in kenya at that time..I believe she was married in kenya— The “allafrica” article states that stanley armour was furious over the marriage and asked the grandma O to intervene to save the marriage.. the only way for grandma O to intervene, is because SAD was living in that village at the time
Read the last paragraph— how could grandma Intervene to save the marriage?
http://allafrica.com/stories/200408160533.html?page=4