Hello Dr. Lady,

My name is Abraham Lewis. Between 1974 and 1978 I was a sailor aboard the USS Aspro, a fast-attack nuke sub stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Anna Banana's was my favorite haunt in those days and I look back on the place with a fond memories. I have not been back to the islands since '78, but whenever a chance presents itself, I attempt to get someone to find Anna's and buy me a T-shirt of theirs. A long sleeved ``surf'' shirt I had of theirs, with Anna's picture on the back, was the most prized possession I brought back to the mainland.

I believe we found Anna's by chance. Three of us had gotten pretty seriously involved with bicycling and at least once a week used to ride up the middle to Haleiwa, go around the eastern side and come back across the Pali. Getting back to base (SUBBASE) via the main drags was almost suicidal, so we constantly explored downtown for less traveled routes back home. I think it was on just such a trip that we came across the place. Having just biked close to 100 miles, we would have been thirsty and hungry, and the prospect of appropriate fare without cover charges or bar girls, relatively close to base was probably too much to pass up.

At that time, as you say, it was only beer and burritos. The bartender was the only staff - an Irish girl named Rose with long curly black hair and freckles. One of our group bore a resemblance to the actor Al Pacino who was very popular at that time from a movie of his that was packing them in... ``Serpico,'' I think. Anyway, the resemblance was strong enough that he was frequently stopped on the street by strangers, usually women. I guess Rose was another Pacino fan, because she fell head-over-heels for him. And we all fell madly in love with her. And all this despite the presence of her large, jealous, violent boyfriend.

As you may know, Al Pacino is not a man of large stature. Neither was my friend. In the course of our many visits there were enough French farce routines and absurdly close calls to feed a daily sitcom. My friend and Rose's ``official'' amorata never actually met and the affair ended with bruised hearts as is only fair.

Entertainment on our first visit, aside from Rose and the food, and Rose and the beer, and Rose, was provided by the victors of one of the weekly rugby matches at Kapiolani Park. Rugby players being what they are, this group had attained the asymptotic limit of boisterousness. After slightly dulling the edge of their thirst with a pitcher each, the team captain stood swaying atop one of the tables in order to toast the group with his second pitcher. He was roundly cheered in his efforts, but the moment his tone dropped below a Bacchanalian level of decadent levity, with some maudlin hogwash like ``What a great bunch of guys,'' he was de-pantsed. This led to the entire team doffing their shorts in short order and dancing around the bar in their jock straps. The ladies in the audience seemed to appreciate it. I kept coming back... I knew there was a ladies league out there somewhere.

Having scoped Anna's aplomb level, the next time we visited we skipped locking our bikes outside and instead rode them through the front door, wove our way through the tables and parked them by the back wall. By our third visit, Rose would have pitchers and burritos sitting at our table before we'd dropped our kickstands.

The burritos she used to make for us clearly violated the old maxim about never eating anything larger than your head. For Rose, we got a waiver.