I’m going to accept that the morning feels lazy and spend some extra minutes in bed.

But you’ll get a weekend treat anyway–A few more things Gov. Lingle doesn’t know about Barack Obama’s home in Hawaii. This time it’s his ties to the the PineLads from Lanai High School back in the 1970s.

This true tale comes courtesy of my friend Chuck Smith (Of Two Minds).

Since you mentioned Lanai, I thought I might as well explain the Lanai-Obama connection.

The trivial connection is that after our time on Lanai my Mom wanted to move to Oahu so my stepfather got a job teaching math at Punahou. At that time tuition for teachers’ kids was free so my brother and I attended Punahou– my senior year. As a result I graduated from that infamous school based on happenstance not brains… and so Obama and me, eh, we wen da same school, and we were both on the basketball team (he was on the AA varsity, I was on the second varsity a.k.a. “A” squad) only I was a mediocre player despite many hours of extra practice after school and regular practice.

On Lanai I played for the PineLads, the Lanai High basketball team, which had extraordinarily gifted athletes in those years. (I was a gangly, supremely untalented benchwarmer, the haole kid.) The Lanai High team, coming from a high school where the class of 1971 (my class) had about 40 students, reached the State Championships in 1970 and very nearly won in 1972.

During our years at U.H. and after graduation, former PineLads got together to play ball–in the U.H. years, at Chaminade, where Philip Camero (now an H.P.D. veteran) was able to angle time in the gym. I joined the guys for a few of these games, back in the early 70s.

Unbeknownst to me (I’d moved to the Big Island), in the late 70s several of my teammates played pickup games after hours at Punahou with some of the Punahou varsity squad. Here is my teammate Ricky Oyama’s account, sent after we met for lunch earlier this year in Honolulu:

I happened to read this article in the Advertiser on Barack Obama growing up playing pickup basketball at Punahou.

“It occurred to me that a little over 30 years ago when we were single, Nelson lived a block away from Punahou and I lived a block away from where Obama grew up. Since we were younger and in better shape back then, we would play against the Punahou Varsity boys after their practice was over on their outdoor asphalt court. According to them, and I’m pretty sure Obama was one of them because I remember a kid with an Afro, we were tougher than the rest of the ILH. We made them better players and they eventually won the state tournament.

It was Nelson and I who instilled perseverance in Obama by beating him up especially under the basket and made him what he is today. So remember to vote for him on November 4th, you won’t regret it…

Now the last paragraph is tongue-in-cheek of course, as Ricky was quick to note in a followup email that the young African-American lad might have been Richard Haenisch, who also played at Punahou in the late 70s. But by Obama’s own account, he was very dedicated to basketball and thus I personally conclude the preponderance of evidence supports the idea that the former PineLads did toughen up Obama in these after-school scrimmages.

I am unable to confirm this with archival links, but I should note that all the small high schools like (your alma mater) University High, Laupahoehoe and Kahuku were grouped in the afore-mentioned Class A, while the big high schools like Kaimuki, Iolani, Punahou and McKinley were grouped in Class AA. Through a peculiarity in the structure of the state tournament, Lanai actually played in the AA tournament in 1970, the year I was lucky enough to be on the varsity PineLads team. We played Kaimuki, a school in which any one class far outnumbered the entire student body of Lanai High and Elementary Schools. The PineLads were that good.

Interestingly, there were about as many haoles (3) attending Lanai High as there were African-Americans attending Punahou. My brother and I had a wonderful time on Lanai and were sorry to have to leave.