Stuffs

The electric meter once serviced a caretaker's cottage.
Photo by Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin

Yea, though they departeth this vale of tears, they walketh in the valley of the shadow of death, they be not afraid, for they carrieth 150-watt work lights.

Inside the crypt is the Montgomery family, about which not much is known. Fanny and Isaac and five-year-old Daniel Montgomery emigrated from Workington, England, to Hawaii in 1838 and set up the Puuloa Salt Works. Fanny died on May 3, 1868, and was laid to rest in this grand tomb. How did she die? The only other excitement that week, according to period newspapers, was the arrival of the famous, distinguished diplomat Anson Burlingame, whom Abraham Lincoln had earlier named ambassador to China.

Son Daniel, age 37, perished on June 11 two years later; father Isaac passed away five days later. The big event that week was the visit of a British "flying squadron" of warships; all those of English ancestry in Honolulu were beside themselves, and partying heavily. One smells tragedy here.

At any rate, the entire Montgomery clan wound up encrypted on King Street, and, you will notice, before the introduction of electricity. The power connection was an afterlife ... sorry, afterthought.

The power meter actually serviced a caretaker's cottage in the rear of the property. The cottage burned down in the early 1980s, and the meter was never removed. That's all there is to it.

However, if you stand on the short wall and look into the meter, you'll notice that it's ... dead.