The house on Rubicon Street may look cookie-cutter, but inside sits the home of the Royal Hawaiian Steel Guitar Hall of Fame & Museum.

Steadying himself with a cane, Jimmy Hawton, the museum's 78-year-old founder and curator, admitted a guest who had come to learn more about so exotic an institution.

Hawton hoped his visitor didn't have sky-high expectations. "It's just in my living room," he said.

Crammed floor to ceiling with records, sheet music, photo albums and steel guitars, Hawton's living room celebrates one man's life-long love affair with the romance of Hawaii.

As a boy growing up in Wichita, Kan., Hawton taught himself to play the Hawaiian steel guitar while listening to "Hawaii Calls" on the radio. Having never seen the ocean, much less a tropical island, the music spoke powerfully to him.

"The steel guitar is the voice of Hawaii," said Hawton. "Number one, it has relaxation. Number two, it has love in it."

Hawton served in the Navy in the South Pacific as World War II ended. When he returned stateside, he got a job at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. His civil service job paid the bills. Hawaiian music made his leisure time special.

When his guest was uncertain what a Hawaiian steel guitar sounded like, Hawton gave a demonstration.

Slipping three picks on his right hand and holding a steel cylinder in his left, he stood over the strings of a laid-flat guitar and began plucking and stroking.

His visitor was soon transported half-way across the Pacific to a land of swaying palms, sweet breezes and dark-skinned beauties.

"It's the most expressive instrument on this earth," Hawton said of his instrument, which looks as plain as the sound is dreamy. One listen as a Kansas teenager, Hawton said, and "I just loved that music."

In the decades after the war, Hawton lived in Napa while playing in such bands as Jimmy's Beach Boys and Jimmy's Surf Riders. Hawaii-themed dances and country club luaus were common gigs.

To keep his evocations of the islands fresh, Jimmy and his wife Beverly vacationed in Hawaii each year. Sitting in with hotel bands, he lived the dream that so moved him as a boy.

Only in recent years did the dream go sour. Although the Hawaiian steel guitar was invented in Hawaii and has a legacy over a century old, it has gradually fallen out of favor with island bands, he said.

He tried interesting the Bishop Museum, a repository of Hawaii's cultural heritage in Honolulu, to take his collection of two dozen steel guitars. The museum refused, saying it didn't have enough room, Hawton said bitterly.

"The year before last, I told (Beverly) 'This Hawaii is getting so sick. I don't want to come here anymore,'" he said. Thus ended a 25-year string of Hawaiian vacations.

Back in Napa, his health failing, Hawton redoubled his efforts to find a proper repository for his collection of Hawaiiana. "This is what gets me in a panic," he said. "I want to get my guitars where they can be seen and heard."

Time is not his friend. "I'm going blind. I can't walk. I can't lift," he said.

Hawton is still capable of giving Hawaiian guitar lessons, but he can't find pupils who want to master a retro sound. "In this day and age, I'm competing against the damned computer," he said.

His collection of 26 guitars fills two bedrooms and overflows into the garage. He had it appraised a few years ago for $30,000, he said.

He never intended to acquire so many guitars, he said. But when his guitar-playing buddies died off, their widows offered their instruments for sale.

Although the Grammies last year created a category for Hawaiian music, the sounds of the islands aren't as popular as in earlier decades. Just try to find it on the radio.

Hawton said he pitched KVON, the local radio station, for a show featuring Hawaiian music. He argued that a lot of Hawaiians are settling in the Napa Valley. "Why not give them some music to listen to and make them feel like home?" he said.

The station didn't buy it.

The decline of Hawaiian music parallels the diminished popularity of the luau, which was once nearly as popular as crab feeds. "Luaus are my party," said Hawton.

Unfortunately, they aren't easy to put on. "It takes quite a bit to bury a pig and cook it," he said.

Hawton has a Web site, www.steelguitar.org, where the Royal Hawaiian Steel Guitar Hall of Fame and Museum has an Internet toehold. The site offers a history of the steel guitar and promotes steel guitar albums including his own "Blue Coral."

One of Hawton's biggest fans is his wife. "I think he's one of the best musicians I've ever heard. He can hear it once and just play it," Beverly Hawton said.

When Hawton burned out on Hawaii and his health declined, his wife rallied to his side. "She said, 'We'll make Hawaii at home,'" he said.

And so they have. Their backyard on Rubicon is a re-creation of a Hawaiian garden with nine pools, 24 waterfalls, five illuminated pagodas, two illuminated ponds and 10 illuminated waterfalls. Water begins flowing with a flick of a remote control.

Their patio has six sliding glass doors that open onto the garden, creating that seamless transition between indoors and outdoors that makes a stay in Hawaii so magical.

Beverly Hawton apologized for the garden not looking its best in winter. Come back in summer, she said, when the birds of paradise and ginger plants are in their glory and Hawaiian music pours from speakers hidden throughout.

"We love it out here," she said of her backyard's many themed nooks. "If we don't like one part of the island, we go to another part of the island."