BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi
A salmon run

I’ve just been to where visitors from the so-called Third World can’t readily distinguish the well-off from the regular, as housing and the other basic human needs are affordable and reachable by almost anybody who aspires for them.

It’s where three family cars and a garage for them are deemed a necessity, where front and back lawns are watered by sprinklers and trimmed by motorized mowers as common marks of decent, normal living.

It’s where double-insulating doors of commercial establishments automatically open for you – to the sight of wide aisles and rows and rows of well-stocked stands from where buyers pick their grocery needs without looking at the price tags. Or of families, friends and contented retirees sharing breakfast around warm restaurant tables and mapping out their next vacation routes. It’s where wide, pothole- and traffic jam-free interstate highways lead you to your choice of fishing and hunting grounds this autumn.

It’s where, despite the global economic crisis, you can eat all you can. Back home, I told my hosts, we eat all we have – which is often not enough. Back home, we had long consumed or abused what what we had. We hardly have lawns to mow, or water to grow grass, much less forests to preserve for the succeeding generations to see a deer or two.

Still, the common longing for home surfaces among Filipino expatriates the moment you pop up in their adopted neighborhoods. By yearning for news, you sense outright they would rather be here in this nation of want than be out there living out the American dream –if only they could.

So they do the next best thing to coming home – make you truly feel at home that gives you the certain feeling that they haven’t really left home after all these years. While they admit more Americans are now staying home because of the recent oil price hike and the impending global economic meltdown, expatriates aren’t bothered any as long as you’re around.

They’ll take days off from work to be with you, even if they remotely know you from Adam. As fellow Cordillerans, they’ll get you almost any gift of your fancy and drive you to anywhere you want to be – at your slightest hint.

So I tried to keep mum about my plans. Still, the closest of kin, not necessarily by blood but bound by years of friendship, immediately saw what I really wanted to do. That’s why Conrad Marzan, the diminutive folksinger with a heart bigger than his body, and his wife and nurse Pilar, met me on my arrival at the San Francisco Airport. Both wanted to prime me up for my date with my daughter Beng, whom I haven’t seen for a while.

When they knew my flight from here was set, Paul and Jenelyn Balanza called from their home in Midland, Michigan, to assure they’d drive me to Beng in Albany, New York. The young couple claimed their long-planned vacation would pass that way anyway, and that Albany is near. It took 14 hours, with several eatery, restroom and fuel station stops I lost count of.

I took advantage, going on a two-week salmon run the moment Pilar cooked pink salmon in their home in Santa Clara. It was all pure fillet, far from the head and belly Europe dumps into the SM malls here. Atlantic salmon is readily available in the highway exit diners of New York State and the in Queensboro neighborhood of Camilo Madadsec in New York City. Fr. Dario Palaci must have known it, so he provided respite with a “pinikpikan” offering at his wife Cathy’s birthday in the Big Apple.

I tried to make sense of American football – even if it’s more of a handball – after learning that Paulo, Paul and Jenelyn’s son, has been averaging three touchdowns a game for his junior high school varsity in Midland. Paulo's elder sister Sunshine had me back to salmon at the top-rated Zinc Cafe with her own earnings.

Salmon fishing provided father-and-son bonding, and it was no moment that Paul turned out empty-handed and had to clean Paulo's catch. Beng couldn’t thank them enough for the four-day father-daughter bonding we both needed most. My daughter asked for their addresses, hoping to send them cards this Christmas, plus a note to Angie Mayegayeg and her daughter Ruth for the fun of her walking their tiny dogs in New Jersey.

I couldn’t thank Joel and Emily Aliping enough. Or his brothers Bob and Bryan, Miggs Meru, Jorge Pawid and Harry Basing-at who drove from way down San Diego to be at the couple’s home for a reunion of Baguio and Cordillera boys and girls hosted by the BIBAK chapter in Northern California.

It was deep honor seeing again past chapter president Johnny Copero, incumbent president, Dr. Nap and Glo Batalao and incoming tribal chief Art Bulayo. And Richard and Jopats Arandia, Felix Tayatao, good-looking Dorothy Pucay and her mother. And retiree Lito Villanueva, who went fishing for our taste of striped bass.

Neither could the Baguio goodwill mission headed by Rep. Mauricio Domogan fully thank Dinah Villanueva and the Baguio Californians she heads for the months of spade work that paved the way for the rekindling of sister-city ties between Baguio and Vallejo. The Baguio mission is grateful to the Vallejo officials led by Mayor Osby Davis, the host families, the Filipino community and their guides, function and tour hosts.

I owe the immigration officer in San Francisco who expressed his welcome concern. “You don’t look or sound excited being here,” he noted as he was about to stamp my entry. I lied about my enthusiasm by telling the truth that my travel authority to cover the sisterhood renewal carried the specific provision that no government funds shall be spent for it. “Welcome to San Francisco, anyway,” he said with understanding.

But it’s always cheaper to have friends than to buy a round trip plane ticket. A friend and fellow Cordilleran here bankrolled half of my fare. (e-mail: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).