Growing up in Baguio: a collective memory
>> Thursday, March 16, 2017
BENCHWARMER
Ramon
Dacawi
Dummy swords, shred
morning glory, of children at play among the ruins of man. -- From Freddie
Mayo’s Session Road
BAGUIO CITY -- Those
who grew up here share a collective memory of childhood that cuts through the
generations. Recollections of boyhood - or girlhood - in Baguio often come in
the form of anecdotes. They are stirred up by morning coffee or evening brandy
inside watering holes along Session Road., the city’s main street which façade
of stores are now changing.
We cling to memories
for they are the tie that binds, at least for us children of Baguio’s formative
and nostalgic years. Even our lowland and Metro-Manila counterparts trigger
memories the moment they reiterate the obvious and take us to task over the
loss of what was distinctly a mark of Baguio then.
They too pine for the
loss of pine, that distinct, fresh and undeniable scent on their first ascent
of Kennon Rd. that told them they were almost here. Still, they forget that the
eventual fulfillment of that common yearning for a personal and private piece
of the Baguio they embraced at first sight also has something to do with that
loss.
Whoever comes up for
the first time wants a piece of refuge and sanctuary in this temperate
paradise. The knife cuts deeper whenever Baguio boys –and girls – who settled
in the metropolitan jungles return to what was once their cherished turf and
playground. They seek us out for old times’ sake, initially for the sharing of
memories.
Suddenly, reunion
coffee turns bland. Wine sours the moment they begin to demand to know what we
who never left had or hadn’t done to mangle the once-familiar landscape they
had left behind.
It’s difficult to
nurse in silence the more painful wound opened by the insensibility and
condescension of a boyhood buddy and fellow native who has just reappeared. So
we get back at them, inflicting our own hurt, as the late fellow journalist
Willy Cacdac did.
We stood our ground
and tried to man the fort while you left and built a personal fortune, Willy
reminded a former broadcast media colleague who had arrived for a high school
reunion. The guy saw us inside the rebuilt Rose Bowl restaurant, came over to
our table and poured his sentiment, asking us to account for lost pine.
Willy’s own diatribe
silenced the visiting buddy who sheepishly returned to his own table to
re-think his position. If he had pushed on, I felt sure Willy would have dared
him back to Mt. Mary, that once thick pine stand where boyhood differences used
to be settled through fisticuffs.
I
had wanted to offer the guy an unsolicited advice: Share some of his millions
earned to pay for a piece of remaining pineland, thereby saving it from
subdivision developers coming in to build vacation houses.
For the generations of
fellow newsboys and bootblacks who grew up to be newsmen, lawyers, doctors,
politicians and such, then were those years until the 70s. Then was when it
took our elders an hour just to walk up or down Session, the city’s short,
inclined main street
Pedestrian and vehicle
traffic was light then. Yet it took people time to walk through as they had to
greet and chat with each other. Almost everybody knew everybody, either by name
or face and which part of Baguio the other lived in. That was when Baguio was
one neighborhood, not 128 barangays.
There were traffic
lights and blue-uniformed traffic cops, true-blooded members of :Baguio’s
Finest”. They were more for visitors who didn’t know when and where to cross
and pass. Then was when the whole city – traffic and all – would come to a
standstill at dusk, signaled by the siren blast from city hall. The angelus was
always a surprising moment for visitors who could only wish it would also be
restored back home somewhere down there.
Peppot Ilagan, who,
three years ago, joined fellow newsman Freddie Mayo in the great newsroom in the
sky, walked home from school to Jungletown, now Salud Mitra Barangay. Its
original name was a misnomer, but which Baguio is turning into – of the urban,
concrete kind. Peppot went to the public schools with Steve Hamada, my
five-year editor at the Baguio Midland Courier.
Steve said he had to
have a perfect class attendance for an A rating in math at the University of
the Philippines College here. Peppot appeared only for the final exams and also
got an A. “His formulas were not in our books but they were correct,” Steve
swore.
Notwithstanding his
mental gift, Peppot never learned to equate “squat” outside the comfort room or
beyond the corporal punishment imposed by cadet officers for long hair,
unpolished shoes and buckles during out ROTC Sundays. He married late and had
to rent for his young family the basement of the home of school teachers Jose
and Macrina Olarte at Aurora Hill.
(Note from the editor:
Ramon Dacawi wrote this piece in this same section of the Northern Philippine
Times in September 2007. We reprint it considering he is again on dialysis
which he has to endure four times a week. For those who would like to get in
touch with him, here is his cell number: 09167778103 or email: rdacawi@yahoo.com)
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