BENCHWARMER
Ramon S. Dacawi
Long before they had me, my unlettered parents, especially my father, had been fighting (or coping with) poverty. With nary a plot to inherit out of the expansive rice terraces spread like a g-string on mountainsides in their native village in Hungduan, Ifugao, my old man set out after the war to find work and raise his family in Baguio . He hiked five days through the Mountain Trail and ended up as a flower garden laborer at the Pacdal Forest Nursery.
The third of five children and the first to be born here, I grew up at the nursery watching my old man coax petunias and carnations to bloom, and pine, juniper and alnus seeds to sprout. Early on, I knew I would need a high school scholarship. The urgency became more pronounced the moment I stepped out of the graduation rites at the Rizal Elementary School in my new pair of rubbers shoes my dad bought me for the occasion.
The grant notice came from the University of Baguio . While I was in the sixth grade, the institution opened a “star science section”, towards completing a one-section-per-year UB Science High School. In no time, my father, relieved and worried, was figuring out how to produce my school uniform, my first pair of black leather shoes and my white lab gown.
That summer I saved for my daily stipend by doing what now successful politicians (many of whom UB produced) proudly reflect in their election campaign ads as credentials for good governance – newsboy, shoeshine boy, caddy, janitor and whatever they are no longer. My list is longer – mushroom hunter, “sacate” cutter and Wright Park pony boy.
Being in the first batch to graduate (Class ’67) from the Science High, would-be fellow newsman Domcie Cimatu became my “Manong”. He will always be, even when I learned Domcie is a little younger than me. Dr. Sammy Lachica, retired U.S. Navyserviceman Norman Rulite are our “adings”, so are expats Edna Palispis and Joel Aliping, lawyer Edong Rillorta, banker Emil Ruff, Domcie’s more illustrious brother Frank of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Phillian Weygan, she of the Christian and civil society with cosmic genes.
The deference towards seniors is part of the UB family tradition established after a teacher-couple from Tondo came up to help rebuild Baguio during the post-war reconstruction. On August 8, 1948, the couple opened what would become UB on a hole-in-the-hall along the city’s main street. They drew 89 pioneering students in vocational courses.
We addressed Dr. Fernando Bautista Sr. “Tatay” and Rosa Bautista “Nanay”. We still do. It took me sometime, however, to call their seven boys “kuya”, especially Dr. Reinaldo Bautista Sr., the university president while I was in college, and Des, who took me in his staff, while he was serving as city councilor, just after my college graduation.
That time I got to edit the college paper to justify my scholarship, Tatay led me to a newly enclosed cubicle below a stairway landing at the backside of the gym. “Ito ang upisina mo, anak,” he said.. On another occasion, he acknowledged UB’s growth to the word of honor of students coming from the Cordillera provinces. Often, the students would enroll and take their periodic tests on a pay-later promise they would keep, he noted.
Years after they returned home to serve as teachers, engineers, bankers and such, the students had the opportunity to thank Tatay, during his bid as delegate to the Philippine Constitutional Convention.
My own memory of Nanay Rosa comes each time I receive snail mail. She would come with empty, used envelopes she would have us fold, for us to write on in her grammar class. At her home, she would offer us the same main dish –stewed beef with sayote chunked, always a welcome change from my father’s fried “bulilit”.
The tradition lives on. After all, it’s always good to have younger UBSH alumni or students calling you “manong” the moment they learn you, too, studied in their school long before they were born. It’s a balm for the painful truth, revealed to me three years ago by an old woman vendor selling ampalaya leaves for an ailment common to the aging.
“Sangapulo, tang,” the woman who, I swear, was old enough to be my mother, replied when I asked how much. Even with the deference, friendship at UBSH cut across each year section, especially when we’re out of the campus. We were bound by a common yearning for a normal growth or relief from the to-each-his-own and no-cheating code in class. We never believed playing billiards well and drinking gin early were signs of a misspent youth. Ask retired Pfizer supervisor Santiago Dariano, he with the highest IQ in my class. He would ground his perfect math scores with precise cue angling on the pool table at Aurora Theatre to shoulder our alcohol bills with his consistent winnings.
We weren’t supposed to be science students in form. So biology teacher Ernesto Alcantara provided the substance beyond the smell of a formalin-laced wildcat specimen in the lab. He led us boys one evening to catching bullfrogs along the Teachers Camp.Emmett Brown Asuncion, our director, made us “Singing Cadets”, winning cheerleaders, actors, taught us grammar, Latin declension and whatever we needed to know.
Emmett made me a priest in “Condemned” and Macloyn Flormata a robber in another play . He turned Alex Apellanes into a winner in declamation with a powerful, stirring portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”. In Domcie’s class, Joseph Villalba brought Baguio to prominence with his first-place performance in the national final of the annual “Voice of Democracy” oratorical contest. (to be continued).
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