Waldo Wanders

Sometimes A Great Notion: Part 2 - First Day:Manila

2012-02-27T18:08:00.003-08:00

"Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds"
~ Charles Caleb Colton

"In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry"
~ Robert Burns

We arrived in Manila just before midnight and found ourselves disembarking at the old International terminal, the same terminal I had left from 28 years earlier. We were told the "new" terminal was closed, but not why. But we went through Customs, our papers stamped and got our luggage in what seemed like just a few minutes, despite the large number of "Balikbayan boxes". In reality it took us about an hour, I guess the excitement of being back made time go fast.

Balikbayan is a term that refers to Filipinos returning to their homeland (there are 11 million who reside and work in countries all over the world). They return bearing "pasalubong" (gifts) in large boxes.

Suitcases in hand we turned and there was Manong Tony, looking much the same as he did the last time I saw him back in '75. He had been like a big brother to me when I was little, and when my two youngest brothers were born he took over some of the responsibilities that had formerly been the sole domain of our housekeeper Auring, like taking me to the movies. After college, he went on to attend seminary and had become a minister. Now we discovered he was a Chaplain in the Philippine Air Force with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He currently was attached to the PSG, the equivalent of the US Secret Service.

After hugs and introductions, we took our luggage and headed for the parking lot. It was warm and muggy, and we started sweating immediately. Our noses were assaulted by the blended, sour odor of diesel fuel exhaust, sewage and uncollected garbage. The Step-Mom exclaimed at the stench, but for me, the old familiar smells were stirring the memories and resurrecting feelings long forgotten: home. I'm home.

I was reminded of the movie Kelly's Heroes, where two soldiers from rural Texas are covered with the contents of an outhouse. Upon being told they stink, Don Rickles comments "kind of reminds you of home, don't it" whereupon one of the soldiers replies "you know it kind of does"

Tony loaded us up, Dad up front and the Step-Mom, Maureen and I crammed in the back, and drove us to the old UCCP Mission Guest House in the area of Metro Manila called Malate. Tony was trying to convince Dad to have us stay with him, but the Step-Mom insisted on a hotel and the Guest House (now called Shalom Center) was the compromise. I wanted to see and experience the old sights and places, and the Guest House was an important part of our pilgrimage.

The city was still very active at 1:00 a.m. and traffic was heavy. Most of the time our driver just drove through the red lights, simultaneously depressing the accelerator and his horn as we approached an intersection. We had no idea whether the drivers in the on-coming traffic were going to stop or not, so it was rather exciting. But the honking must have been a well known signal because it all seemed to work out. When we were forced to stop at a traffic light, a small boy or two would come up to our car and press their faces close to the glass, looking so pathetic, begging for money. The driver would give them some cash and they scurried away. It made Maureen cry and I realized this was an aspect of our trip that I had not anticipated.

The drive from the airport that used to take twenty minutes now took just over an hour. We got to the Guest House to find that the beautiful turn-of-the century two story guest house had been replaced by a modern tall building. We checked in, not knowing what other changes to expect after all these years. But the room was cool and clean, the sheets crisp and white, the water hot and refreshing. We cleaned up and crawled into bed, and were soon fast asleep.

We awoke just a few hours later to the sounds of vendors in the street selling taho, a custardy dish made from tofu, sago pearls and assorted fruit or syrups of your choice. We tried to go back to sleep but we hadn't adjusted to the change in time zone yet. To be honest, I was too excited to go back to sleep.

So, we got up and went downstairs and took some pictures on the street out front and then went through the lobby and out the back door.

There, behind the new tower were two of the original guest houses still standing, looking rather forlorn and uncomfortable. This was one of the things I wanted to see again. Slightly modified, but still mostly the same, there was the house where we lived our first few months in the Philippines.

It was strange and wonderful, the memories of my childhood came rushing back, of daily sounds, smells, and rituals. Of warm, yet still comfortable mornings, the relative quiet before the hustle and bustle of the city gearing up for another busy day of commerce. The hot afternoons when the city would suddenly go silent, the only sound was the wings of the cicadas humming.

Back inside, I asked at the front desk about changing some dollars for pesos and the clerk said they could arrange for a money changer to come by a little later. Dad and the stepmother were still in bed and we were enjoying the break in the Tagalog lessons, so we went to see about getting some breakfast without them.

The days of a multi-course American style meal served family style at long tables covered in white tablecloths were long gone. In the old days, breakfast was preceded by a reading from the Upper Room, followed by several relevant Bible passages and a prayer. Then eggs, sometimes fried, sometimes scrambled or wonder of wonders boiled eggs perched on little white egg cups. Fruit, toast, bacon or sausage and juice would round out the meal.

The Shalom Center now had a cafeteria and served traditional Filipino foods. I steered Maureen towards a breakfast of coffee, mango juice, rice, fried eggs and little red sausages called longaniza and was gratified to find that she really enjoyed it. The coffee came in little packets with the creamer already mixed in and you just poured it into a cup of hot water. She was a little suspicious of it at first, but happily discovered that it was quite delicious. We lingered for awhile after eating, sipping our coffee and slowly adjusting to our new surroundings.

After breakfast we went down to the lobby to meet the money exchanger, running into our "travel companions" as we exited the cafeteria. I suggested to Dad that he take the opportunity to change some dollars to pesos but he brushed it off.

Prior to our trip I had spent many hours on line updating myself on the Philippines, reading travel tips and advice, newspaper articles and consular warnings. The country that we had known so well had greatly changed, but Dad still thought that he knew it all, certainly much better than I.

When we got to the lobby Tony was there and helped us change some money with the money changer while we waited for the parents. They appeared a little while later, and Dad promptly announced that he needed to change some dollars! Too late, the money changer had already left. The step mother needed some sun glasses too, so it was decided we would head over to SM Mall after lunch at Tony's home. We grabbed some of our luggage to store at his home and headed out to fight the traffic once again.

We arrived at the base and the guard cheerfully waved us through. Tony gave us a quick tour around the base and stopped first to let Maureen pick a Kalachuchi blossom, then to let us have some photo ops with the impressive residence across the river.

We kind of felt like we were breaking some rules: You usually don't see this side of the official residence, nor can you normally get this close. But we reminded ourselves that this was the Philippines and things are a little more relaxed here.

The parsonage was attached to the back of the Base Chapel. We arrived at Tony's home and met some of his family. Two of his daughters were at work and we would meet them later. His wife, Beth, was the daughter of old family friends and excused herself to prepare lunch while Tony gave us a tour of the Chapel and his gardens. Orchids, flowers, fruit trees were everywhere. I had forgotten how lush the tropics can be.

Here is Tony and the parents. Dad is trying to figure out how to use the video camera (he shot hours of the sky, the ground or the interior of the car).

Then we were ushered in for lunch. It was an excellent meal that included fried fish, rice, a shrimp, beef and vegetable stir fry, green beans, mangoes, bananas, grapes and suman. They even cooked up a few pieces of whole dried fish called Tuyo just for me.

Dried fish is made by heavily salting fresh whole or split fish, which then are dried in the sun. To prepare them you simply heat a little oil in a skillet and fry them up. The oil reconstitutes the flesh and they emit a very strong odor. Most Americans find the smell horrific, but it always makes my mouth water. For almost thirty years I had been dreaming of this moment, the taste of tuyo and rice filling my mouth.

After lunch, Tony and Dad sat down to discuss the itinerary. Our original plans had been to go from Manila to the island of Leyte for a week, then back to Manila and on to the mountains of Baguio with a side trip to Sagada. Dad immediately changed things up by saying he wanted to go to Baguio first and then Leyte. I tried to explain that we had reservations made at hotels in Baguio and Leyte, that people had taken time off from work to see us and that we couldn't just change things up but he refused to listen.

What I didn't realize then was that he was apprehensive about going back to Leyte. He was afraid that, at best, no one would even remember him. So we changed our plans, which meant we now had to go buy tickets to Baguio and hope we could find rooms.

So first we went to get 4 plane tickets to Baguio. Dad did his knick knack paddy whack dance (slapping each pocket in turn) and said he left his credit card at the hotel. Apparently he had only brought dollars to exchange into pesos. So I had to pay for all the tickets.

Then we headed over to SM Mall. Traffic was miserable and it took us forever to get there. I was totally amazed at the congestion of the city. We were even more shocked at the total disregard for traffic signals, the large number of cars trying to fit into a finite number of lanes. Navigating the ever changing maze was like some crazy dance, a game of "chicken" to see who would yield first. At some point Tony determined that we were headed the wrong direction and began to slowly work his way from the far left lane all the way over to the far right lane. Once there we thought he was going to pull in on a side street and head back the other direction. Instead, tooting his horn and putting on his left blinker he executed a wide turn. Cutting across about six or seven lanes of traffic and into the lanes heading the opposite way, smiling and waving as vehicles would stop just inches from our car. It was a gut wrenching experience, but two things were evident to us, there was no road rage, no cussing or angry gestures. With so many people (around 21 million in the Greater Manila area) rubbing elbows, it was essential that decorum be maintained. So, despite the congestion, people kept their cool.

When we finally arrived we were stopped by guards at the parking garage who cheerfully checked the trunk and under the car for bombs. After we parked, there was another security check, this time for us. We were told that we were not allowed to take pictures inside the mall, but I surreptitiously took a few blurry shots. There were no malls in the Philippines when we had lived there last, and Maureen was impressed at the number of employees (four or five smartly dressed young women in every department) and how friendly and helpful they were.

Dad and Tony went to exchange some dollars to pesos while the Step-mom, Maureen and I did some shopping. Maureen had left her swim suit back in the States, and I thought I'd pick up an embroidered short sleeve shirt. The Step-Mom went to go buy some sunglasses. The exchange rate currently was floating around 56 pesos to one dollar. For some reason this was very confusing to the parents and I wasn't sure why. Dad had done some mission work in Nepal, Central and South America, they both had worked in Africa, so they had relatively recent experience with varying exchange rates. Maureen got her suit, I got my shirt and we wandered over to see how the Step-Mom was doing. She was having trouble picking a pair but finally decided on a stylish black framed designer branded pair. Dad and Tony came up and she said "these are only $10 dollars". Maureen looked at the tag labeled 5,600 pesos and said uh no, they are around $100. The Step-Mom looked annoyed and insisted she was correct and purchased them anyway. Leaving the mall she had an indignant whispered conversation with Dad and after some calculations on a piece of paper the sunglasses were carefully remanded to her luggage for the remainder of our trip, as they too valuable to wear.

After the mall we headed over to the American Cemetery. This again took forever due to the heavy traffic. We had intended to do some sight-seeing but it now seemed rather late to get started. I was beginning to worry about how much time we would waste everyday just trying to get to the places we wanted to see.

When we got there it was just after 5 pm, it was raining and they were closing for the day. But Tony showed them his official I.D. and they just waved us in.

The rain suddenly stopped and the sun tried to peak out. It was serene and beautiful.

Administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission it covers about 152 acres and has 17, 206 graves and an additional 36,282 names inscribed on limestone columns of those missing in action. We walked around for an hour and then it started raining again so we decided to go.

Tony decided it was time to get something to eat and stopped off at McDonalds. After crossing the ocean to get here it was not our first choice but he was driving and our host, so we went along with it. We parked right in front and Tony paid some street kids to watch his car. A guard armed with a shot-gun opened the door for us and we trooped in.

This turned out to be an interesting experience because the McDonalds in the Philippines are nothing like the ones back in the States. For one thing rice comes with the meals and french fries are a special side order. Salisbury steak, Spaghetti and fried chicken are also on the menu. We tried these "new" items and found them to be pretty good!

The Step-mom went to use the restroom and came out shortly and said there is no toilet paper in there. Maureen pulled some out of her travel bag and handed it to her. She seemed most annoyed that we were so prepared.

I can't help it, a decade of living in a rural area of the Philippines, plus being a Boy Scout who was taught to "be prepared", I find my self always thinking of contingencies. Before we had left I had advised her to get some travel "tp" to bring with her, because like when they were in Africa, it is something that is not always provided or available.

We had an early flight to Baguio the next morning, jet lag had finally caught up to us and we were worn out, so Tony took us back the Guest House. We showered and Maureen took a little time to write down the experiences we had so far in her journal. Another day of firsts for her!

A Day in Manila from Waldo Wanders on Vimeo.

100 Years Gone By: A Baguio Tribute

2012-01-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

"You.
You.
You are still a whisper on my lips.
A feeling at my fingertips,
That's pulling at my skin.

You leave me when I'm at my worst.
Feeling as if I've been cursed,
Bitter cold within.

Days go by and still I think of you.
Days when I couldn't live my life without you.
Days go by and still I think of you.
Days when I couldn't live my life without you.
Without you...
Without you"

Always

2012-01-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes A Great Notion: Part 1 - Plans

2011-08-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

"The past is funny ... it never seems to let things lie, finished. It never seems to stay in place as it should"
~ Ken Kesey

"There are some things that can't be the truth even if they did happen"
~ Ken Kesey

Sometime around the advent of the new millennium my father began voicing the desire to return to the Philippines. I didn't think too much of it at first, it was not like he needed my permission to go. I simply said "you should go" and left it at that. Over the next few years he returned to the subject frequently. I didn't know what the problem was, buy a ticket and go. But he seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. This from a guy who left school and home to travel a 100o miles to west Texas to help round up a herd of wild mustangs, put them on rail cars where they were transported to Galveston, then on to a ship and across the ocean to Greece. This from a guy who quit his job and moved his family across the ocean to live and work in the Philippines. This from a guy who over the previous 25 years had visited, lived and worked in rural Mexico, South America, Africa, Nepal, Egypt and had taken several trips to Europe. Often times I wouldn't even know he was out of the country, calling the house week after week with no answer. Finally I learned to call around to his various siblings where I would learn of his whereabouts.

So why should taking a trip to the Philippines be so difficult? Sometime in early 2003 he was talking about it, again, and fed up I said "quit talking about it and just go!".
I'll go if you go

I was totally taken aback. Never in my entire life had he ever expressed needing my help with anything. I didn't know what to say.
I'll go if you go

Up to that point I had never even considered going back, at least not after all these years. There was a time in the late 70's and early 80's when I thought of returning often. But now, nearly 27 years since I had last been there I was rather ambivalent about it. All of the people I had remained in contact with were stateside now, I assumed that the majority of my schoolmates were here as well too. Sure, there were places I'd like to see, foods I'd like to taste again, but I wasn't sure what other motivations there were for me to go. If I wanted to go to a beach, I could go to Mexico for a fraction of the price.

I was married, we were settled into our lives, two out of three kids graduated, we had jobs and pets to attend to. More importantly, the thought of being trapped with my Dad for an extended period of time was not very appealing. Since my marriage, our relationship had slowly improved, but some things don't change and at times it was tenuous at best. Dad had an expression he liked to repeat every time we came to visit:
"Company is like fish, after three days they start to stink"

This was his way of letting us know he didn't want us around too long and certainly was mutually true of our relationship. By the second day I was always ready to leave. I couldn't imagine being stuck with him on a plane for 24 hours, let alone a few weeks. I let the subject drop, but then he brought it up again a month or so later. And again a few weeks after that. And again the next month. He had seized on this idea and wouldn't let it go.

I'll go if you go

My boss was from the Philippines originally, and made the pilgrimage back to see his parents and siblings once a year. I mentioned my father's desire to go back, half thinking that perhaps he could be my dad's travel companion the next time he went. We discussed cost, safety, things to do and see, the best time of year to travel.

Then my father received a letter from Tony Ngoho, one of our former "students" inviting him to come visit. Back when we lived in the Philippines, my mother had come up with an idea of putting a few deserving kids through college. She started with one, and by the time we left eight years later the number had grown to around thirty. A nurse herself, most of the students were in the local nursing program, some pursued BAs, others got their BS degrees, a few went to seminary after college, of which Tony was one. Of all the students who lived with us over the years, Tony was most like family, more like an older brother to me.
I'll go if you go

Slowly, the idea percolated, the desire to return began to outweigh the disadvantages. I thought of bringing my wife, I had always wanted to show her the places I so often talked about. So it was that, in the summer of 2003, having become confused from all the Texas heat, forgetting in an instant all the misery I had gone through over the last 45 years, I finally caved in to my father's request.

Things quickly fell apart from there. The original plan had been for just the two of us to go, the stepmother had no interest in going to the Philippines. Then I modified it to include my wife, and when the stepmother found out that she was going she decided she would go too. This is not what I had envisioned, I had figured that two against one would make the situation manageable, but now, two against two, we were clearly outnumbered. This should have been my first red flag that things were not going to go well. Still, I thought, it shouldn't be too bad, we'll let the old fogies do their own thing and we will go off and have our own adventures. How bad could it be?

So I reluctantly purchased four tickets and contacted a friend in the Philippines to secure reservations for us in February of the coming year. This should have been my second red flag: why was I buying the tickets?

Dad wrote Tony and together we made an itinerary. You would think after growing up with the guy I would have remembered how easily sidetracked the old cuss could get. This should have been my third red flag; Dad never sticks to the plan. My wife and I scheduled vacation time, applied for passports and waited. Mine was a simple renewal and came back quickly, but this was her first passport and weeks went by, the departure date loomed. She was beginning to panic, then, just a few days before we were scheduled to leave it arrived! It was time to go.

In February of 2005 we boarded a plane for Detroit where we would meet up with Dad and the Stepmother. There we would board another flight bound for the Philippines. We checked in and waited, and waited. Boarding was announced and still no sign of them. We had their tickets and just as we were about to go up to the counter, here they come wandering over. They had gone to get something to eat and didn't hear the boarding announcement.

The jumbo jet was packed, mostly with Filipinos, a smattering of Japanese and Koreans; we were among the handful of Caucasians. Looking out over a sea of dark heads from our seats near the rear of the jet, my father commented on how many Filipinos were on our flight. Standing up to see what he was talking about, the stepmother said with her megaphone voice:

How can you tell? They all look alike to me... Now, Do all Filipinos have black hair?

Four hundred heads turned around to see who was addressing them. Mortified, we slid down in our chairs and hid our faces. My father tried to distract her, getting her to sit back down by saying he is going to teach her a few Tagalog words, starting with the word for "thank you":
Dad: Salamat
Stepmon: Sayluhmet
Dad: Salamat
Stepmom: Sayloomet
Dad: Sa. la. mahht.
Stepmom: Say. lay. met.
Dad: Salamat ...

That was when my wife and I realized that we had made a horrible mistake. But it was too late, the doors were closed and we were rolling down the runway. Their loud voices penetrated our earphones and drowned out both music and movie.
Dad: Salamat
Stepmon: Sayluhmet
Dad: Salamat
Stepmom: Sayloomet
Dad: Sa. la. mahht.
Stepmom: Say. lay. met.
Dad: Salamat ...

My wife looked like she wanted to scream, she turned to me and mimed stabbing herself with a knife. Their "conversation" continued on until the flight attendants arrived to ask what we wanted to drink, and then picked right back up again til we got our meals. It was going to be a long flight.

From Detroit we headed north into Canada, the pilot commenting on the cities as we passed over them. Looking out over the snowy landscape below the stepmom turns to my dad and says:
What is that white stuff on the ground?
"Snow" my dad says. She is quiet awhile, pondering this bit of information.
But, does it snow in Canada?

Heads turn again. Oh my God. She was a schoolteacher for thirty years. We pretend we are asleep.

After listening to the same word being repeated for 20 hours, we finally landed in Nagoya, Japan. We disembarked so they could clean the plane, lemmings in an endless queue: out the door, up flights of stairs, down long halls only to find that our destination was the restrooms! For the men it was a fairly quick and painless procedure, but entirely different for the women. My wife found herself in a slow moving line, eventually ending up before a row of stalls. The woman in the stall directly in front of her seemed to be having some difficulty, bumping and banging against the door. Finally, the door opened and to my wife's horror there was no toilet, only a metal framed hole in the floor! Fortunately, the stall next to it became available and it did have a toilet, so she scurried into it before someone else could claim it!

Leaving the restrooms we re-queued and snaked our way back to the plane. Back on board we happily discovered that our surly flight attendants have been replaced with a bevy of laughing, smiling, cheerful Filipino attendants. Their mood was infectious and soon we were all smiling and chatting with our seatmates. Maybe it was just getting a break from our long flight, maybe it was knowing that soon we would be there, but that last leg of journey went by in no time at all.

Part 52: Lost Horizon

2011-05-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

"... you can't subject a mere boy to... years of intense physical and emotional stress without tearing something to tatters. People would say, I suppose, that he came through without a scratch. But the scratches were there - on the inside."
We sat for a long time in silence ...
Do you think he will ever find it?"

- from Lost Horizon by James Hilton

I was hurriedly cramming all my worldly belongings into my footlocker and suitcase for the summer. Five years worth of school magazines, yearbooks and newspapers, old scripts, a few school books and novels, left over school supplies, a photo album, sheets, blankets and clothing.

In a small air force flight bag I packed the bare minimum of clothing I would need to get me back to America. I planned to buy all the clothing I needed while I was there and much more. I had been busy compiling a list of things I wanted to pick up including gifts for my friends.

A month earlier, in April, my parents and brothers flew to the U.S. for a four month furlough. I would be joining them now that school was out and I was excited to be heading back to the States for a short visit. I was looking forward to doing some sight seeing, eating American food and visiting the relatives. If I had time I hoped to see some of my friends from Brent who now lived in the U.S. and had made tentative plans to see my girlfriend in North Carolina while she was on furlough too.

I had got my bundle of exit papers from the local PC commandant, paid the appropriate fees and document stamps on my exit visa. Then I went to the Mission Board offices and picked up my ticket and passport. The treasurer handed me my documents, then pulled a dusty cash box from a drawer. Fumbling with the key, it groaned in protest at being opened, the lid snapping shut on his hand several times as he tried to extract a single ancient bill from its interior. Scrooge gripped it tightly in his hand for a few moments, stretching out his arm and retracting it several times before finally handing it to me. I looked at him in disgust and amazement. A measly five bucks "travel money" to get me back to the states.

The next morning I caught a Korean Airlines 747 out of Manila to Seoul, then on to Los Angeles. It was a long flight with a lousy movie and I had plenty of time to think. I thought about my five years at Brent; I thought about my senior year ahead, planning and dreaming of the things I would do. Slave Day, Senior Skip Day, Prom and Graduation; now my name would hang in the Gym along with the names of my classmates.

The plane was delayed in Seoul and by the time we got to L.A. I had missed my connecting flight to Chicago. There were quite a few stranded kids at LAX and we spent the night in the terminal playing cards. In the morning while waiting for my flight the elderly couple who had been sitting next to me on the flight asked if I had spent the night in the airport and had I had anything to eat. I guess I looked hungry - I hadn't eaten since the day before but didn't want to seem like I was looking for a hand out. They wouldn't take no for answer and bought me breakfast.

When I got to Chicago I was surprised to see my mom's sister and her husband waiting at the arrival gate. They bought me a steak, we drank wine and they peppered me with questions. I hadn't seen them for years and happily recounted my adventures at Brent and my plans for my Senior year. Then on to Iowa in a inter-state commuter turbo prop. The plane circled the little airport, preparing to land, I watched the buildings below.

Then it hit me all of a sudden, from deep within me I knew with the utmost certainty; I would never go back to the Philippines again. The empty pit within me was a chasm that could never be filled. Then the wheels touched the ground and the plane came to a stop. Walking across the tarmac I searched the crowd for my family; I found confirmation on my parents faces. That was it. The adventure was over.

I never got to say farewell to the family who raised me, to my friends, my city, my school, my home.

"You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you

You taught me how to love
What it's of, what it's of
You never said too much
But still you showed the way
And I knew from watching you
Nobody else could ever know
The part of me that can't let go

I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again"

- from a song by Bread

I never got to look for the little boy lying in his hole in the comote field, to tell him it's safe to come home.

I think he lies there still.

Waiting.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

Goodbye.

Part 51: The Last Waltz

2011-05-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

"I will remember you and hold on to the
fine time that we knew, sing a memory or two, when there's nothin' left to do"

~ from "Love's in Vain" by Jimmie Spheeris

"The Devon faculty had never before experienced a student who combined a calm ignorance of the rules with a winning urge to be good, who seemed to love the school truly and deeply..."
~ from A Separate Peace by John Knowles

"What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind..."

~ William Wordsworth

Those were sweet, blissful days. I had fallen from grace, wandered in the desert, was lost and then found. I was humbled and found redemption.

The school year was swiftly coming to an end and I didn't see it coming. I didn't see the signs or learn from past events. I didn't remember that all good things must end, that "some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them".

Jaime and I had a lot on our plates that spring. End of the year term papers, a play and we were busy trying to get the yearbook finalized in time to get it off to the printer.

Aah, the Ganza. Blood, sweat and tears. Lots of artistic disagreements, lots of shouting, lots of compromises. We had many a late night, drank gallons of coffee and smoked cartons of cigarettes. Cutting and pasting, banging away at the typewriter, digging through submitted photos, poetry and art. Jaime was the editor and you could see his hand all over it. Maybe a little of mine too, but it was hard to tell, we thought so much alike.

This year's edition reflected his anxiety and ambivalence about Brent, about leaving the Philippines. But this yearbook also reflected the tension and uncertainty amongst the students, staff and faculty. Unions, petitions and lawsuits; the Headmaster and a few teachers were facing legal proceedings. Brent was at a crossroads, a very different school from the school we arrived at five years earlier.

The one constant was the Campus, changing yet unchanged over the last 67 years. So, instead of doing the traditional dedication to a faculty or staff member, we made our dedication to the Brent Campus. Our staff photographers took pictures of Amos, Ogilby, Binsted, Weiser, Richardson, Hamilton, the Old Infirmary and the New Dorm. Pages were filled with photos of the Neutral, the soccer field, the gym, tennis courts and the Valley. Maybe it was his way of saying goodbye to each and every building, tree and place that had touched and shaped our lives. This Ganza was his eulogy.

Each member of the Senior class got their own individual page and they spent a lot of time working on them, carefully crafting their last words and testaments. We finally got the last one and we submitted our almost finished product to the printer, happy, yet slightly unsatisfied, a bittersweet moment. A week later we had the printer's proof back for us to check for errors or to make any last minute corrections. In an unusual turn of events, the Headmaster insisted that he see and sign off on this blueline before it was released to print. He didn't like some of the captions, in particular one next to his photo in his Halloween costume that said "Old Nick". He made some corrections and returned it to us, ordering the Ganza adviser, Mrs Sheffer, to make sure that his changes were made. This really rankled us, especially Jaime. We made some corrections of our own, fixing typos here and there and then Jaime, in a bold move, restored the original caption to the photo. Anarchy! His final act of rebellion.

It had been a rainless, hot spring and as the months progressed it continued to get dryer. The Neutral turned a rusty brown, most of the grass on the soccer field was dead or dying, brown patches of bare dirt dotted the field.

Field Day was a hot, dusty affair. I didn't much care who won the competitions, I was just trying to spend as much time with my girlfriend, in a few days she would be leaving on furlough with her parents for the summer. It was a day for hanging out between events with her and my friends. When the last event was completed, the last award handed out, we piled on the bus to head over to John Hay to take showers. Brent had no water.

From the earliest days of the founding of the city, Baguio has had a water problem. Despite having some of the highest annual rainfall of any city, collecting and storing water for the dry season had never been seriously implemented. In the 1930s, Mayor Halsema had worked hard to improve the water works, by the time WWII came it was adequate for the population of 50,000. In the late 60's and early 70's the population increased dramatically, once again the water resources for Baguio were over extended. Part of the problem came from the burgeoning number of tourists who came during the dry months, easily doubling the number of people living in Baguio.

In 1976, the lack of rain turned into a drought, water rationing was now in effect throughout the city. Downtown Baguio was a grimy mess, the rain that normally washed the streets and sidewalks clean, now just a distant memory. Fires were a real problem as there was no water for the Fire Department to use. The river that flowed past Asin Hot Springs became a tiny creek. Back at Brent the situation was grim, the water tower and cisterns ran dry. The Boys dorm reeked from unflushed toilets, the boys reeked from want of showers.

Only the local US Airbase had a steady flow of water. Over the years the military commanders and planners of Camp John Hay had continuously improved and supplemented their water storage and collection system; they now supplied Brent with potable water for drinking and for the kitchen to cook and wash dishes with. Brent had 50 gallon drums of water of dubious quality trucked in for flushing toilets in the Administration Office, Ogilby Hall and the girls dorm. My friends and I went to John Hay almost every day now, to shower at a friends home and use the "facilities".

With Field Day out of the way, we focused our attention to the last play of the year, "Flower Drum Song", a musical being directed by Mrs Viduya. It is a story of the struggle of assimilation, maintaining cultural identity and the struggle between the older and younger generations. Sammy Fong, a nightclub owner, is about to enter into an arranged marriage with illegal immigrant Mei Li. But Sammy is in love with club dancer/singer Linda Low, who is romancing Wang Ta, son of a wealthy Chinese businessman. Mei Li falls in love with Wang Ta, but is honor bound to fulfill her contract. It was a convoluted plot, but a lot of fun to produce.

Most of my classmates were in the play, Beth Wagner was Mei Li, Paul Bautista was Wang Ta and Paul's sister Margie was Linda Low. Jaime had the role of Sammy, Dayne Florence was the father of Mei Lei and I had a minor role as a slightly deaf, dirty old uncle. About half of the cast was Caucasian, which in a play about Chinese Americans can be problematic. But the blond haired kids dyed their hair black, and with some make up it didn't look too rediculous.

The Junior class was busy preparing for the Junior-Senior Prom. As class president I found myself making most of the decisions, but I tried to delegate where and when I could. A couple of classmates were looking for a band, others were in charge of decorations and setting up. The class treasurer and I went to look at various venues for the prom; we went from restaurant to club, sampled the menus and worried about parking. Finally, one of the kids whose father worked for VOA was able to negotiate us a good price at the John Hay Main Club. With the money we saved I ordered 12 dozen long stem red roses which would be handed out to the girls when they arrived (for those slackers who were too cheap to get their dates flowers).

The only thing I hadn't done yet was get a date for the prom. Jaime was going to go by himself and then asked Flo Lusk to go. I too had been tempted to go by myself, but then I decided to ask Lisa Marks, one of my girlfriend's friends, so she could go. I warned her that I would be busy making sure things were running smoothly and that this was just a "friends only" kind of date. My friend Jack was taking our buddy Vic Horne's sister Tracey and Vic was taking Pam Johnson; Dayne Florence was taking Jasminda Salapong.

Trying to keep an accurate head count so we could order enough food, I was surprised to find a few of my classmates had not RSVP'd yet. I asked one of them if he was going and did he have a date. He said he wanted to ask one of our classmates. Maybe it was my recently restored self confidence, maybe it was the inner peace I felt, but I was emboldened. Not thinking how it might appear I said Do you want me to ask her for you? He said he did, so I sought her out right after our next class and asked her point blank Do you want to go to the Prom with him?
She did, and her response gave him the courage to approach her himself. This would be the first time going to a dance for both of them.

Finally it was prom night. I had to get there early to help set up. The night was a blur, every time I turned around someone was asking me something and I hurried here and there, checking on this, checking on that. Some of the day students had arrived in their own cars and naturally had smuggled in alcoholic beverages. Every now and then two or three would wander out to have a "smoke" or "get some air". I didn't have time, I was getting pulled in all directions. I didn't even get to finish my dinner. Finally, I collared the class vice-president and told him he would have to deal with the questions for the rest of the night. I found my date and we danced and I even made it out to the parking lot.

Because of Martial Law there was a curfew, those who were not planning to stay had to leave early, but the majority of the guests stayed and danced all night. Just before dawn things began to break up, I made my final rounds, then headed back to Brent with Jaime and our dates. We caught a cab and they dropped us off at the bottom of Brent Road, from there we walked up to the school. Out of the mist on the road in front of us, two figures slowly grew in size and then we recognized them, it was Mr Keddie and Mr Spitzer. They were leaving school early, trying to stay one step ahead of the law, they were headed to Manila to catch a plane out of the country.

Then one sunny day it was Graduation. The Gym was packed with parents, students and relatives. Pomp and Circumstance began playing and the Seniors filed out with me leading the procession up the aisle. Our class advisor Ms Estacio whispered loudly "What's he doing! He's not a Senior!" Apparently after decades of teaching at Brent she had forgotten the long standing tradition of having the Junior class president escort the seniors to the stage. At the foot of the steps I turned and stood to one side, congratulating the seniors as they filed past going up the stairs. There were speeches and awards, the senior class sang "To Each His Own". They called the names and handed out the diplomas. Then it was over and the recessional began. The Seniors posed for pictures with family and relatives and took their last class picture. I worked my way through the happy crowd, congratulating my jubilant friends, meeting their parents. There at the back of the gym was Jaime and his family and as I approached them I was overwhelmed with grief.

Up to that moment the significance of this graduation had been hidden from me, locked away in some remote area of my heart and brain. Jaime was leaving. For five years we had ate, slept, fought and laughed together. Brent had molded and shaped us and we had grown and changed together. We shared a million memories and experiences. He knew what I was thinking and I knew how he felt. So different and yet so alike. We had the same friends, we liked the same girls. We felt the same rage, the same joy. We had made choices over the years based not on the facts of the choice itself but on our friendship. As much as two friends could be, we were joined at the hip. He protected my front, I watched his back.

We were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. He was Phineas: intelligent, athletic, boisterous and charismatic, a magnet that drew everyone towards him, there did not seem to be anything he couldn't do. We all shined brighter around him. I was Gene: quiet and introverted, yet around him I grew more confident, more outgoing. Because he was naturally assertive, I was often accused of being his "tuta", a puppet, but they didn't know us very well. There was a lot more give and take than they would ever know. They didn't know that when he was his most self-assured and adamant, inside he was tormented by self-doubt and feelings of inferiority; that when I backed his play I bolstered his self-confidence as well as mine.

It seemed we had always been together, that we had always been friends. Because of this, it never occurred to me that there might come a day when he would leave me behind. I guess I thought we would live and die together. I stretched out my arm to shake the hand of the conquering hero. If he had maintained his composure I could have made it through unscathed, but the look on his face told me everything. Time to back his play one last time. The enormity of it engulfed me and the tears began to flow, then to gush.

It wasn't a graduation, it was a funeral.

"To each his own it's plain to see
To walk alone you have to be
It's all for you and all for me - You'll see
I'm gonna miss you, yes, I will
No matter who you are,
I'll love you still
For my life is my conscience, the seeds I sow
I just wanted to let you know.
Familiar faces that I've seen
Turnin' red and turnin' green
They just got caught with writing on their sleeve
I guess I'll leave
I'm gonna miss you, yes, I will
No matter who you are, I'll love you still
Will you cancel my papers and lock the door?
'Cause I ain't gonna be 'round no more
Will I make it through the summer,
Breaking ties with the old and new?
Losing one just gains another
There is nothing I can do
I'm gonna miss you, yes, I will
No matter who you are I'll love you still
For my life is my conscience, the seeds I sow
And I just wanted to let you know"
~ To Each His Own by America

Part 50: For Whom the Bell Tolls

2011-04-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Dong! Dong! Dong!

For four long years I would jerk awake to the sound of the Chapel bells pealing loudly every Sunday morning beginning at 6:00 a.m., calling the staff and their families to the early morning service.

Donggggg! ....... The Kalinga Quasimodo would wait for the last echo to fade away, allowing you to drift off to sleep again, before yanking the rope again.
Dong! Dong! This would continue on for a long miserable hour, then a blissful reprieve of an hour and half of silence before the bells would begin ringing again.

Dong! ........ Dong! Dong! now ringing to call parishioners to the second service of the morning. By then most of us had resigned ourselves to the fact that our sleep was over and got up.

Dong!.... Dong! Dong!

For four long years I listened to the complaints and threats about the Chapel bell and how they would resolve the problem - everything from placing a roll of toilet paper over the clapper to stealing the entire bell! Anyone trying to sleep in on Sundays had a tough time of it. There was no escaping it, the bells could be plainly heard everywhere on campus, the sound bouncing and echoing off the hills and buildings. The boys had it worse than the girls, as our dorms were situated closest to the Chapel.

My first two years in my room below the Infirmary it wasn't too bad, our dorm parents made us younger kids get up anyway and go to breakfast every Sunday at 7:00. Fresh fruit, juice, pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, fried eggs and sometimes cheese omelets. Sunday morning breakfasts were the best. But, for the upper classmen trying to sleep in, it really must have been hell, especially for the boys in Weiser Hall, directly across from the Chapel.

Dong! ........ Dong! Dong!

We were not the first, decades of boarding students had their dreams rudely interrupted by the loud clanging. Generations of boarders plotted and conspired against this usurper of their Sunday morning slumbers. It was something that unified and joined us together, our mutual dislike for the Chapel Bell.

Now in my fifth year at Brent, ensconced with all the male boarders in the New Boys Dorm, I became more acutely aware of that damn bell. Situated almost parallel with the Chapel, I could clearly see the bell tower from my bedroom window. I tried stuffing cotton balls in my ears, I learned to sleep with a pillow over my head, turned the radio on in an attempt to drown out the noise. Nothing worked. Weekly I listened to this new batch of boarders bitching about the bell. Bleary eyed, they would sit on the student lounge steps cursing bell and bell ringer. Schemes and plans, variations of which I had heard a thousand times before spewed from their lips.

One Saturday afternoon, in the spring 1976, I decided enough was enough. I was done with just cussing about it.
If you hate it so much why don't you guys do something about it?
There were some non-committal responses and mutterings.
Fine. I'll do something about it.
Leaping to my feet I pointed to Andy McMullen and another kid.
You guys come with me.
Sending one to get a roll of toilet paper, Andy and I scrounged up a ladder. Heart pounding, with the two kids holding the ladder I climbed up into the bell tower. Once up there I realized that the toilet paper roll idea would not work. What to do. Then looking at the knot an idea popped into my head. Carefully reaching up I leaned forward and untied the rope from the bell - just enough to disable the bell, but not enough for the rope to fall. Success!

The following morning was blissfully sweet, not one ring from the hated chapel bell. Silence. Blessed Silence. For the first time in almost five years I got to sleep in. Some who claimed to be awake swore they heard a low clunk as the clapper vainly tried to strike the bell. By supper that night the word had spread amongst the boarders. We were instant heroes!

On Monday morning, however, for the second time that school year I was called into the Headmaster's office. Someone had seen us carrying the ladder. Teachers were outraged. Some wanted us expelled, others wanted us suspended for a month. Dr Ralph Rodriguez was in charge and asked us for a description of our shenanigans. I told him the whole story in vivid detail, and he laughed when I was done. Shaking his head he said "Boys, I know it was just a silly prank, but the staff is very irate about the whole thing and are screaming for your blood! I am going to have to do something. I am considering suspending you from school for two weeks."

Vaguely I could see that it had less to do with the Chapel Bell and more to do with the general labor situation at Brent and the new generation of "disrespectful" students. They needed an outlet for their frustrations and we were it. Better than being expelled, but still bad news. Gathering up my courage I spoke up.
But Sir, just last week Dick was caught with alcohol in his room and he was only campused for a month.

Dr Ralph swiveled in his chair looking out the window across the campus. His desk clock ticking loudly, we waited in silence awaiting our sentence. Finally, he turned back with a big smile on his face.
"Ok. Two weeks campused, woodpile duty. Apologize to the staff. That's my final decision."

It was a wonderful world.

Part 49: Surprised By Joy

2011-04-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."

-C.S. Lewis

It was a warm, dry January when school started again. The soccer field and Neutral were not their normal vibrant green. Noticeably absent was the daily afternoon shower that usually rolled in between 3:30 and 4:00. Water shortages were already beginning to be a problem around the city.

We took advantage of all this warm weather by playing football, Frisbee and Red Rover after school. The football games were played with no pads or helmets, 12 to 14 players per team, all on the field at the same time. Other than the quarterback there were no set positions, everyone was a linebacker and a potential receiver. We'd play with abandon, crashing in to each other like some medieval horde, without regard to potential injuries. Clothes were torn, lots of cracked skulls, bloody noses and bruised ribs.

We played Red Rover the same way. One day I was sprinting across the line when I was grabbed from behind. I wrapped my arms around a tree and tried to pull myself across. Someone grabbed one leg, somebody else grabbed another, lifting me off the ground, trying to pull me away from the tree. Then a third person peeled my hands off the tree. I slid down the tree on my face, the bark peeling away strips of skin from my nose and cheeks. Jack and Jaime helped me to my feet. I thought I was down only for a second, but when I got up Neutral was mostly empty, the opposing team having vanished. Where did everybody go?
"Well, you know, people are kind of scared of you"
I didn't know what to make of that, I guess I had been a little intense lately.

Brent was competing in the annual week of citywide PRISSA games and the whole school went down to watch. Basketball, soccer, track and field events were part of the line up at Burnham Park. Mario Sarmiento and Peter Naylor were especially talented in the track and field events and we whooped and hollered every time they took the field. Peter was from New Zealand and liked to compete barefoot which endeared him to the local mountain men.

After the competitions ended for the day we would wander about downtown, shopping or getting something to eat. Some days there was enough time to catch a movie before I had to be back on campus. We would go as a group and one day I found myself sitting next to my former girlfriend from my very first year at Brent, who now was a Sophomore. Her friends were trying to hook us up, but it was a casual friendship; we hung out together, she made me laugh. That afternoon while watching The Return of the Pink Panther she reached out and took my hand in hers. Still a little gun shy, I wasn't sure about this, but I was surprised to find that after four years my hand still remembered hers. In that round about way that people do, we talked about going steady again, she wanted to, I was hesitant about entering into another serious relationship. I told her I needed to think about it and promised her an answer soon.

I was one of half a dozen science fair winners from Brent who would be going to the Regional High School Science Fair being held in the town of San Fernando. We loaded up the bus with our exhibits and headed down to the beach. It was anti-climatic for me, I got eliminated when the judges came through during the very first round of judging. That was fine with me, I could hardly concentrate anyway.

That night after supper I walked down to the beach by myself and watched the waves crashing on the shore. I thought about the girl and the decision I had to make, I didn't know what to do. I was in turmoil, once again thoughts and feelings I thought I had left behind came boiling to the surface. I prayed for guidance, I prayed for peace of soul and mind, I prayed for release from my despair. The wind whipped about me as I paced back and forth in the dark; and then there on the beach a wave of joy passed through me.

No angel appeared, the heavens didn't open up, there was no burning bush, I heard no voices. But there on the sand, by the churning sea, time stopped for a moment and I was left with hope and peace.

In the morning I caught a bus back to Baguio. I was eager to get back home and see the girl. By the time I got to Brent the calm I had felt the night before had left me and I reviewed the pros and cons once again... I was going up the hill towards Ogilby Hall when it occurred to me all of a sudden. I could trust her. She would never lie to me, she would always be there. Walking through the locker room I saw her standing by the book store, talking with some friends. I slipped up beside her and she searched my face for an answer. She must have found it, because she smiled and took my hand.

Part 48: The First Cut is the Deepest

2011-03-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

"I used to be a King and everything around me
turned to gold.
I thought I had everything and now I'm left without a hand to hold.
But it's all right, I'm O.K. How are you?
For what it's worth, I must say I loved you.
And in my bed late at night, I miss you.
Someone is going to take my heart
But no one is going to break my heart again"
- from "I Used To Be A King" by Graham Nash

Funny how life goes on around you; the sun rose every day, people laughed and sang. So I adjusted to the single life. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, made new friends, hung out with a different crowd.

As so often happened at Brent, some kids didn't return after the holidays, leaving us to wonder what happened to them. Mike Kendrick never came back to Brent after the Christmas break, I got a letter from him a few weeks later telling me that they had moved back to Australia. He told me to write him, but he didn't provide a return address.

One of my new friends was Jack McMullen, I liked his sense of humor and admired his toughness. He was strong as an ox and his temper made it best to be on his good side. One day I saw him pick up a picnic table and hold it above his head with one hand and then throw it across Neutral. But mostly he was a good natured, jolly fellow and fun to be around.

I was still avoiding the ex, so Jack, Jaime and I spent a lot of our weekends off campus, hanging out with some of our day student friends from Camp John Hay, Dayne Florence, Vic Horne and Keith McCullough.

Jack displayed his non politically correct sense of humor one day by making a wooden cross, then cutting up his sheets to make two hooded shrouds. Then soaking the cross with lighter fluid, he set it ablaze and we stood covered by our sheets waiting for the Base "Blue Bus" to arrive from John Hay. It then occurred to me that maybe this was not such a good thing to be doing. Keith alighted from the bus stopped and then fell down laughing when he saw us at the top of Neutral. He got up and ran up the hill toward us and tackled Jack and they wrestled for awhile. Keith spent the rest of the school day wearing Jack's sheet. He was a big guy, thank goodness he had a good sense of humor.

We were working daily on Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance", they were trying to whip us into shape. Mrs Villaba rehearsed us individually and in groups on the songs and Mrs Viduya worked with us on our lines. It was tough for me, not only was I not much of a singer, but my ex and her new beau were in the play as part of my pirate band. Most scenes where I was on stage they were on it too. I pretended to be over it but it was killing me. Fortunately most of my singing was relegated to a few lines here and there and for the rest I was backed up by a chorus of "pirates".

Finally, it was time for our performance. We were as good as we would ever get. I remembered all my lines and my voice only cracked once or twice. All in all we did moderately well, we had good material to work with, the audience laughed at our lines and songs and we didn't embarrass ourselves too badly. I got something out of it anyway, I kept my pirate costume and wore it at Brent's Halloween Carnival later that month.

I decided not to go home for Christmas that year. I put off getting my tickets until the last minute. Then when I was sure there were no available seats till well after the holiday season, I telegraphed home my apologies and watched my friends pack and leave one by one. None of them invited me home, but that was my fault, I didn't tell any of them I was staying. Misery loves company and I was it.

It wasn't too bad at first, although the silence in the dorm was deafening. I cleaned my room daily and listened to AFRTS. I joined the Christmas shoppers and browsed the markets. I ate most of my meals at the school. Mr Keddie and Mr Spitzer were there along with a few other of the boarding faculty so the dining room would be operating for the duration of the holidays. I was sitting in the lounge after lunch one afternoon, reading by the fire, when I was surprised to see an old familiar face from my first year at Brent. I recognized her right away, she vaguely remembered me, but we slowly reacquainted ourselves. Homesick for her family, friends and the country of her childhood, she hadn't been back for four years. Now she was home from college and had stopped by to see her old school. I supposed her classmates had all moved away and I was the only one she sort of knew. She wanted to know what I was doing there on the empty campus and I told her I was staying in the dorm for the holidays. I saw her almost daily after that, sometimes we would drive around so she could see the landmarks of the city where she grew up.

A few times I went over to her folks house for a meal, sometimes just to hang out and watch them bake cookies and build a gingerbread house. It was nice to have someone to talk to and I felt safe with this college girl. She invited me to spend Christmas day with her family and at first I said "no, I don't want to intrude", but later when her mother asked me again, I agreed. It had been kind of lonely at night and I had been dreading Christmas. I really liked her family, I liked their warmth and laughter, the love they showed for each other. They probably didn't approve of my hair, but they never said a word about it and made me welcome. Christmas morning came and I was surprised and touched when there were gifts for me; later we sat down for the best Christmas meal I could ever remember.

She had been looking through her sister's Ganza yearbooks, she had read some of the things I had written. She asked me about them, commenting about a line here or there, asking for the back story behind a poem or two. She wanted to know if I was still writing and asked to see what I was working on. I had given up writing by then, I had written everything I could till I was all dried up. But she persisted, so reluctantly I showed her my notebook and after reading through it she asked me about it. Slowly but surely she coaxed out the story of my misery, things that I thought I had buried away for ever. I don't remember how long I talked, or the words she said to me afterwards. I do remember the hurt and pain at having to relive it.

One day while touring around the city in her parents car we stopped to admire the scenic view. There by the side of the road she put her arms around me, then kissed me. The passengers of a Jeepney driving by whooped and hollered but she wouldn't let go. A wave of emotion rolled over me: confusion and fear. My heart screamed out it's rage and pain, then another wave flowed through my hardened heart: a whisper of hope.

She was gentle and patient; by the time she left and school began I was ready to try again.

Part 47: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

2011-03-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

"When you were young and on your own, how did it feel to be alone?
... But only love can break your heart, try to be sure right from the start.
Yes, only love can break your heart. What if your world should fall apart? "
- Neil Young

I spent a week before school started with Michael Kendrick at his home on the tip Bataan peninsula. His dad worked for the Australian Ford company and his house was in a small modern company development in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest village, surrounded by tall cogan grass. There was a newly paved two lane that ran in front of the housing development and past an abandoned unfinished ten story hotel and finally ended at cliffs overlooking the island of Corregedor. It was an odd place to find a community of Australians. There was nothing to do out there, but every morning there was a ferry that took the bored housewives into Manila. We did that a few times, we listened to records, he liked some Australian singer called Olivia Newton-John. But mostly we spent the days riding mini bikes up and down the empty road. One day we were blindly tearing through the tall grass and after awhile decided to pull up and walk around. We could see a glimmer of sky ahead and pushing our way towards it we suddenly found ourselves standing on the edge of a precipice! If we had driven another ten feet we would have gone right over!

I arrived back for my fifth year at Brent with a new sense of purpose and confidence. I was a Junior and felt like I was at the top of my game. But as the days and weeks progressed I came to find a Brent radically different from the way I knew it. Sure, the campus was the same, I had the same dorm room, arranged in the same layout I had the year before. But for the first time since I had started there in 1971, there were more new students than returning students. This was true with the faculty as well, we had all new dorm parents for both Hamilton Hall and the Boys Dorm; new teachers now outnumbered the old ones. In the dorms Jaime and I now had been there the longest. It was odd to be the "old timers" at Brent. There were just a few other boarders coming back, Mitz Lizares was returning as a Senior, James Jensen and Mike Kendrick were the only two returning from our class; it was only their second year at Brent. There were no returning Sophomores or Freshmen. Over at the girls dorm Leigh Gilmore, Susan Kendrick, Chris Fassnacht, Kelly Low and Renee Case were the only returning girl boarders. Amongst the day students it was slightly better, there was a slightly larger sprinkling of students who had been there for ten or more years. Brent depended on returning students to maintain the continuity. In years past, the old timers (teachers and students alike) shepherded the new students through the process of acclimating to parochial school life. This was especially true in the dorms, where the restrictions and confinement of boarding life were especially tough on kids who never had to deal with so many regulations before. Now they railed against the system and viewed us as out of step, out of touch and weird. They rebelled against the rules, the food, Chapel, prayer at meal time, even singing the Philippine National Anthem at flag raising. Never in all my time at Brent had I seen so many boarders being "campused" or on "woodpile duty" on a regular basis. Things seemed out of balance and on the verge of chaos and anarchy.

The school year had started normally enough, I went through my usual routines and when the boarders began to arrive my room already had that comfortable lived in look, as if I never left. We had new dorm parents, Mr Keddie and Mr Spitzer, two former Peace Corps volunteers. They were really laid back, casual in attire and attitude, casual about rules, drinking and drugs. Jaime took the room across from mine, the same one he had last year too. Michael had the room right next to me, James was next to Jaime. New students Jack McMullen and Jon Peiti were on our floor, Jack's brothers Andy and Ron were on the floors below as was Jon's brother Robert.

One morning I was crossing over to the locker room when a taxi pulled up and a woman and a teenager got out. They stood there indecisively, alternately turning from Binstead, to Ogilby, then to the Office and back again, clutching suitcases and looking lost. I went up to them and taking a bag, walked them to the Office. When they emerged a while later after registering I helped them with their luggage to Hamilton Hall. Leigh Gilmore was there and I introduced her to the new boarder. The mother was effusive with her thanks and her daughter who was a Sophomore flashed a smile at me, her eyes sparkling. My heart leaped from its locker and flopped about on the floor. Euphoria. I was smitten.

She joined us at our table that night, the following weekend we went to the movies and by the next week we were a couple. She seemed to like my quirky ways, she asked to wear my jacket. I was on cloud nine. The more I got to know her the more I came to believe she was ideal for me. The world was a wonderful, beautiful place; everything was as it should be. Things were looking up in school too, I was surprised to find myself nominated and elected class president, although I suspected that no one really wanted the job. Still, the year was turning out to be perfect.

This new found love took the edge off classes, as the new teachers were just as annoying as the new students. We had a new art teacher (another former Peace Corps volunteer) who, on the first day of class, asked us to paint a color wheel. But she didn't want it to look like a traditional color wheel. So I made one that was amoebae shaped and got a "D"! I looked to see what everyone else did and theirs were the regular circle exactly like the one in the textbook. They got "A's". What the hell.

Then there was my English Lit teacher. He loved James Joyce, he even wore a little Irish cap and had an Irish temper to match. His temper regularly got the best of him, on more than one occasion he got into shoving matches during student/faculty basketball games. (The thing I really didn't like about him was the way he treated his Filipina wife, publicly ridiculing her in front of the students, faculty and staff.) On the class syllabus I noticed that the only author on the list was Joyce, and all of his books were on the reading list. I was not a fan of Salinger and Catcher in the Rye and found Joyce's Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man equally annoying. One day after a protracted argument about why I thought the young artist was an idiot, he marched me over to the office. There in the Headmaster's office he ranted, raved and foamed at the mouth. He wanted me expelled, suspended at the very least. Dr Ralph Rodriguez, assistant headmaster and in charge while Dr McGee was in Manila, stared at him bemusedly, then asked me to state my case. I calmly told him my side of the story and why I found Joyce so irrelevant. When I was done, Dr Ralph turned to my teacher.

Has he failed to submit any homework?
No
Has he failed any exams?
No
Has he been disruptive in class or disrespectful to you? (this had me worried, I was sure I was guilty on both counts)
Well, no, but he was arguing with me
So your objection is that he disagrees with your point of view?

My teacher started raving again and Dr Ralph turned to me and with a pat on the back he lead me to the door. "I don't care for Joyce much either" he whispered. Aloud he said "You can go to your next class, there are few things I need to clarify here." As I left the office I heard renewed shouting behind the closed door.

Over the coming months these new teachers (and our dorm masters) and their disregard for laws and local customs would find themselves in and out of trouble with the authorities. Even our Headmaster would find himself in court facing charges.

Meanwhile, life continued at Brent. There was a school dance at Camp John Hay and Kevin Martin, as Senior class president, auctioned off the freshmen and new students to raise funds for Senior Skip Day. The Junior class would be sponsoring the Prom this year and I was surprised when Bessie Manois, our class treasurer, told me how much cash we had in the bank. Of course, under the strict supervision of our class advisor Ms Estacio, we had saved every penny we earned since seventh grade. Bake sales and our booths at the Halloween Carnival had done very well. This year at the carnival we had the rights to the "restaurant" and that should bring in a lot more cash.

Mrs Viduya held tryouts for the play Pirates of Penzance, where, despite my inadequate vocal talents, Mrs Viduya gave me the role of the Pirate King. Fortunately, I didn't have too many solos. Mark Viduya was the Major General, my classmate Greg Clavano had the lead role of Frederic, Marie Strasser portrayed his love interest Mabel and my girlfriend played Ruth, the "piratical maid of all work".

Out in the real world "The Thrilla In Manila" was getting underway. We were excited and impressed that the fight of the century would be taking place in the Philippines. (President Marcos had offered to sponsor the event - which everyone suspected was to divert attention away from all the arrests going on under Martial Law). We gathered around the TV and watched while Ali and Frazier battled it out for 14 rounds. I was a little sorry for old Joe, he took a beating. A few days later I took a worse thrashing.

It was a big surprise when, on one sunny day at breakfast, that I found myself without a girlfriend. Apparently she liked the captain of the basketball team better. I was devastated, I never saw it coming.

Some of my friends knew it but didn't bother to tell me. The signs were there of course. One night a few weeks before I awoke to the sound of laughter coming from the next room. I got up and went next door to find Leigh and some of the girls had snuck over from their dorm. A bunch of the guys on our floor were there and so was my girlfriend. I didn't think anything of it, I waved at her, but I was too tired to stay up and went back to bed. I didn't recognize that she was being distant.

I was crushed. I stumbled around like a zombie. There was no consolation, I had poured my heart and soul into that relationship. I felt so betrayed. The worst part was that she seemed so happy, much happier than she had ever been with me. I attempted to be brave and tried to make the best of things.

I was the idiot with a sick smile on his face. It was hard, there was no escaping them. She was there at every meal, sitting at his table now. I could hear her voice, her laughter. There they were together on the steps of the student lounge, cuddling on the Neutral. He was on my floor, I saw him in the bathroom, in the halls, they were together in our dorm sala, there he was with his arm over her shoulder and she was still wearing my jacket. So, I began avoiding any place I thought they might be. I kept to myself, hung out at the library or just stayed in my room. Days and weeks went by, the loneliness and isolation, at first so unbearable, now seemed like an old friend. I wore it like a mantle, my crown of thorns.

"If I laugh, just a little bit, maybe I can forget the chance
that I didn't have to know you. And live in peace, in peace.
If I laugh, just a little bit, maybe I can recall the way that I used to be, before you.
And sleep at night - and dream. If I laugh, baby if I laugh just a little bit... "
- Cat Stevens

Part 46: There and Back Again

2011-02-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

"As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

Back at Brent I stripped my bed and packed up the last of my things for storage. We didn't have to haul our trunks down to storage this year, as long as they were clearly labeled they would be moved for us. Then, after racing up to the dining hall for a quick bite to eat, Tommy Quinto drove us to the airport.

It was a long wait at Loakan airport, the flight was full and there was a lot of extra luggage, mostly from Brent students going home for the summer or back to the States. They were having difficulty getting all the luggage stowed away and had to repack the plane. They didn't make us wait on board, but kept us in the departure area. While we were waiting the airline passed out glasses of orange juice. I was thirsty and drank it down. Shortly thereafter I made a mental note to never eat bacon and eggs and drink orange juice so early in the morning after a night of drinking.

Finally, the plane was loaded and we boarded. Cindy was sitting next to me in the window seat, I had the aisle. After the Prom, things between us had returned to the status quo. We taxied to the far end of the tarmac and came about. Then we began lumbering down the runway, engines straining. We didn't seem to be going very fast and after a certain point I realized that the wheels were not lifting off the ground.

Baguio's Loakan Airport is known for it's short, concave runway with cliffs on either end. Because the runway is so short, larger planes cannot use it. Even for the F-27 with it's large wingspan this runway was a little tricky. To help the pilots out, the Airport had installed markers every 50 feet along the runway. Large black lettering on a white background told the pilots how many feet were left till the end of the runway. A long hazard yellow line crossed the runway at the point where the FAA felt the wheels needed to leave the ground and a corresponding yellow marker at the same point shouted out a warning. From that point on the runway was crosshatched with thick painted lines. We called it the "Point of No Return".

I had been chatting with my seatmate, casually glancing out the window, noting the markers as we passed them. When we passed the yellow warning marker I turned with a grin to Cindy "We should have lifted off by now!"
Oh No! She covered her face with her hands and assumed the crash position. We continued to barrel down the runway, no sign of slowing down. Leaning over, I could see the fence rapidly growing larger. Finally, the wheels left the ground and a split second later we passed over the fence, then the road on the edge of the cliff. As we cleared the road the overloaded plane dropped for a few long seconds into the canyon below. Passengers screamed, some shouted, then burst into nervous laughter as we slowly began to rise again.

Leeanne, Lulie, Jaime and I were going to spend a few weeks together. Jaime's dad was going to drive us around Northern Luzon and I was just waiting for them to get to Manila to pick us up. Leeanne was busy saying goodbye to her boyfriend and I didn't like being the third wheel all the time. It was raining heavily in Manila and some parts of the city were flooded. I did a little shopping with Cindy, went to the movies and out for some pizza. Her folks maintained a home in Manila too and one night after I dropped her off I found myself stranded due to the high water. After some extensive arguing with the housekeeper, Cindy was allowed to put me up for the night. The Ya-Ya showed me my room, gave me the evil eye and pointedly shut the door firmly behind her as she left. I got the message. No Funny Business Mister! I have to admit I was tempted. By the next afternoon the waters had receded and the family chauffeur drove me back to the Mission Guest House.

Jaime and his Dad showed up a few days later with Lulie in tow. A short time later Leeanne arrived by taxi and we were off. For the girls, this would be their first time to see parts of the country not normally visited by tourists; they were going to get to taste new foods. Away from the cities, restaurants and shops, they got to see the life in the rural areas that Jaime and I experienced growing up. We took the National Highway north to the very top of Luzon to Aparri, the highway ending at the sea. Like Vigan, Aparri was a centuries old Spanish town located in the province of Cagayan and had been an important port during the heyday of the Spanish Galleon trade. There the ships would pick up bales of tobacco from the Cagayan valley before heading on to Manila.

There was little tourism there in those days, no big hotels or fancy restaurants. We had the beaches to ourselves; white sands and crystal clear water. Leeanne had been reading Jaws by Peter Benchley and was a little skittish in the water, constantly looking about and jumping if something brushed past her legs. Of course, this set my devilish mind in action and I scoured the beach for a suitable piece of driftwood. I found a large chunk of wood shaped like a dorsal fin and slipped in to the water when her back was turned, holding it under with my feet. Then, easing off behind her I slid under the water and holding the driftwood above me I swam towards her. She didn't notice the "fin" til it was just a few feet from her. Then the screams! I could hear them plainly even under the water! She was out of the water and clear up to the truck faster than you could say "We're going to need a bigger boat". She had some choice words for me when she saw me holding the driftwood.

There was an underlying sadness on this trip, despite the fun we were having. In the quiet moments, between the laughter, the somber misery returned to our faces. Leeanne was heading off to Montreal to law school, Lulie to Hollins College in Virginia. Besides the friends she was leaving behind at Brent, Leeanne was thinking of her boyfriend in Manila. So, when a few days in to our trip she came down sick, I think it was the sadness and loneliness more than anything else. While Jaime' s Dad drove her back to Manila, we remaining three caught a open sided Dangwa bus to Sagada.

The Episcopal Church ran a guest house called St. Joseph's and we reserved ourselves some rooms and went out to tour the town. We wandered through the woods, climbed the limestone crags; we spent a few quiet days relaxing, reading, writing. Then I caught a bus back to Baguio and then on to Manila; Jaime and Lulie took a bus to his home in Solano.

We had been together as a group since 1973. A lifetime of tears, laughter and loving; now these were our last days together. In the glory days we would have fought and died for each other. How could an insignificant calendar date in time abruptly conclude our relationships?

Our Fellowship was at an end.

Part 45: Picasso's Last Words

2011-02-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

"What do you think an artist is?... he is ... constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly?"
- Pablo Picasso

Brent School held a Cultural Fair in early May, organized by one of our new teachers, Dr Robert Fox. He had been in the Philippines for four decades, serving in various capacities with the National Museum of the Philippines since 1948 and formerly taught at both the International School in Manila and the University of the Philippines. It was a real coup by Dr McGee to get this prestigious Professor of Anthropology to teach at Brent.

"In 1958, Dr Fox led a National Museum team in conducting extensive excavations on two sites in Batangas, considered to be the first systematic excavation involving the National Museum in the country. In the 1960s, by then the head of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum, he led a six-year archaeological research project in Palawan, focusing mainly on the caves and rockshelters of Lipuun Point in the southern part of the island. Its most outstanding site is the Tabon Cave complex where the only Pleistocene human fossils found in the Philippines at that time were discovered. The fossil finds included a skullcap, jaw bones, teeth and several other fragmented bones."
- from the history of The National Museum of the Philippines

The Cultural Fair was a school wide event held over a three day period, it brought together archaeological and anthropological exhibits, artisans and dancers comprised of various representatives of the Mountain Province tribes: Bontoc, Ibaloi, Ifugao, Isneg, Kalinga, and Kankanaey. Faculty and students from Baguio Universities and High Schools were invited to attend, as were various dignitaries and clergy. A special luncheon in the dining hall was served for the big shots and we boarders were relegated to slightly warm sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper handed out by Domingo and Arsenio from tables on the Neutral. At least there were chips and soft-drinks to go along with them. And there always was the Canteen. What with school out and so many people on campus, Freddie and his canteen were doing a furious business.

No classes were held during this event, but we had been given assignments by our teachers, and most had to write some kind of paper on various topics. We wandered from display to display, taking notes, but it was the live performances and interactions with the artisans that really fascinated me. I was particularly interested in watching the basket makers making the backpacks called pasiking, the weavers sitting on the floor with their hand looms and the potters making clay jars for storing rice and water. They were selling the items they made and we were encouraged to help support these cottage industries. From a selection of unfired pieces I picked out two small jars, a tea pot and a larger jar. On Friday they took all the items and covered them first in rice hulls and then firewood before lighting the fire. They kept the fire burning all day and night, adding more hulls and wood when needed. Early Saturday morning they let the fire burn out and by late afternoon they raked the ashes away from the fired pieces. The clay had turned brick red with spots of black, where the ashes had discolored it. I was disappointed to find that my large jar had cracked during the firing process, but my smaller pieces were still intact.

After the Cultural Fair ended, talk quickly turned to the Junior-Senior Prom that was coming up in a few weeks. I wanted to go but couldn't because I was a Sophomore.

For the past five months I had been trying to get this certain girl to go steady. No luck. Cindy and her sister Kelly were from Canada and their Dad managed a paper mill in Bislig, a town on the far southern side of Mindanao. Cindy was my age but she was a Senior. Jaime's sister Renee was always teasing her half jokingly that she was "natangsit" or "mayabang" or "hambug", which is to say she was a little stuck up. She sat at our table at dinner every night and afterwards I walked her back to the dorm. She sat next to me in Chapel and we went to movies together every weekend; but I wasn't really getting anywhere, no kisses, no hand holding. She often told me she "just wanted to be friends", so I was quite surprised when one day she asked me if wanted to take her to the Prom! I didn't mind that she asked me, I would be one of the few guys in my class who would be going. In the next breath she said "Of, course you will first have to get something suitable to wear..."

With the Prom quickly approaching, I had to hurry. Now that I had a date, I needed to get a complete outfit. So the next afternoon, Dana Busse and I headed downtown to Lambino's to get something made. A really fine tailor, I had been having all my pants made there since Norman first took me there four years earlier. First we selected fabric for shirts and then we both decided to pick the same fabric for our pants and vests. Then, after getting measured, we went to look for shoes. Normally, I was an earth shoe kind of guy, which was totally unsuitable for the Prom. I found a pair with two inch heels which were all the rage. Some of the guys had even taller heels, but I found it kind of hard to walk in them.

A few days before the big night we went back to Lambino's to pick up our suits (sans jackets). They fit perfectly and we agreed that we looked really cool.

The night of the Prom, Dana and I walked up to Hamilton Hall to pick up our dates. I presented Cindy with an orchid corsage and she gave her stamp of approval to my clothes. All the other girls came down to admire the finery and see us off. Then it was time to go; George drove up in the school's VW "Combi", he would be taking us over to the Main Club at Camp John Hay. The dinner was a wonderful formal affair, afterwards we all got up en masse to dance. Making sure we were on the floor for every "slow" dance, I finally got to get my arms around Cindy. Oh, what a night.

Two days later and I watched as some of my closest friends marched down the aisle and up on to the stage. As president of the Junior class, Jaime lead the way, the graduating seniors in procession behind him. It was a somber moment as Pomp and Circumstance swelled. A time for endings, a time for beginnings. The Seniors choked their way through a song by Seals & Crofts, We May Never Pass This Way Again. Afterwards, lots of hugging, lots of tears.

After graduation that night we went to a party being held off campus at the home of one of the graduates. Honestly, I can't tell you a lot about the party. Most of the seniors were there, there was lots of food; I remember there was chocolate cake and cases of Cold Duck. Lots of cases. Turned up loud on the stereo was Paul McCartney and the Wings new album Band on the Run. We all seemed to know the words to every song and when Picasso's Last Words came on we lustily joined in.
" Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore"
Well, we sure could and we did. Cases. We were still up when the sun rose the next morning and a bleary eyed Mr Pettitt drove those of us who had to catch a plane to Manila back to Brent to pick up our luggage. He was still suffering from the previous nights over indulgence and we came close several times to running off the road or into a tree. As we weaved back and forth across the yellow line, I made a mental note to add Cold Duck right next to Ginebra San Miguel on my list of alcoholic beverages I would never drink again.

Part 44: Ride the High Country

2011-01-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

Since the very beginning of Bishop Brent's Baguio School, outdoor excursions were an integral part of the curriculum. Santo Tomas, Asin Hot Springs and trips to the beach were regular parts of student life. On February 28, 1910, the first annual Great Northern Hike up into the mountains of the Cordilleras was undertaken. For the first few decades the entire school would take part in this adventure. Headmaster, teachers, students, the cook leading a pack mule loaded with pots, pans and supplies would head north on foot. On occasion even Bishop Brent would make the 250 mile trek; from Baguio up 2000 feet to Haight's Place, on to Suyoc, Cervantes, Sagada, Bontoc and finally Banaue and then back to Baguio.

After the school went co-ed in 1926, it was deemed to be unladylike for the girls to take part in the annual hike. Post WWII the Great Northern Hike had become a class activity, limited to those who signed up to go, usually Seniors and Juniors and now they went by van, bus or truck.

So it was that I found myself part of Mr Pettitt's field trip into the Mountain Province. We were to collect field research and write a term paper that would count as 25% of our final grade. Norman, Curby, CJ, Scott Jazynka and Lulie were just some of students who had signed up. We loaded up a truck with our gear and supplies, gym mats on the truck bed and a tarp over the back half to keep them dry and give those of us riding in the back a little shade. Canvas straps were woven between the end posts to keep us from bouncing out on the rough narrow mountain roads. The chaperones took turns riding up in the cab which was not as much a luxury as you might think. The roads were very narrow, at times one side of the truck would scrape the cliff walls while on the other the outside tires hugged the edge of the road. It was much more scary being inside the truck than in back where we could only see the road behind us.

Our driver was George Latawan, a mountain man who wore cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and US Army surplus coat. He drove fast in Baguio and drove faster on the open mountain roads. I don't think Pettitt or the other teachers on our trip knew it, but George always kept a bottle of Ginebra San Miguel behind the seat of the truck. Now that he was away from the school he was able to partake of his favorite beverage from time to time. Ginebra was very popular among the mountain tribes. We would pass villages where mounds of empty bottles were stored in fish nets, waiting to be taken down the mountain to be sterilized and refilled. The youngest member on this field trip, I got the distinct feeling that quite a few of them didn't like having an underclassmen along on the trip. Some of them complained to Pettitt but he had already made up his mind. So I spent my free time hanging out with George. I helped him each morning to get the truck loaded and ready to go; I became his "sidekick" during this trip.

We spent most of the first day driving, it was hot and dusty in the back of the truck and after a few hours we got used to the amazing scenery around us. But then the fog started rolling in, so thick now that we could only see the road thirty feet or so ahead or behind. Here and there the tops of the tall Benguet Pines poked out and then rock formations, looking like ghostly towers or parapets of castles appeared! Sagada. Home of famed anthropologist William Henry Scott. Clean, pristine, pine forests right up into the town; white and green houses and buildings that looked like Brent. The old church looked medieval which added to the mysterious atmosphere. Sagada was the second largest Episcopal mission in Mountain Province, older than the one in Baguio. Long before Bishop Brent opened his school, Fr. Staunton, another Episcopalian legend was at work in Sagada. He started schools, a lumber mill, acquired a printing press; later a convent was opened.

Dirty and tired we hurried up to unload the truck because it looked like it was going to rain; we were going to sleep in classrooms of one of the schools. Later, when it started to pour, Lulie and I grabbed our soap and shampoo and went out to shower under the downspout. It was wonderful to get the grime of the road off our bodies. Afterwards, we started work on supper. George went up to Mr Pettitt and asked " I need to go into town to pick up some supplies, can I take one of the boys to help me?" That meant me. We left and George made a beeline straight to a local watering hole. He bellied up to the bar and ordered gin with a water chaser and a beer for me. The bartender poured a tall water glass full of Gin and the same size glass with water in it. George drained the Gin and then chugged the water. Mouth open, I stared at him in horror, my stomach burning, beer halfway to my lips. Yikes! He had another, this time drinking it much slower while I drank my beer. Refreshed, we headed back to the school. This would be our routine when we hit a town. Gin for George, Beer for me.

That night as part of our class assignment, a village elder came and told us the old legends of his tribe, of their gods and how his people came to be. George was our interpreter, interjecting his own comments from time to time. The old man told us a story of how the luck of the village had changed when their sacred tree had been cut down. Many years before a group of young men came from a rival village and cut down their tree in retaliation for cutting down that village's sacred tree. Things went from good to bad to worse for the village after that. As we sat around the fire listening to the old man's story George turned to me gleefully and whispered "I was one of the young men who snuck into the village and cut down the tree! Better to cut down a tree than to cut off each others heads!"

The next day we pulled out, headed to the next town. At the next village the local shaman came to read chicken entrails. Apparently you foretell the future by looking at chicken guts. I got delegated to hold the live chicken while it's wings and body were beaten with a stick, something to do with forcing the blood to certain parts of the body. That's me being totally disgusted. Each village was different than the other, not only did the locals dress differently, but the architecture of the homes changed too. It was amazing that from one side of the mountain to the next things could be so different. We were to find that Sagada was an anomaly among the other towns we visited, cleaner, friendlier and more familiar to our Western eyes and tastes. We stayed dirty for days, stopping once at a river to wash. By this time neither the boys or the girls cared about bathing in their underwear, we just wanted to get clean.

The last stop on trip was Banaue, famous for the impressive views of the rice terraces. This time we would be spending the night at a hotel there, overlooking the famed rice terraces. We would have the use of our own beds with clean sheets, flushing toilets, showers and a swimming pool. Heaven. A few hours later, washed, a full stomach we were lazily lounging in the pool watching a single engine plane come up the valley. Thirty minutes later there was a commotion by the bar, and one of my schoolmates came hurrying up. "hey that plane we saw, it crashed! They say some Americans are hurt!" Some local farmers had seen the plane crash and had stopped a passing car to send word to get help. We threw on our clothes and ran out into the parking lot where a truck was getting ready to pull out. We climbed aboard and away we went. We drove a few miles and pulled up next to another truck stopped by the side of the road. There was a heated conversation going on between the local police, the farmers and the occupants of the other vehicle. Apparently the occupants were dead, they were Americans and being apprehensive about handling dead bodies no one wanted to touch them. "They have sent for the PC, they are worried about the dead spirits" someone said. Crude stretchers had been made from branches and blankets by the farmers. Norman and some of the guys grabbed stretchers and headed over the side of the road and I followed. We got to the plane and they were in fact dead and we were going to have to get them out of the plane and back up the mountain. I avoided looking at their faces. Where the seat belts were their clothes were torn and the bones badly broken. They were so heavy. I wondered how their shoes got off their feet. All of a sudden I wasn't so sure I wanted to do this. Fortunately for me there were twice as many Brent students as were needed. Norman took charge and in short order had the bodies out, strapped on the stretchers and mostly covered in blankets. As they filed past me I involuntarily looked at the foot of one of the bodies, it was grayish blue. I found myself wondering at how fast life leaves us; in a short hour the things that mark us as alive are gone. As we made our way back up we passed soldiers climbing down. The PC had arrived.

After we got back to the hotel we had a meeting over drinks, I know I needed one. We were supposed to spend another day there, but no one felt like hanging out. We took a vote and it was decided that we would head back to Brent in the morning. I went to bed early that night, though some Seniors were tempted by the hotel bar.

It was fairly quiet in the back of the truck for the first few hours, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Scott, Curby and I were leaning up against the straps at the end of the truck. It was a little tricky, keeping your balance and leaning back without bouncing out of the back of the truck, but we managed to get the hang of it. One of the girls turned on her cassette player and all of a sudden we were singing along to ABBA and then the three of us did an impromptu dance number to a new song by The Three Degrees called "When Will I see you Again", singing at the top of our lungs. Life goes on.

Part 43: Whistle Down the Wind

2011-01-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

"People forget that when you’re 16,
you’re probably more serious than you’ll ever be again."
- John Hughes

In December of 1974 I turned 16 and I was terribly serious (when I wasn't being goofy). This generally was an impediment, girls like boys who are not so serious or too goofy. It was hard deciding on one or the other and the middle of the road seemed kind of blase. The Seniors were cool and seemed so mature, they were on their way to change the world and I, well sometimes I still wanted to be a kid.

Being a kid meant playing Frisbee or Red Rover on the Neutral and Capture the Flag in the Valley. It also meant doing the duck walk down Session Road arm in arm with my favorite girls. It meant sneaking into Paul Bowman's room every night to turn his electric blanket on high, then waiting for him to wake up screaming. Or helping my buddies Mike Kendrick and Tom Lowman build a secret hideout in the ceiling above our rooms. We opened up the recessed florescent ceiling lights to make a hatchway up into the attic of our dorm. We drug up a couple of mattresses and some throw pillows from the lounge and Tommy wired it up for lights and a fan. Tommy was a fun guy to hang out with, he loved The Beatles, martial arts, scuba diving and was something of a genius. The hideout didn't get much use, after all we had the entire campus to hang out in, but it gave us something to do.

Mr Pettitt was directing a play called Henry IV. No, not the one by Shakespeare, the one by Luigi Pirandello. It is an examination of the fine line between sanity and insanity. A wealthy man falls off his horse during a historical reenactment and wakes up thinking he is Henry IV of Germany. A lot of the characters had pages of dialog, Jaime was playing the title character and had a speech that was 3 pages long. We were all struggling to memorize so many lines, and Pettitt was getting really impatient during our rehearsals. He got fed up one day and issued an ultimatum: have all your lines memorized by next week or the play is off. We practiced hard, each of us helping the other work on their lines when ever we had a free moment. Finally, just a few days before the deadline we thought we had done it. Well, most of us did. A few were still having trouble. I had been working with Jaime and Kevin and they finally had it down. The rehearsal came and we went through our lines and a few made some minor mistakes but not too bad. But then Kevin did his part and forgot a few words of his last speech. That was it. I had worked with Kevin in Murder in the Cathedral and knew he could get it down, but Pettitt was like my dad and had no patience.
Pettitt said "it's off".
For days we tried to reason with him but he wouldn't budge. Months of hard work down the drain. Some of the cast were pissed at Kevin, most were mad at Pettitt for being such a hard ass.

A few months later some of us found it rather annoying that Mr Pettitt took a part in the play Oklahoma! Jaime was still pissed and didn't even try out. It was a big production, it seemed like most of the school was involved one way or the other in the play. Mrs. Tabafunda was real busy sewing costumes for everyone and Mrs. Villaba had her hands full as music director. Some of the roles had multiple actors which made rehearsals complicated and confusing. Leigh & Leeanne got the part of Aunt Eller, Kevin & Jim Evans were Jud Fry, Cindy Johnson and Noni Donohue were Ado Annie, Dayne Florence was Ado Annie's father Andrew, Dana Busse was Curly, Beth Wagner was Laurie. I had a tiny part as one of the cowboys, but I didn't mind, it gave me plenty of time to flirt (in the dark) backstage with Marie Strasser and Margie Molina. Kevin poured himself into the role and gave a memorable performance.

Life in the dorms at Brent School was a wonderful, transformative experience. A school within a school, our education did not conclude with the last class each day. Not having parents or a family to guide me, I put into practice the archaic things I picked up from old movies and novels: a gentleman always holds out the chair for a woman at dinner and always carries a clean handkerchief to present to a lady for those inevitable moments of tears. I learned to listen or at least to pick up on a stray word here or there, a look on the face. In spite of and because of my limited budget I learned to give thoughtful, insightful gifts.

We were a diverse lot, we all came from different social and economic backgrounds. We didn't watch much TV after school or at night, we usually sat on the student lounge steps and talked about the books we were reading and what was going on in the world.

Nixon had resigned, Ford took his place and in February we were let out of class to watch TV as a large group of recently released POWs arrived at Clark Air Force Base. Music was changing too. Something called "Disco" was infiltrating the airwaves. The times they were a changin'.

We didn't always agree and many a heated debate that started on the steps of the student lounge would carry on into the dining room, sometimes afterwards they would carry on late into the night back at the dorm. But in spite of it all, in some strange way, we were bonded together.

In a discussion about empathy, Rug once said that it was all relative. Everyone sees the same event slightly different. My worst or best experience could be minor in the eyes of someone else. "So how can we empathize with someone if we don't experience things the same way?" a classmate asked. You first have to admit that their point of view is valid. Then you have to try and learn what experiences may have formed and shaped them into arriving at that viewpoint.

The boarding students were my surrogate family and though the boys lived in one dorm and the girls in another, most managed to form close bonds. Some were to last a lifetime, some were lost, others found again.

"Whistle down the wind, let your voices carry
Drown out all the rain, light a patch of darkness
treacherous and scary
Howl at the stars, whisper when you are sleeping
I'll be there to hold you, I'll be there to stop
the chills and all the weeping
Make it clear and strong, so the whole night long
every signal that you send, until the very end
I will not abandon you my precious friend
So try and stem the tide, then you'll raise a banner
Send a flare up in the sky, try to burn a torch
and try to build a bonfire
Every signal that you send, until the very end, I'm there
So whistle down the wind, for I have always been right there"

Part 42: Holiday Road

2010-12-20T01:00:00.000-08:00

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;--a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
- "Holidays" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

While lowlanders considered Baguio the vacation destination, we who lived in the city on the other hand usually went somewhere else for our holidays. We got about a week at Thanksgiving and another at Easter, but the longest holiday was Christmas break, lasting close to three weeks. In my first years at Brent I spent the shorter holidays in Baguio with whatever missionary families my parents could pawn me off on. Sometimes I got to spend it at Camp John Hay at a classmate's home. Later, Jaime and I more often than not spent the shorter vacations together with his family in Baguio or at his house in Solano.

I was still nursing crushes on Leeanne and Lulie, but the former had a boyfriend in a band in Manila and Lulie was dating Jaime. But we were still friends and this year we took several trips together down to the lowlands where we'd spend a long weekend at Linda Schwartzendruber's home in Forbes Park or at Lulie Lawry's home on Clark Air Force Base.

Named after William Cameron Forbes (who in 1904 at the age of 34 became the Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the Philippines; 5 years later he was appointed Governor General), Forbes Park was a gated community founded in 1940's. The wealthiest families had homes there; Manila Country Club and the Polo Club were within its boundaries.

Besides the armed guards at the main gate, Linda's home had its own guards at their gate too. Situated right next to the Polo stables, I could see the riders practicing from the upstairs window. The house was enormous, the entry more like a hotel lobby, with a Chinese Rickshaw from Hong Kong under the curved stairway, an antique elephant chair from India and a huge Siberian Tiger skin on the floor. Our whole house in Tacloban could fit into the living room area (really a series of 5 living rooms)! The large dining room was circular and the table in it was too. and there were three kitchens back to back. Despite all the trappings that surrounded them, the Schwartzendrubers were a warm and down to earth couple. He was tall, looked kind of like Cary Grant but spoke more like Gregory Peck. She was dark haired and petite, she reminded me of Harriet Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

When we went to Manila we would stop and pick up a dozen roses to bring to Mrs. Schwartzendruber. Our afternoons were spent shopping in Makati, sometimes we would catch a movie at the Rizal Theater. Leeanne and I saw Young Frankenstein and Earthquake there. In the evenings we'd meet up with other Brent students, congregating together at someplace like Italian Village or Shakey's for pizza and beer. Afterwards, we might go to a schoolmate's home. A few times it was back to Linda's home to swim in her pool, play billiards and take advantage of one of the many fully stocked bars.

Going to Clark was a totally different experience. It was like being stateside, albeit a tropical U.S.A. American cars and trucks, stores and shops, even the neighborhoods looked American.

Founded in 1902 as a US Cavalry post called Fort Stotsenburg, it originally was home of the 26th Cavalry and the 86th and 88th Field Artillery regiments. Eventually the Army Air Corps established an airfield there and Clark Field was born. A bustling air base at the height of the Vietnam War, Clark Air Base was at that time the largest overseas U.S. Military base in the world, covering 156,204 acres. While in the early days most of it was uncultivated grasslands and jungle, the base grew up and around the old army post, a small city surrounded by tall, magnificent trees. The 13th Air Force Headquarters occupied buildings that went back to the early 1900's. The base was an odd mix of American Colonial bungalows and modern track housing. The Officers' Club surrounded by the graceful old homes with large verandas, was a stark contrast to the modern rectangular block housing of the single enlisted men. There were shopping centers, bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants, clubs and schools. In the late 60's and early 70's there were around 8,000 American kids in the base's school system.

Lulie's mother Chloe met us in front of the house with hugs and kisses. A beautiful southern belle, she took a real shine to me and showered me with attention, which kind of annoyed Jaime because he was Lulie's boyfriend after all. But maybe she knew I was the odd man out and was compensating for the agony I was going through. She took me by the elbow and walked me into the house, completely ignoring Jaime. She asked me what I'd like to eat while I was there, she would fix whatever I was hungry for. So we had roast beef, ham, turkey and mashed potatoes, hamburgers and steaks, German chocolate cake, pecan and cherry pies, peach cobbler and ice cream. I was in 7th Heaven. On my second visit to their home she met me at the door with a big pitcher of screwdrivers calling out "Marky, look what I've got!".

One night well after midnight we were sitting around listening to music and talking when Lulie's dad came out in his uniform strapping his side arm to his waist and grabbing his automatic rifle from the closet. "We're on full alert. You kids stay inside till I find out what's going on" he told us. The next morning he called to say we could go outside but we had to stay on the base. Later that morning Lulie got her mom's car and we drove over to the Hobby Store to pick up some leather crafting supplies. She drove around the base to see if we could see what might be going on. The Main Gate was closed and they had big trucks blocking the entrance. The fighter jets were out of the hangers and they were all being armed. Base security trucks with .50 caliber machine guns in the back were driving the perimeter and even patrolling through the residential areas. Lulie and I were out sunning ourselves in the drive way when a jeep drove by slowing down to see if we were OK. It was pretty exciting but I never did find out what was going on.

It was at Clark that I had my first taste of good Irish Whiskey. One night Lulie's parents were having a dinner party for some of their friends and we were helping out in the kitchen. After the meal, it was time for coffee and dessert and Lulie's mom was making Irish Coffee. She carried a tray of cups into the living room but soon returned bearing a single mug. "Mark, taste this, it doesn't seem quite right." It looked delicious, whipped cream floating there with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top. I took a big swallow and choked, my eyes watering, the liquid burning it's way down my throat and into my stomach.
"Uhmm, There's no coffee in it" I sputtered and coughed, Jaime pounding my back.
"Whoops! I knew I forgot something!"

We went to the movies, sometimes to the Bobbit, other times to the Collin Kelly. One weekend we went over to the high school football field called the Bamboo Bowl, to see Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in "Papillon". We sat on the field watching the movie; I was painfully aware of the couple snuggling on the blanket next to me and vainly tried to ignore them. But they were in love and their happiness and contentedness spilled over, enveloping me in the warmth.

Part 41: The Tempest

2010-11-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

"These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air... We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with sleep."
from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

I'm sure there were school activities those first few months of school, some field trips maybe; my friends Leigh, Lulie and Leeanne had lead roles in Alice in Wonderland, but I can't really tell you much about the first part of the semester, because I was preoccupied, I had a girlfriend. For some reason it seemed to take up all my free time and I was neglecting my friends. I think they were sort of happy for me although they often appeared concerned. OK, so things got a little tempestuous at times. It was turning out to be an on again off again relationship. We would break up and then a few days or a week or two later we would get back together again. Things would be great at first, but then they would slowly start to fall apart and neither of us seemed to know why.

Mirroring my life, the 1974 Typhoon Season was a busy one, there were 35 typhoons or tropical storms between January and December that year. Not all the storms impacted the mountain provinces, but we had more than our share. Baguio had an early warning system, a siren located near City Hall which could be clearly heard around the city. It consisted of a single or a series of siren wails; the Mayor would determine the number of signals depending on what the weather bureau (PAGASA) would announce:

Typhoon Signal #1 - some elementary schools had the option NOT to go to school, or if during the day, have parents pick them up.

Typhoon Signal #2 - elementary and high school kids go home, universities and government still at work. Heavy rain coming within the next 4 to 8 hours.

Typhoon Signal #3 - no work, no nothing, get home. Emergency/disaster groups and utilities get ready. Heavy rain, strong winds expected within the next 4 hours.

Typhoon Signal #4 - Typhoon is here, don't go out, very dangerous conditions.

Brent didn't recognize the first two signals, it was only when the third signal would commence that school would be let out. I never actually heard #4, by then the wind and rain were so strong that the sirens could not be heard.

There were a few minor storms and typhoons the first few months of school, but nothing that caused the school to close. This all changed when Typhoon Susang hit Baguio one Thursday afternoon in October. I was in English class when we heard the first siren go off, no big deal we heard these often enough; then the second siren sounded and we all sat there pretending to be paying attention while listening with a cocked ear for the third siren. There it was! School was out! Susang struck Baguio on the 10th of October, bringing 30.8 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. A week later and we heard the sirens again, waiting with baited breath for that third siren. That typhoon was Tering and it was followed by Uding 6 days later. This was getting kind of old, it seemed my clothes were always damp. Typhoon Wening hit four days after that. On the first of November, Yaning blew through and Aning hit us a week after that. Each time now you could hear the classes around Ogilby counting out the sirens: one... two... three! The roar of cheers and the boarders would go running back to the dorms to fill the wood boxes with firewood, then to the canteen to stock up on snacks. The rain would start, then came the winds, eventually the power would go out; usually shut down by the power company to avoid injuries. We ate dinner by candlelight, later that night two raincoat clad houseboys would show up, one bearing a petromax lantern in one hand and a thermos of coffee and another of hot chocolate in the other; the other houseboy gingerly carried the inevitable tray of jelly rolls (we had the same snack every night for five years!).

Weekends during these typhoons were spent at Hamilton Hall (although the girls did surprise us a few times by showing up at the boys dorm), playing cards, eating snacks and listening to someone play the guitar while singing along. We would make the trek up the hill, leaning into the wind and by the time we arrived we would be completely soaked. There was always a roaring fire going and the girls would give us clothes to change into; we would line up our shoes on the hearth, hang our socks, shirts and jeans over the fireplace screen and watch the steam rise from our drying clothes.

Late one night during a typhoon we got a call from Hamilton Hall, Mr Pettitt needed some help boarding up a window that had broken in the storm. Jaime and I went over and on the way we picked up a piece of corrugated roofing that had come off the covered walkway. It was really tough trying to hang on to that tin sheet in the strong wind! When we got there we carried it up to the "4 L's" sala and helped Mr. Pettitt nail it over the window. While we were doing this Linda went to use the restroom, but came out a few minutes later screaming! There was a rat in the toilet! When she went to flush she noticed something wet and furry looking up at her from the bowl! Jaime grabbed the fireplace poker and I the tongs and while I held it down Jaime killed it! I was totally disgusted. From that day forward I always look in the toilet first...

Jaime and I were still in our sopping wet clothes, so the girls offered the use of their blazing fire to dry them out. We took off our clothes and I eventually found myself trying to get warm, huddled under a blanket with a pretty classmate in her room. How I got there or where the dorm master was I couldn't tell you. I was vaguely aware that we were both in our underwear (I can't tell you why she was because I never asked), but it never occurred to me that this might be an opportunity for hanky panky! Or at least it didn't occur to me till the next day when Jaime said something about it!

After Typhoon Aning we had a break in the weather and Mr Asiatico decided he had better take advantage of the situation and make his annual trip to 100 Islands. We got to the coast and it was still a bit overcast and the water was choppy as we headed out to sea. About half way out we heard a shout from the bow and Mr Asiatico was pointing out to a pair of dorsal fins a hundred feet or so from our boat! This was the first time I had seen sharks other than the dead ones brought in by fishermen. Two of my classmates and fellow boarders, Tommy Lowman and Michael Kendrick were with me, Tommy had brought along his scuba gear and two extra pairs of swim fins and masks. He had brought along so much gear that Michael and I had to help him get it all in the boat. That first night after supper, we helped him get geared up and he tested out his new underwater flashlight. I was swimming along side using a snorkel when Tommy poked a bunch of sea cucumbers which suddenly expelled their innards! This was totally unexpected and with muffled shouts we swam quickly back to the beach. I guess they were as startled as we were!

Later that night Tommy and I snuck out to swim over to an island that was a few hundred feet from the one we were on. There had been a concrete bridge connecting the two, but Typhoon Susang had destroyed it. Now there were just the supports sticking out of the water. We were about half way there when churning waves threw us against the the busted up bridge. I felt a burning pain on my thighs where I scraped against rebar and broken concrete. We climbed on to one of the supports and Tommy shined his flashlight on my legs, they were covered in blood! He had a bad gash on his hand and we looked at each other and said "SHARKS".
We couldn't stay there, so we once again swam as fast as we could back to shore. When we got back to camp, our classmate Marie cleaned our wounds and anointed us with iodine. Most of the scratches were not too deep, but my legs were a little stiff and sore the next morning. After breakfast we began collecting our samples and answering our worksheets. The sky was clear, it was warm and sunny and the water was calm. A couple of sea urchin fishermen showed up on a bamboo raft, they had long poles with a steel spike attached to the end. They would go along till they spotted a cluster of sea urchins, then used their poles to skewer them and bring them up. I was watching them from the edge of the water when I felt a sharp pain in the bottom of my foot. Thinking I had stepped on a thorn or a piece of glass I went up the beach and sat down in the sand to examine my foot. I was surprised to see a fish attached to my foot! I yanked it off and it left a little bloody hole in the sole. It turned out it was some small species of Remora, about 4 inches long, that used a sucker on the top of its head to hang on to sharks and would feed off the remains of whatever the shark was eating. A great specimen for our science class, but I was not happy that it had been collected at my expense.

We still had not learned our lesson about safe swimming practices because that afternoon while snorkeling alone on the backside of the island we suddenly felt ourselves in a strong current and were being pulled out to sea. After some desperate hard swimming we managed to catch hold of a coral reef. After several attempts at trying to cross the sharp antler coral barefoot, we ended up having to walk backwards in our swim fins.

Nights on the islands were a strange thing. There was no electricity, the only artificial light at night came from our camp fires and lanterns. When it was overcast it was pitch black, but when the skies were clear you could see fairly well. We kept waking up, thinking it was almost sunrise only to find out that it was one or two o'clock in the morning. On our last night I woke up knowing it must be hours till sunrise, but decided to walk down to the beach and watch the waves. I was sitting there, pondering my life, my relationship with my girlfriend that I knew was coming to a final end, when I heard someone come up behind me. I turned to look and it was a wondrous sight. Clad in a bikini, her waist length blond hair glowing silver in the starlight she came and sat close beside me, smelling of lavender and apricots and she was most beautiful. Jaime once said of her that she was the kind of girl his mother warned him about and accordingly gave her wide berth. I didn't see it, she was young and fresh, vivacious and alive. But I followed a code; I had a girlfriend back at Brent and this girl had a boyfriend there too and I felt honor bound not to break "the rules".

We didn't talk much, we shared a cigarette or two and she put her head on my shoulder. We sat and first watched the waves, then the sun rising up out of the water till we heard the voices of our waking classmates. Rising to her knees she kissed me lightly and went back to camp.

A lot has been written about living a life without regrets, but maybe you really haven't lived if you don't regret something. As I rode the bus back to Brent I know I was regretting my inaction, when my girlfriend broke up with me a few days later I really regretted it. Although mutually agreed upon, it didn't end well. Then, as if to put a final period (or maybe an exclamation point) to the end of our relationship, Typhoon Bidang slammed into Baguio the following Thursday, the 28th of November, knocking down trees around the city and on our campus.

Part 40: Routines, Rituals and Traditions

2010-11-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

As per my annual routine I returned to Baguio a week before school started. Arriving at Brent things were comfortably the same. Crossing Neutral to Binstead, I peeked in the lounge to see if anyone might be there. It was empty, but it was a friendly expectant emptiness, as if the room was waiting for us to return and bring it back to life.

Yet to say that school was unchanged from the previous year was not true. Like every other year since I started going to Brent, the 1974-75 school year brought big changes. When I got to the dorm one of the first things I discovered was that I was now on the top floor on the east side of the dorm (as a sophomore I had expected to be on the second floor again). This was comforting in its own way, I had woken each day my first two years at Brent with the sun rise, from my high vantage point I could see the tree covered mountains in the distance. I went and collected my trunk and other belongings and then went to select mattresses for my room. My queen size from last year was no where to be found so I assumed some teacher had got to it first. After digging through a dozen or more I was able to find two kapok stuffed mattresses that were plump, firm and at the same time soft. I spent the rest of the day arranging, then rearranging my room. That night I lay in bed watching the lightning flashes on the distant mountains. It was good to be home.

The next morning I decided to take a shower and then head downtown to do some shopping. Knowing the dorm was empty I just threw my towel over my shoulder, picked up my shower kit and walked out the bathroom door only to discover another change. We had new dorm parents, the O'Neils, and there was Mrs O'Neil walking up the steps to introduce herself! Whoops! There I was doing the Full Monty! I think she was more embarrassed than I was, all she said was "oh, my...". I skidded to a stop and did an abrupt about face (in case she wanted a rear view) and went back into the bathroom and wrapped my towel around my waist. After a few minutes I decided the coast was clear and made my way to my room to get dressed. At dinner that night she turned bright red as I was laughingly introduced to them by my former dorm mother Mrs Pettitt. The Pettitts were now dorm parents of the girls dorm. After having them as dorm parents for two years I kind of thought of Mrs Pettitt as my surrogate mom and I wasn't too sure I liked this change.

The next few days were quiet ones, I replicated my yearly routine of collecting my school books from the book store, getting a head start on my required reading, going to the library, making a trip downtown for siopao or shopping. Along with a slew of other kids, Jaime showed up the Friday before school started; he had the room across the hall from mine. Jaime and his family had just got back from short furlough in the U.S. and I was eager to hear of his adventures. One of the things he brought back was a pair of brown leather work boots which he called "shitkickers". I really liked them and so we went to town to see if we could find me a pair in the "army surplus" section of the market. This section of the market was mostly black market goods that somehow made it from the bases at Clark or Subic to the stalls of the Baguio market. There you could find American candy, cigarettes, Army, Air Force and Navy apparel. After a hour of searching I found a pair of brand new black Navy steel toed deck boots with vibram soles and they fit perfectly. Jaime picked up some brown shoe polish and a bar of saddle soap and then we headed over to the Rose Bowl for some chicken fried rice. I tell you of these mundane facts because these items became part of our routine. If we happened to be in the dorm when the dinner gong sounded, Jaime would come to collect me saying "let's go Kid" and off we would march side by side, our boots beating out the time on the pavement, then drumming on the wooden part of the sidewalk of Binstead, our feet hitting the swinging doors to the dining hall at the same moment which would burst open with a crash, a half second pause at the top of the landing, then Jaime would step to the right and I to the left, ka thump, thump down the two steps, our grande entree!

The next day we went back into town again with Leeanne and Lulie to catch a movie and go to a used clothing store we had heard of, the forerunner of the ukay-ukay shops that are so prevalent in Baguio today. I picked up a black cable-knit sweater and an olive green zip up jacket like the one Clint Eastwood wore in "Kelly's Heroes". At the urging of the girls Jaime and I also purchased matching pairs of striped bell bottom Levi brand hip huggers. Now we were stylin!

There were a lot of new kids in the dorms this year, Michael and Susan Kendrick from Australia, Juli Tin, Margie Geronimo, Chris Fassnacht, Donna Stackhouse, Cathy Blowers from Africa, Cindy Hill from Saigon, Marianne Salvo from Laos, Paul Bowman, James Jensen from Liberia, the Lipka brothers from Indonesia, Chuck Wheeler and Joan Barber who came from Saipan, Tommy and Mary Lowman out of Vietnam, and a bunch of Canadians, much to the delight of Leeanne Colvin. There was Dana Busse, Pierre Sabourin, Garth Patterson, Cindy and Kelly Low. Garth came to the dorms with his hockey sticks, I am not sure where he thought he would be playing. I think this was our most culturally diverse year, with the Canadians, four British kids, three Australians added to our normal Filipino and American mix. The Brent student population really swelled that year, my class which in previous years bounced between 11 and 14 students, now numbered 22. Besides the high school students we also had that year for the first (and last) time Junior College students!

The first few weeks went by quickly, class and student council elections; the new Senior class president Norman Van Vactor quickly gaining huge popularity by securing Rug's old room off the dining hall as a private "Seniors Only" lounge. With all these new students, the annual Senior class fundraiser "Slave Day" was a huge success. The auction which normally ran about 30 to 40 minutes from beginning to end, dragged out to an hour and half. Relationships seemed to form quickly that year too, by the time Slave Day rolled around most of the "available" girls had boyfriends. Somehow I found myself with a girlfriend too.

Rituals. We all have them, the little things we do when we get up in the morning, when we go to bed at night. Humans are creatures of habit, we tend to like doing things in a certain order, step by step instructions, bullet points, map directions, the laundry lists of our lives. There is comfort in the sequence, a sense of accomplishment after completing a step. It is an unspoken acknowledgment: we can't control what is happening out there but we can control this. For some of us it is something more. The ritual of my annual return to Baguio and Brent is something I have written about many times; I am writing about it again to emphasize how much it meant to me. I could leave Baguio any way I liked, plane, car or bus. But I had to return exactly the same way each time now. I think subconsciously I was afraid to break my routine, as if it might jinx my new life. So I followed my routine: plane to Manila, taxi to the PNR bus station, bus to Baguio, closing my eyes and waiting for the scent of pine and the coolness on my cheek before opening them again. But there was something else I haven't mentioned before. When I stepped off the bus I experienced this emotional release; like the sensation a child experiences when they think they are lost and beginning to panic when suddenly they catch sight of their parents: the heart drops to the pit of the stomach and rebounds equally fast, pulling with it all the pent up fear and agony, the hiccup before the torrent of tears comes exploding forth with relief at being safe again. This is what I felt each time I returned, this is how much it meant to me.

"I'm back" I would silently whisper, wrapped in their warm embrace.

"... And like he told me, when she holds me, she enfolds me in her world."
from the song "Corey's Coming" by Harry Chapin

Part 39: Reap the Wild Wind

2010-10-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Mindanao has a rich and colorful history, the Moro natives there as different from other Filipinos across the archipelago as the natives of Kiangan or Bontoc in the mountains of Luzon were unique to their region. Upon the arrival of Magellan in 1521, Mindanao was Muslim (as was most of the Philippines) or "Moro" as the Spanish called them. The Spanish were only able to gain footholds here and there along the coast, building stone fortresses to protect them from the natives who fiercely resisted the Spanish rule. By the time the Americans arrived 377 years later they still had no control of the island. The Moros transferred their war from the old master to the new. From 1898 through 1913 the US Army fought the Moros with 4,234 US troops killed.

Then in 1915, Dr Frank Laubach arrived in the Philippines. Initially trying to work in the Lanao Del Sur region, it wasn't till 1929 that the US Army felt it was safe enough for an American missionary to take up residence in the Maranao area of Mindanao. With Camp Overton in Iligan and Camp Keithly in Marawi and a small floatilla of gun boats on Lake Lanao it was felt that they could balance the disruption that a Christian missionary would bring.

The word Maranao, means "People of the Lake", referring to the indigenous people who inhabited the lands around Lake Lanao whose principal town is Marawi. They are famous for their artwork, sophisticated weaving, wood and metal craft, and their epic literature. Realizing that he had to fundamentally change his western views of the Maranao and other Moro tribes he wrote:

"..I must confront these Maranaos with a divine love that will speak Christ to them, though I never use his name. They must see God in me and I must see God in them. What right then have I or any other person to come here and change the name of these people from Muslim to Christian, unless I lead them to a life fuller of God then they have now? Clearly, clearly, my job here is not to go to the town plaza and make proselytes, it is to live wrapped in God, trembling to His thoughts, burning with His passion."

Over the years he opened a school for Maranaos and he developed the "Each One Teach One" literacy program. It has been used to teach an estimated 60 million people to read in their own language. He was deeply concerned about poverty, injustice and illiteracy, and considered them barriers to peace in the world.
Laubach is the only American missionary to be honored on a US postage stamp.
(For a brief history of the Moro Wars: http://www.morolandhistory.com/00.Text%20Document/brief_history_of_america_and_moros.01.htm)

Summer Vacation. Again. In contrast to previous summers I was really looking forward to this one. Norman Van Vactor, a fellow boarder at Brent, had unexpectedly invited me to spend the summer with him. I had known Norman since my first day at Brent; our parents worked for the same mission board and my father had been to their home before. I had visited Mindanao several times, had been to the cities of Zamboanga, Davao, Cagayan and even Cotobato before but I had never been to Marawi.

Marawi was situated on the shores of Lake Lanao. The Van Vactors were old hand missionaries, Norman's folks having first arrived in the Philippines in 1948. They lived in Cagayan de Oro from 1954 through 1967, then they were reassigned to Marawi where Dr Van Vactor served as president of Dansalan College.(Established in 1950, Dansalan College was opened to provide an opportunity for the Muslim young people to gain a higher education. At the time there was only one other secondary school in the area, a trade school.)

So after sweating it out for a week or two back home in Tacloban, I was packed and ready to go when we received a telegram. Norman's mother Maisie had become quite ill and my trip to Marawi would have to be canceled. I had been struggling to maintain my sanity and composure, but now the thought having to spend the rest of the summer at home seemed impossible. Then a week later I got a second telegram telling me to come on down!

So I boarded a plane from Tacloban to Cebu, spent most of the day waiting in the airport for my flight to depart for Iligan, which like Baguio's airport was notorious for getting socked in by fog and bad weather. Unlike Tacloban's tiny provincial airport, Cebu's Mactan Airport was large, sleek and modern. They even had TV monitors scattered around the waiting area and I watched "The Man called Flintstone" while waiting. We didn't even get any television reception in Tacloban, so I thought it was great! Finally, my flight was called and I was on my way! Norman met me at the airport at Iligan which was about the size of Tacloban.

The first thing we did after being met at the airport was to head to a barber shop. Norman told me that the locals took a real dim view of long haired hippies and he didn't want to attract any more attention than was necessary. I wasn't sure if he meant the PC (Philippine Constabulary) or the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), but at this point I was so relieved to be there I would have gotten a military style buzz cut and was telling the barber to do so when Norman said No, that wasn't necessary. Funny how I steadfastly refused to give my father his wish and at the drop of a hat I was more than willing to shave my head at the askance of a friend. So this is the cut I got. I felt like Samson after Delilah had his hair cut, as if my hair had been my strength.

From there we headed up the mountain to Norman's home. Marawi is nestled on plateau, 27oo feet above sea level. It was a long drive up winding roads and over rolling hills surrounded by tall Cogongrass. Norman nonchantly mentioned as we were driving that on this very same road the previous week a PC convoy had been ambushed by the MNLF. It was a perfect place for an ambush and it brought home the fact that the civil unrest so far removed from my life in Baguio and Tacloban was alive and well here on Mindanao. Norman explained that as long as we were off the road well before dusk we would be fine. We had some autonomy of movement because of the services and good works Dansalan College provided and the way the Van Vactors and the Laubachs before them dealt with the Manranao people. Still, it was more than prudent to be careful. Norman's summer job was running errands and picking up supplies for the college, so we would be driving this road weekly. (On one such trip we headed back home late in the day when we were stopped by a column of PC. They ordered us to haul them back to the army camp in Marawi. I was pretty nervous, as were the soldiers in the back of the truck, keeping their eyes peeled for MNLF soldiers)

Maise Van Vactor was propped up with pillows and wrapped in a blanket when we walked in the door, but she greeted me warmly. A beautiful woman, she had sparkling mischievous eyes and a matching smile. She held out her arms and gave me a vigorous hug. I knew right then that I was going to have great time there. There was the sound of rapid scampering feet and here came their dachshund Willy at full speed sliding around the corner. He may have been 14 years old but he still had a lot of energy! Norman showed me to his room where I could stow my bag and pointed out the bullet hole in the wall above his bed, a recent addition. He had been reading in his room and his mother was hanging up some clothes in his closet when it happened. That night we were on the veranda and I saw flashes of light on the horizon. "Look," I said "there is a big thunderstorm over there".
No, that is artillery fire.
Another grim reminder of the conflict, for the first time I realized that there was a "real" war going on here.

We spent the weekdays plying between Iligan and Marawi, picking up lumber, building materials, groceries and other supplies for the college. Weekends we toured the town and its markets: shiny brass urns, pots, platters and gongs, wavy bladed kris swords, hand woven and dyed fabrics; I picked up some cotton batik for my mom. I thought about buying a Malong. Here most men and women wore malongs, a traditional "tube skirt" like the sarong worn by peoples in Indonesia and Malaysia. The most beautiful are made by Maranao, Maguindanau and T'boli weavers. They can function as a skirt for both men and women, a dress, a blanket, a sunshade, a bedsheet, a hammock; most of my friends used them to sleep in.

There were around 20 waterfalls in the Iligan area, I don't remember which ones we went to but I do know we went to Maria Christina falls, where we swam in the cold water. We also boated and swam in Lake Lanao. When Norman and his family moved to Marawi in 1968 he had to leave his beloved banca (outrigger canoe) behind. So he found plans for a English style punt in Popular Mechanics and the maintenance shop of the college built it for him. It was 18 ft boat powered by a Johnson 4 horse engine, great for the calm waters of Lake Lanao. I was in the water swimming when Norman crawled back in the boat and started up the engine, and took off across the lake. He was just a speck on the other side and I was beginning to wonder how long I could keep treading water when he began heading back towards me. I was pretty tuckered out by the time he got back to pick me up.

Besides the truck, we also drove his families Toyota Crown. Crown was Toyota's top of line luxury model, it came in coupes, sedans and station wagons. In Japan the sedans were used for limousines but for some reason Toyota never really tried to market the Crown very strongly in the US. The Van Vactor's Crown was only a lowly station wagon, but underneath the unassuming hood was a souped up hot rod! Due to the increasing violence in the area it had been decided that, in case of an emergency, the already large engine should be modified for quick get-aways. A Hurst speed shifter and a Holley 4 barrel double carburetor had been installed and that wagon could fly! We would drive the "old family wagon" when ever we could. Norman would depress the accelerator and you could hear the click of the Holley kicking in. It was quite a sight to see a plain old station wagon burnin' rubber! The 26 mile drive from Marawi to Iligan that normally took us around an hour or so in the truck could be be cut down to 20 minutes if there was no traffic! Norman really loved to put the wagon through her paces. He had been given some evasive driving lessons (including controlled braking and 180 degree spins) and was eager for any excuse to practice. Decades before the term Tokyo Drift came into common usage, Norman was busy on the mountain roads honing his shifting and braking skills. One night we flew down the mountain, reaching speeds up to 124 miles an hour! I swear I could feel the front end lifting off the road!

One of the services the College provided was a clinic. Part of Norman's job included driving the nurse to villages in the area. One night Norman, his brother Ross and I were parked in front of a Datu's (Chief headman) house, waiting for the nurse to finish her work, it was getting late and we were eager to get back home. It got darker and then I heard Norman hiss:
Whatever you do, don't make any sudden moves, keep your eyes straight ahead!

Then a dozen or so heavily armed men came filing by on either side of the car. We kept still and pretended they didn't exist. They went into the house and we continued to wait. Finally, Norman said I guess we had better go see what is going on. I had strong misgivings about getting out of the car but didn't want to sit in it alone either so followed him into the house. We were greeted and welcomed into the Datu's living area and were offered refreshments. As the servant went through a door way that was blocked off by a large batik curtain I saw an astounding sight: dozens of shiny new M-16s, a 50. caliber machine gun, rocket propelled grenades and box after box of ammunition. I quickly averted my eyes thinking to myself, "We're all gonna die", but half a hour later, we finished our snacks and were on our way home. I gained a lot of empathy for these people whom I now saw were just farmers trying to hang on to their land and way of life from the ever encroaching land grabbers and speculators. This did not necessarily make me feel any safer, but at least I was able to begin to see their point of view.

Then it was time to head back to Tacloban. It had been a wonderful summer, the best in so many years and I was so grateful to the Van Vactors for letting me come in spite of her illness and told them so repeatedly, but I was surprised to see tears in her eyes when Mrs Van Vactor hugged me goodbye.

Part 38: Mourning Becomes Electra

2010-10-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

With conclusion of "Joseph", work began on Everyman, a medieval morality play, to be performed once again at Brent's St Nicholas Chapel. Rug surprised everyone by promoting Gordon Strachan from his role of archbishop (in the play Murder in the Cathedral) to the role of God in Everyman! This was definitely not a case of typecasting! Jaime got the role of Death, Elmer was the Messenger. There were new faces to our theater group as well: Paul Becker got the lead, his brother Mark was Fellowship, Fred Thomas was Kindred, Robert Rivera was Good Deeds, Norman Van Vactor got the role of Knowledge (Everyman I will go with thee and be thy guide); and as for me, well I was relegated to lying under the front pew, holding a flashlight to provide extra lighting at key moments during the play. But at least I got a front row view!

This play turned out to be a real crowd pleaser and was another feather in Rug's cap! And he didn't slow down; right after the last performance of Everyman, he caught a flight to Italy so he could direct "The Most Important Man" by Pulitzer prize winner Gian Carlo Menotti. He returned three weeks later with autographed postcards from the theater signed by Mr Menotti for us!

Time was moving swiftly. The mile posts that signaled the final days of the school year came and went: Senior Skip Day, the Science Fair, PRISAA Nationals, Field Day and the Junior-Senior Prom. Even at Brent, where a single school year could hold an eternity of lifetimes, another year was all too quickly coming to an end. Teachers and students, people we had loved, laughed and lived with, would be leaving. Most we would never see again. Growing up with a transient lifestyle I knew this and comprehended it. But I wanted an end to the constant changes and movement. I wanted permanence. I tried to extract the most out of each moment, sucking up words, memories and mementos, storing them away, as if that could somehow slow the march of time.

I wasn't the only one who felt this way, the little farewells were taking place. Cathy McAlister had just been reunited with her boyfriend Nathan and now they would be separated again when she left for college. Daily now, faculty and staff would approach and hug graduating seniors like Jean Clark, Ginger Hamilton and Michelle Woods, some they had known their entire lives; now they were about to enter universities in the United States, a country they barely knew.
Then one day before graduation, Peg appeared with a pasiking on her back. Peg Hamil. Always quick to put me in my place, to correct my mistakes, pointing out errors in my judgment and thought process. More than any other friend she molded and shaped me. Typical anti-establishment Peg, she was leaving, not waiting around for graduation day. Her friends gathered around for hugs and goodbyes and she turned to go. Beth started sobbing and turned away, but Renee and I walked with her to the gate. She gave us some last words of advice and a whack on the head for good measure. We watched her figure growing smaller as she walked down Brent Road; I turned to say something philosophical to Renee (whose eyes were streaming) and she slugged me. Renee hit harder than most guys, her punches always left huge bruises. It was just her way of telling me to shut up.

The Jenista's were moving on. Mrs Jenista full of life and laughter; standing me up and singing in the dining hall impromptu! Mr Jenista brought history to life for me. Connections, he would say, it was all about connections. Random acts strung together precipitating monumental events. He showed us how the actions of individuals and governments could affect events decades or centuries later. He taught me to soberly reflect and review, not to be so caught up in the emotions of the moment. I wondered how it would be to grow up in the Philippines, to graduate from and then come back and teach at Brent, then have to leave again. Was it what he thought it would be, was the experience diminished by the changes at Brent?

And Rug was leaving us too. We had a going away party for him one night, Leigh and I went to town and picked up a bottle of wine as his going away present and we made him a card put together from the programs of the different plays he had directed. Later that night, after the throng had left, there remained those closest to him: Leigh, Elmer, Jaime and myself. He shared the wine, shared some advice, shed some tears. Of all my teachers he affected me the most. Not so much with his constant strive towards excellence and perfection, but in showing me that before one can stand firmly behind ones convictions first he must reflect upon his own character, its weaknesses and flaws before passing judgment on others. This has always been hard for me because it runs contrary to my upbringing. But I strive for it everyday.
Then, just as suddenly as he came into our lives, Rug was gone.

"...And that's the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success. For it may very well be that in the short moment of his last proud and unflinching glance he had beheld the face of that opportunity, which like an Eastern bride had come veiled to his side. But we can see him an obscure conqueror of fame tearing himself out of the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted egoism. Is he satisfied quite now, I wonder? We ought to know. He is one of us and have I not stood up once like an evoked ghost to answer for his eternal constancy? Now he is no more, there are days when the reality of his existence comes to me with an immense, with an overwhelming force and yet upon my honour there are moments too when he passes from my eyes like a disembodied spirit astray amongst the passions of this earth, ready to surrender himself faithfully to the claim of his own world of shades..." from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Part 37: Visitors

2010-09-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

We were rehearsing twice a day now and Rug was pulling out what remained of his hair, trying to get us to properly enunciate the lyrics for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We finally got it down fairly well, but I think he just gave up hoping we would get it perfect. Besides, we were going hoarse from all the singing and the kitchen was now supplying hot tea steeped with ginger root to sooth our sore throats. It was a little awkward performing in the narrow Amos assembly hall, there wasn't enough room for the chorus and the band to join the actors on the same stage, so we were positioned about halfway down the room while the band was off to one side of the stage. We were facing the audience so we couldn't see the action on stage, focusing our attention on Rug, just where he wanted it to be! Jaime and Elmer really got in to their roles and we picked up on their energy and sang with gusto!

Between theater productions our Junior Varsity team got the opportunity to play soccer on the Varsity team. We were playing an exhibition game with PMA (the Philippine Military Academy) at Brent and they were killing us. They were physically so much bigger than the players on our high school team and injuries were taking their toll. The varsity coach (Mr Jenista) was even playing trying to keep us from looking too bad. Early in the game the Coach Allegre passed the word for the JV team to suit up and I ran back to the dorm to grab my uniform. He was going to rotate us in as filler to give the Varsity players a chance to rest. As I stepped off of the Neutral on to the asphalt my cleats slipped on the pavement and I landed on my ass! Right in front of the girlfriend. Ah, the humiliation! But I didn't look back to see if Trini was laughing at me and headed gingerly down to the field. Just as I got to the top of the steps I saw Mark Becker trying to steal the ball from one of the PMA forwards. They both kicked at the ball at the same time and Mark Becker fell over. He tried to stand up but fell over again. The ref stopped the game and Coach Allegre ran over to see if he was OK. By the time I got to our bench he was helping Mark off the field. A broken leg!
"you're in Walter" ... uh, that would be me.
My stomach was in knots as I ran out on to the field. These PMA guys were huge! Well, maybe our guys can keep the ball on the opposite end I thought. It didn't last long and soon this human tank of a player came barreling down the field towards me and I bravely raced forward to meet him. My foot connected with the ball, his shoulder hit mine and then the world got funny. I was flipping horizontally in the air, I saw the sky three times before landing on my back with the wind knocked out of me. I struggled to my feet trying to divine the location of the ball and hoped he wouldn't score. Our goalie managed to save the ball and once again I prayed that the ball would stay on the other side of the field. No such luck. Here came the tank again and when he spied me he got this big grin on his face. This time he just ran right over me. Literally. I saw stars and felt my teeth rattle as he stepped on my head, then heard the referee's whistle and felt someone lifting me up, the field out of focus; there wasn't any part of my body that didn't hurt.
"Walter you're out!" ...Thank You Jesus.

On the first of March the International Club (Pilipino, French and Spanish classes) took a field trip to the old colonial Spanish town of Vigan. We left Brent around 5:30 one morning and stopped in Bauang for breakfast provided by the parents of my classmate Bessie Manaois. When we got to Vigan a few hours later we headed over to St. Paul's Cathedral with it's free standing octagonal bell tower for a tour of the church and the Archbishop's palace all dating back to the late 17oo's. We then toured the Mestizo district with it's old Spanish homes, considered to be the best preserved colonial Spanish town in Asia. It was a city steeped in Philippine history: home to Father Jose Burgos, one of three priests executed in the early 1800's during a rebellion against Spanish rule; a hundred years later it was the headquarters for General Emilio Aguinaldo (first president of the Philippines) who fought against the Spanish and then the Americans. Then the Governor of Ilocos Sur invited our group over for a lavish barbecue luncheon at his ranch. The meal was more Spanish than Filipino in style, pit cooked beef, pork and goat served on sword-like skewers, Spanish appetizers called tapas, big platters of paella, meat filled empanadas and leche flan for desert. There was San Miguel beer and icy cold pitchers of Sangria, which unfortunately we were not able to taste. Well, at least not when any of the teachers were looking! Afterwards, stuffed and sleepy, we went back to town to shop in the open air markets and stores. Then, to top off a most excellent outing, on the way back to Baguio we stopped at the beach to swim before returning to Brent.

A few days later our dorm mother Mrs. Pettitt gave birth to a baby boy! We were excited to have another addition to our dorm. All was well with the world. Then one day all my sense of well being vanished. I received a letter from Mom telling me that my Aunt and Uncle were coming from Japan and that her and Dad were going to bring them up to Baguio for a visit. At the bottom of the letter she wrote "your father wants you to make sure you cut your hair..."

We had been reading My Name is Asher Lev in Rug's English Literature class, the story of a boy with an artistic talent, a gift his parents, relatives and neighbors cannot relate to and do not understand. I saw my life mirrored in those pages, strong domineering father often absent from home, parents wrapped in work and academia with little time or patience for their son. While I found solace in the words, I found no solutions or answers. Only the directive to be true to ones self. So, of course I didn't get my hair cut. As the day of their visit neared, I grew more agitated, this was not going to be a good thing I predicted. My friends grew concerned about me, so much so that they approached some of my teachers and broached the subject. I guess they were concerned too because on the day they arrived I got called to the office and was told my family was at the gate, but to wait at the office. Then Mr Jenista went down to the gate to escort my parents on to campus. I could see him talking with my parents before they began the walk up the hill.

The tension was palpable as we walked towards each other but before my Dad could say anything my Aunt said "Paul his hair isn't that long! The way you talked I thought it must be down to his knees! My son's hair is about as long as his!" This simple statement endeared her to me for life. It not only altered the way my parents viewed me, it toned down the way Dad spoke to me. Well, a little bit anyway. Mr Jenista gave my family a tour of the Brent campus while I went back to class. Later that afternoon I changed into some nicer clothes and met them for dinner at Mario's. I'd like to say we had a pleasant visit but you can see from the expressions on everyone's faces that no one is too happy.

I didn't see too much of them the rest of their stay in Baguio (the first and only time my parents came to the campus to see me), they toured the city and the markets, visited some other Lutheran missionaries and then they were gone.

Below are excerpts from the program for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Part 36: The Great Escape

2010-09-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

"All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times..."
~ Walter Bagehot

"Ah, Herr Bartlett. And Herr MacDonald. We are together again. You're going to wish you had never put us to so much trouble..."

I adhered to my ritual when I returned to school: plane to Manila, taxi to bus station, bus to Baguio, taxi to Brent, two or three days with the campus to myself. Freedom. On the bus I would close my eyes in silent benediction, waiting for the first wafts of cool angel's wings to brush my cheeks, the scent of pine trees holy incense, then lifting my lids in supplication. Salvation. Like a returning soldier or a man released from prison, I wanted to fall to my knees and kiss the ground; sometimes I did. Zion.

Jaime showed up the next day, his family was spending a few days at the United Methodist Mission cabins. He invited me over and we went down to Jean Clark's house to hang out. The Clark's had a tire swing on a long rope and there were a bunch of kids already there climbing to the top of a platform and jumping off. First one kid would drag the tire up to the top of the platform and start it swinging, when it returned they would climb on and then another kid would leap on the next time it came back. This would continue, with each cycle the tire getting further away from the platform, the rope twisting and spinning, kids on the tire making way for the next jumper. This was a rough game, there was no telling where the jumpers head, elbows, knees or feet would strike and sometimes the jumper would miss completely and belly flop in the dirt below. We did this for hours and were all pretty scraped and bruised up when Michelle Woods leaped from the platform and missed the rope. She managed to get one hand on the tire and another on someone's belt but was drug beneath the tire for several feet before letting go. This was a mistake because when the tire came back it struck her in the head. We all quickly piled off to see how she was doing. She had a bloody lip and bruised face; there were some tears and some first aid, then back to the swing!

That first Sunday back we had a new student at our table, Linda Schwartzendruber. Like Leigh, she had moved to the Philippines from Hong Kong and Leigh was tickled pink to have someone to talk to about it. Now there were 4 "L's" at our table: Leeanne, Lulie, Leigh and Linda. Intelligent, sharp, witty and cunning, they were to become a cardinal force never to be crossed. We were fortunate to be on their good side for the most part. Except on one occasion, when we were invited to join the girls for dinner off campus. Jaime and I had our "SPs" (special permits), were dressed and heading to the gate and as we passed the canteen below the kitchen we could smell supper cooking. Tapa. Our favorite. Tapa is a marinated then cured beef dish that the cooks at Brent made especially well, although not particularly beloved by those with western palates. Neither Jaime or I said anything but our pace slowed and when we reached the covered walkway we stopped. Then without ever saying a word we directed our feet up the hill to the dining hall. Boy, were they pissed that we stood them up! But they were serving tapa! I tried to explain.

The second half of the school year started out with the same flurry of activity as the first. First was the Science Fair, then Rug held auditions and began rehearsals for Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This was a joint effort between the upper and lower schools with some help from teachers, parents and some students from St. Louis University. The lower school was going to act out the story while the upper school was going to do the singing. Jaime got the part of the Narrator, Mr Pettitt was singing the part of Joseph and Elmer Strasser was Pharoah.

There were field trips, beach trips and dances: the anthropology class headed up into the mountains, the Explorer Scouts went to Bobok, the Art Department went to Crystal Cave and then dug some clay to experiment with. I tried to kiss Cecily Drury on the way back from the beach but Terrence Spencer, a perennial thorn in my side, kept turning around and grinning at us, chanting Mark and Cecily sitting in a tree... and that is as far as that went. Brent had a Valentine's Day dance at the Mile Hi Club on John Hay where Kathy Duncan was voted Queen, with Cindy Johnson and my classmate Marie Strasser (voted Princesses) placing second and third.

Madame Chan, the proprietor of the Old Pagoda came and gave a lecture on Li Po, Chinese poetry and art. She got a big laugh and lots of applause when she said if we didn't know who Li Po was we were not getting a good education.

And then Lulie wrote an article for the school paper about the quality of food in the dining hall which culminated in the "Great Escape". The food was getting a little iffy. There was a lot of grumbling amongst the boarders, some kids regularly filled up on Freddie's burgers before supper or visited the dorm canteens after hours. Sometimes Domingo, our waiter, would put the platter on the table, poke at it with the serving spoon and sniff disparagingly. The cooks were doing the best they could with the budget, menu and recipes provided and they knew when they had produced something questionable. Part of the problem was that a lot of the kids were used to better fare, few were familiar with the Filipino dishes that occasionally frequented our tables and none were used to institutional type meals that now graced our plates.

I don't know where or when the idea originated, but soon the topic of skipping off campus to eat somewhere was being whispered everywhere. The Seniors and Juniors formulated the plans, issued strict instructions, picked a date, made reservations and alerted our friends in the kitchen not to expect the usual number of victims. The basic plan was we were to abide by school rules (other than sneaking off campus!), stick together (no side excursions) and return to the campus en masse. We snuck off campus in twos or threes one Friday night, each group picking different locations to jump the fence and headed to Mario's for supper. Mario's was a great little Italian restaurant owned by the Benitez family and a favorite haunt of ours. All the Benitez kids went or had gone to Brent, so it was a little tricky because we were known, but it all worked out and the faculty never suspected a thing. Before we began eating Norman tapped his glass with a spoon, we stood up and said our school dinner prayer.
Bless us O Lord, this food for our use and us to Thy service, make us ever mindful of the needs of others, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

After supper, the bill paid and tips left, we walked back to campus, singing songs, laughing till we got in sight of the Brent gate, where it all died out.

There waiting for us were Mr Pettitt and Mr Jenista and they did not look happy. They divided up the girls and the guys and marched us back to the dorms. We got a lecture when we got back to the dorm about breaking the rules and respecting the feelings of the dietitian and the cooking staff, we were informed that the entire dorm (sans the cowards who didn't go) were campused for the rest of the weekend and Mr Pettitt hinted there would be additional punishments as well. Then we were sent off to bed.

The additional punishments began bright and early the next morning when we were all awakened and told to get up, get dressed in work clothes and go eat breakfast. Domingo and the other waiters pretended to be angry with us, frowning and wagging their fingers at us. A few of the cooks stuck their heads out of the kitchen and grinned to see so many tired faces, the biggest turnout for a Saturday breakfast yet!

After we ate Mr Pettitt and Mr Jenista announced that we would be forming work details. The boys dorm was led down to the pig pens, we were handed shovels and wheelbarrows and told that we would be digging pits for cesspools and emptying the old ones. The new ones were dug by early afternoon, but it was the emptying of the full pits that was giving us trouble. The contents had the color and consistency of stiff chocolate pudding , but there just was no easy way to remove it without getting filthy. A wooden plank was placed over the pit and we took turns walking it and shoveling it out. The smell was overwhelming. It was a wretched, dirty mess. Every so often someone would yell "Who's shit is this?" and the rest of us would shout in reply "Pettitt's!" or "Jenista's!".
They just laughed, we were doing the dirty work.

As the day progressed the plank grew slippery with manure. I was on the plank and turned to empty my shovel full into a wheel barrow when I slipped off the board. Up to my chest in pig manure! I struggled to get out because no one really wanted to give me a hand! I stripped out of my reeking clothes and there were leaches on my arms and legs, fortunately none in my underwear! Someone used a cigarette to get them off me and then I headed back to the dorm to take a shower. At least I got out of digging!

Part 35: Christmas in Manila

2010-08-30T01:15:00.000-07:00

"She asked him why:
Why I'm a hairy guy?
I'm hairy noon and nighty-night night
My hair is a fright
I'm hairy high and low
Don't ask me why
Cause he don't know
It's not for lack of bread
Like the Grateful Dead
Darling

Gimme a head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair"
~ The Cowsills

My hair had grown quite long; I hadn't had a haircut for sometime now and I was beginning to be a little apprehensive about the upcoming Christmas holidays. I let my hair go partly because it set me apart from everyone else, partly because it made me feel cool, but mostly because the girls liked it. Because of this I was more than willing to face my father's wrath. After lunch I'd sit on the Neutral and one or more girls would comb, brush, braid and style it. As it grew longer they would eventually give me a long braided pony tail or maybe a French Twist, using chop sticks, barrettes, hair clips and bobby pins. Sometimes I'd leave it for the rest of the day and sometimes a teacher would yell at me to take it out. I got teased occasionally but I didn't care, mostly it was because they were jealous.

Peg Hamil, Cathy McAllister and sometimes Kathy Duncan would spend hours after school talking and working on my hair. For Cathy McAllister it was therapeutic, her boyfriend had been "detained" by the PC. One day he never made it home from school. No one knew where he was or what happened to him. Then two or three weeks later his parents found out he was being held at Camp Crame, headquarters for the Philippine Constabulary and one of many detention centers for "dissidents". So, we tried to keep her mind off of it, keeping her company, telling stories, going to movies and working on my coiffure.

I was over at Hamilton Hall helping clean up the day after a dance and the girls started working on me, clips in my hair, a little make up and a crepe paper skirt. Mrs Jenista wanted a picture so here I am posing, with Elmer Strasser down on one knee in mock proposal.

Brent was participating in a citywide Christmas festival and we were organized to be in a parade and then some folk dancing down at Burnham park. Peg, Cathy, the Duncan sisters and I were at the back of the line.

Here we are waiting for the parade to start, notice I am pulling a bottle of Mateus from under my jacket. Hmm, the Duncan sisters seem a little too jolly.

This is as far as we ever got, because as soon as the parade started we ditched and first went over to Madame Chan's to do a little Christmas shopping. The Old Pagoda Shop was one of my two favorite places to shop for gifts, the other was the Pied Piper. The Old Pagoda was filled to the rafters with things to buy. Some were genuine antiques and artifacts, others artful fakes, all of it very interesting. I picked out some incense, a few things for my mother and special friends, then we headed over to the Rose Bowl for some fried rice. It was vaguely disconcerting to see these slightly tipsy, normally straight laced, follow-the-rules kind of girls nervously clutching their bottles of San Miguel, Beth laughing uproariously with her booming laugh at the slightest joke.

What with the plays and parades I forgot to make my airline reservations to get home that Christmas. No, really, I forgot. So, when school let out for the holidays and I got to Manila I was stuck at the Guest House. First available flight out was December 27th. Not too bad a place to spend Christmas I thought, they had a fairly good selection of books and there were plenty of shops and department stores within a few blocks. It was fun to shop and browse those first few days, but then my parents decided I needed to spend Christmas with a "family", so they telegraphed some missionaries they knew and I ended up spending a few days at "Sydney's" home. I hadn't seen her since the Christmas before and she still was as cute as ever and her volumes had gotten bigger too. Her Dad was painfully aware of this and kept a close eye on us whenever he could. She was used to him playing watchdog and devised all manner of evasions that would give her a minute or two alone with me. But most of the time we hung out in the kitchen with her Mom, baking cookies and other treats for Christmas. Sydney had some peculiar habits and tastes one of which was dill pickles dipped in Elmer's glue. I'm not kidding and she kept trying to get me to try it. I thought of all the nasty stuff glue is supposed to be made from and would put her off. But girls are real good at getting boys to do things and she turned her feminine wiles on full blast. Not the worst thing I have ever tasted, but not the best either. I was surprised, but pleased when on Christmas day they had presents for me too, thinking that at least I would be getting something for Christmas. It was interesting to see how other missionaries lived, especially those in the cities with access to imported American products. Their lifestyle was so different from ours in the boondocks where even getting comics or magazines in English was tough.

I did make it home for about a week that year, though it hardly seemed worth the effort. It started with the usual "My prodigal daughter returns" and ended with "My prodigal daughter returns to school". Mom really tried hard to make it a good Christmas for everyone, she had even asked me what I wanted and tried to get them for me, although when I said I wanted an "ELO" or "The Beatles" album I meant Electric Light Orchestra not Enoch Light and his Orchestra play the Beatles. She also gave me some cash and a bundle of Enid Blyton paperbacks, really out of my age range but they were real gifts this time and she was trying to pay attention to the three boys, kissing and hugging us, playing the piano and singing. She brought Mrs Hinakay over from Samar exclusively to make me some shirts and Mom and I went to buy some fabric where I picked out some off white muslin and assorted cotton pastels. Auring didn't really approve of my hair either, but she still made my favorites: beef adobo, fried chicken, roast beef and browned potatoes. Of course I had tuyo and bulad every day.

Part 34: Murder In The Cathedral

2010-08-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

"So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth...
As, in a theatre, the lights are extinguished,
for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama and the bold imposing facade
are all being rolled away"
~ T.S. Eliot

"There is Holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it though armies trample over it,
though sightseers come with guide-books
looking over it"
~ T.S. Eliot

We began pre-production work on Murder in the Cathedral the week after the last performance of After the Fall. While the principals of that play were mainly Juniors and Seniors, the cast of Murder were mostly Sophomores and Freshmen. As with the previous production, Rug went into great detail in giving us the history and background for this play. We learned about the struggle for control of the Church in England between King Henry II and Thomas Beckett. He talked about the similarities for the purpose of the chorus in this play and those used by the ancient Greek playwrights. One of the first things we did was to decorate St. Nicholas Chapel: the maintenance shop made wooden shields and we painted them with Church symbols which were then hung around the sanctuary. Rug ordered iron candle holders, swords, helmets and shields from the metal shops of some of the local mining companies. He designed costumes which were made by Mrs Tabafunda, the school seamstress. The actors who were portraying the acolytes, priests and archbishop took classes on how to respect and wear the real vestments (donated by the Catholic Church) we would be using for the play. Because we would be using the school's chapel as the "stage" for our play, Rug impressed upon us the importance of respecting the sanctuary. This was very difficult with Gordon Strachan who would be portraying the Archbishop of Canterbury; he loved to cuss everytime he forgot a line.

There were a lot of lines to learn, pages of dialogue for us priests and the Christmas sermon was especially long and caused Gordon and Rug much grief.

While all this was going on I still had tons of homework in his English class. We read Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace. I didn't care for the former, I thought Holden was a whiny idiot. I did like the later and found many similarities between myself and Gene. It was about this time that I had my first fight with Jaime. It was during P.E. class and we were on opposite sides of a volleyball team. The ball kept getting knocked out the open doors of the gym and someone would have to run outside to fetch it back. This delayed the game repeatedly and Jaime was getting frustrated. Then during his serve, the ball bounced off my hands and out the door. As I was coming back into the gym with the ball, Jaime met me at the door.
What did you do that for?
I automatically replied with some off the cuff sarcastic remark never dreaming that it would lead to the following event: time stopped and I saw his fist suspended in front of my eye. I could see the hairs on the back of his hand and the pores of his skin with microscopic clarity. Even as I comprehended what was about to happen, I couldn't help but marvel at this amazing spectacle.
POW!
Jaime walked off and I went and sat on the bleachers, hand over my blackened eye. A member of the other team came over, Bill Amedee. He was a big, tall senior.
Are you OK?
At his words, my shoulders began to shake, shamed and embarrassed as I was I couldn't stop the tears from running down my cheeks. It didn't really hurt, but I was shocked and stunned, the betrayal shook me to my core. I couldn't say anything but nod my head. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder.
I'm sorry.
I wondered then and still wonder to this day why he apologized, he didn't hit me. But it did make me feel better.

That night I sat with Peg Hamil and the Duncan sisters at their table instead of my table with Jaime. After supper, Peg said to me Do you want to spend the night?
I must have got a funny look on my face because for the second time that day I got hit in the head.
Don't you have a boyfriend? I asked and jumped out of the way of what would have been my third punch of the day.
Just because a girl asks you to spend the night doesn't mean sex!

And so began the many lessons I learned about women from Peg Hamil. I snuck out of the dorm that night and was met at the back door of Hamilton Hall by Renee Case who lead me up the stairs to Peg's room. There Kathy and her sister Beth had already gathered, clad in pajamas, bearing chips, popcorn and soft drinks. We played cards till the wee hours of the night, then arranging the mattresses on the floor we snuggled up together and went to sleep, Peg's comforting arm across my shoulders. It was then I realized that all I ever wanted was someone to love me.

Jaime didn't stay mad at me too long, which was good because I saw him everyday at rehearsals. The number of rehearsals continued to increase weekly as we approached opening night, and it wasn't just the students; Rug and Mr. Pettitt were practicing the Gregorian chants they would be doing during the play. We only had one rehearsal with the horses and they were skittish and Gordon was cussing up a storm: You're stepping on my F___ING Robe!; Rug looked worried.

The play began at dusk Friday evening, the audience gathered outside the chapel behind ropes as the Chapel bells announced the beginning of the play. The Chorus came down the steps from Ogilby Hall, telling the back story of the dispute between King Henry and Thomas Beckett. Then the three priests came out and filled in the gaps. A messenger arrives announcing the arrival of the Archbishop and then up the hill from Richardson Hall comes Gordon on horseback. We all held our breath, but other than a muttered "Stupid Horse" he stuck to the script. He made it off the horse with out incident and we entered the chapel. The Chorus escorted the audience into the chapel, the acolytes lit the candles and the sun set. The rest of play was performed by candle light. The Christmas sermon stands out vividly in my mind, the billows of spicy sweet incense as we went up and down the aisles. Then the tempters/knights arrive and the Archbishop is murdered. The second night went even smoother, as it should have, it was my birthday; I was 15.

Part 33: Brother Sun, Sister Moon

2010-07-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

"... grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned ..."

- Francis of Assisi

This was a year of momentous change for me. Maybe it was moving from middle school to high school; but not only had I finally grown a little taller, but I also had begun to see things around me differently too. New teachers, new friends, new books and new ideas were opening the world to me. I was active in extra curricular activities; the Student Council, student representative on the Disciplinary Committee, the Ganza year book staff, Brent Players and the Junior Varsity soccer team.

It was sometime in September that I got a letter from Mom telling me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she was going to have radical breast removal surgery in Manila, but not to worry. I did anyway and bought her some gifts at an Arts and Crafts show that was being held in Amos Hall. I went down to see her one weekend after her surgery at St. Luke's Hospital and she looked weak, tired and gray but in good spirits. Mom's brush with death had an interesting effect on my parents; it changed her and her outlook on life and parenting. She asked about me, school, if I had a girlfriend and really seemed interested in hearing my answers. It didn't seem to affect Dad at all, he was still mad about my hair and made sure I knew it.

It was while I was on the Disciplinary Committee that I got to defend my friend Leeanne Colvin. Periodically the lockers and dorm rooms were searched for contraband. During one of these searches a pack of cigarettes had been discovered under her mattress. Intelligent, an Honor Roll student, Leeanne was also brash and outspoken. The school paper ran an article about new boarding students and qouted Leeanne saying she "liked dorm life and have already broken all the rules!" This statement put her on the watch list of some of the teachers on the Disciplinary Committee and when they finally caught her at something they decided to make an example of her and expel her.

It was a dour looking group as the charges were somberly read, the incriminating evidence placed on the table before us and the recommendation for expulsion presented; I was reminded of cartoon caricatures of vultures, they seemed to be drooling. When it came my turn to speak I reminded them of her excellent scholastic record and then played my trump card: enumerating previous "crimes" and the punishments dealt by the committee to other students and noted that expulsion for having an unopened pack of cigarettes as compared to the Campusing (being restricted to the dorm or campus) of another student for a month for being caught drinking alcohol seemed out of balance. I asked if they felt that smoking was worse than drinking and could they in good conscience deal out so severe a punishment to a good student. After several moments of uncomfortable silence the committee voted for a two week Campusing. The vultures would have to go hungry. After the results of the trial were announced and my role in the outcome got out, I had minor celebrity status and Lulie began calling me the Wizard of Words.

I saw two movies that year that subtly affected me as well: Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Godspell. Rug took a group of us to see the former, he had a minor role working with Franco Zeffirelli on the production of Romeo and Juliet and I was interested to see this one as well. It really bowled me over, the images, the music and the message. I wanted to be a Franciscan monk too.

I loved the music of Godspell and felt that the songs seemed vaguely familiar. The following Sunday I was sitting in chapel thumbing through the hymnal and there was one of the songs. Intrigued, I searched through the first lines index and one by one I found most of the songs from the film.

In late September we spent three days at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila to see some operettas directed by Rug. The place was enormous. The first two days we took a tour of the Center, learned about lighting and set design and watched rehearsals. The last night we dressed in our best and were escorted to our reserved seats in the nose bleed section. Still, we could see and hear the performances fairly well. This was the first time I had seen an opera performance and it was exciting to be there knowing that my teacher was the director. We watched scenes from Madame Butterfly, Rigoletto and Faust. After the show ended, Rug came out and took his bow and we embarrassed him by standing up and screaming, hooping and hollering! Not proper Opera etiquette!

After the show eleven of us crammed into Mr Pettitt's little Minica and went to the cast party. It was a tight fit, with elbows and knees all akimbo and me with my face smashed tight up against the glass of the rear hatch as we zipped in and out of traffic through the busy night streets of Manila. The party was a lavish affair, with tables piled high with food. Waiters in white jackets roamed the crowd carry trays of hors d' oeuvres, others carrying trays of champagne. There was caviar to go along with the champagne, neither of which I cared for. I had a champagne cocktail which was a little tastier and grabbed a plate and filled it up. Leigh was really enjoying herself, reveling at being able to hob-knob with the rich and powerful high society folks of Manila. I was more interested in the free food and being able to drink cocktails without retribution.

Part 32: After the Fall

2010-07-01T15:48:00.001-07:00

"The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life"
~ Arthur Miller

"Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
and the days surround your daylight there.
You're gonna go, I know"
~ Dewy Bunnell

Music became an integral part of my boarding school experience, helping me to express my thoughts and feelings. I soon came to delineate my years at Brent by the changing styles of Rock & Roll.

I woke every morning to the sounds of music blasting from Gordon Strachan's room. Usually he would start the day with Stevie Wonder's Inner Visions, or Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley, I learned the lyrics to those albums through the walls dividing our bedrooms. I loved his extensive record collection. Gordon came from England and looked and dressed like Rod. If he was in a good mood he would let me thumb through his shelves of records carefully reading the liner notes, if he was in a really good mood he would let me select an album and play it. This did not happen too often as he usually woke up cranky and irritable and would yell insults and criticisms at my lack of musical knowledge. I didn't care as long as I got to hear the music.

Long before playing air guitar became a regular part of Pop Culture, Gordon would be in his room jamming with Robert Plant and Jimmie Page. I thought he was a total freak but I loved the music. Led Zeppelin IV: Stairway to Heaven, Going to California, Rock and Roll were just a few of my favorite tracks.

Rug had come to Brent from the American School in Rome. We were a little awed by this sophisticated, cosmopolitan teacher. While in Italy he had worked with composer/conductor Gian Carlo Menotti and film director Franco Zeffirelli. He spoke with his hands, passionately gesturing, throwing in Italian words here and there. We learned to knock on his door and say "Permesso?" and he'd call out "Avanti!".

Rug was a busy guy. Besides his regular English Literature classes he also was the adviser for the school newspaper and yearbook; and he was directing plays and working with the Manila Opera Company.

After school he also conducted a workshop called "Sensitivity". Leigh, Jaime, Elmer and I were in this workshop and it changed the way I thought about my friends and people in general. We would each take turns talking about things that were bothering us and then we each got a shot at telling the person what we didn't like about them. Tough stuff and painful. One of the things I came away with is that sometimes the irritating habits we find so infuriating in a person are exactly the same ones we have. So, I found myself reflecting on my own character more and more.

Soon after school started Rug held tryouts for the Arthur Miller play After the Fall which was to be presented towards the end of October. While most of the lead roles went to Junior and Senior students, my friend Leigh who was a sophomore had a major role and I even got two bit parts as a porter and a student. The set was surreal and modernistic, black ramps and catwalks, a chair, a park bench and street light. Jaime worked on the sets and helped man the lights.

I can't say the play was a popular one, it was very confusing and kind of boring even after Rug explained it to us. We worked hard for almost two months, rehearsing and memorizing lines, building and painting sets.

All but the initial and final seconds of the play take place in the main character Quentin's brain, which is reflected by a set consisting of a single chair before a guard tower, which is itself surrounded by a giant, winding ramp made up of crevices, pits, and abutments. The plot unfolds over a period of time; characters and occurrences appear as the protagonist remembers them, and, reflecting the nature of the mind, they often disappear and their stories remain unresolved until later in the play, when they spontaneously reappear again. Quentin sits around and moans and groans about how miserable his life is. Whatever. Can you say LOSER!!!

The biggest controversy was that one of the characters appears on stage in a robe which she opens to reveal her... bikini clad body. OK, in the original play she is naked but this was the Philippines in the early 70's and it shocked the Baguio community plenty. I was down in one of the pits shining a flashlight up at her and it shocked me!

After the play was over we had a cast party in the Senior Lounge and all signed a program for Rug which I embellished with little caricatures of various cast members. Rug told me he had a speaking part for me in his next production: Murder in the Cathedral.

Jaime's parents gave him a record player and he slowly began to build a record collection of his own. Simon and Garfunkel, Jim Croce, James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Seals and Crofts were the artists of his taste. I waited a long time to make my first record purchase. Part of it was because I had no record player of my own, but really it was because for me it was such a monumental decision, akin to buying your first book. What you bought said a lot about you and your character.

So, come Friday we would take our allowances and head downtown. Most times we would just walk till an empty taxi came by, in the early 70's it was still possible to walk all the way to the Pines Hotel and never have a taxi pass you. Our first stop on our weekly pilgrimage was D&S grocery where we bought a quart of Magnolia chocolate milk and a jar of Lady's Choice dill pickles and shared them as we strolled on down Session Road. By the time we reached Assumption Road we had finished both off and we headed up the hill towards Mabini Street. The stores by SLU and UP was where we shopped for books, records and posters. I looked through the bins, wondering what it would be. Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, Emerson, Lake and Palmer; what would it be? We narrowed our choices down and finally Jaime picked "Diamond Girl" by Seals & Crofts. I ended up with "Homecoming" by America and "Songs for Beginners" by Graham Nash. I still have these albums today.

Part 31: The 1973-74 School Year Begins

2010-06-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist
and that there are few great teachers as there are few great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the
medium is the human mind and spirit"
~ John Steinbeck

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school"
~Albert Einstein

Well, that summer was one of the worst yet and I was partly to blame. It was the first summer where I did not cut my hair before I got home. Mildly put, this drove my Dad nuts. It was the cause of a daily round of belittling and beration: "I have a daughter now! Bakla!". But I stuck to my guns and grimly marked out the days on the calender, counting out the days before my release.

Finally, one rainy August morning I found myself boarding a plane back to Manila. I was going to arrive a full two weeks before school started but I couldn't take it any more. I think my parents suspected that I was leaving early but were glad to see me go. I lost no time upon my arrival in Manila and took a cab straight to the PNR bus depot and caught the next departure for Baguio. Five hours and five thousand feet later I was home. With the first waft of cool mountain air a sense of freedom and tranquility came over me. This is where I belonged.

When I arrived at Brent I was excited to be the first student moving into the New Dorm, bright and shiny, smelling of varnish and stain. No one seemed to mind that I was back for the school year early, Mr and Mrs Pettitt were already moved in to the dorm masters suite on the main floor. Juniors and Seniors on the top floor, Freshmen and Sophomores on the main floor and all other grades on the lowest floor. I found my room quickly, my name was taped to the first door I checked. Jaime's was down the hall but I moved his name to the door across from mine, our rooms were right by the side entrance (I didn't know it yet but that would come in very handy whenever we needed to enter or exit the dorm undetected). All the rooms in our new dorm were identical: dark stained paneled walls, matching parquet flooring and garish orange, yellow, white and avocado green curtains. Each room was furnished with two metal bed frames, two over-sized desks/bookshelf units that also served as room partitions and one large double wardrobe. It was too late to get pillows and bedding from Mrs Tabafunda, but I had some sheets and blankets of my own, so I dug my foot locker out of storage, unpacked and then went down the hall to get a mattress. One of the rooms was full of mattresses and another was crammed full with assorted pieces of small furniture. It was a gold mine. This was one of the advantages to getting back to school so early, first dibs on rooms, furniture and mattresses. I started going through them, trying to find the best one, testing them out first. One of them was a real mattress with matching foundation, I realized that this must have been Mr. Craig's. I settled on one and was dragging it down to my room when I thought why not? So I went back and took the mattress and foundation, now I was the only boarding student with a decent bed!

The next morning after breakfast I went and got my class schedule from the registrar and headed over to the bookstore to get my books and supplies for the year. There were a lot of required reading books on the list for my English class taught by a Giussepe De Rugeriis? Must be a new teacher. After stowing them in my locker I went back to the dorm to sign out and then went to the cashier and signed for some "incidentals" cash. I learned this technique from Norman, instead of painfully saving my allowance for the things I needed like shampoo, toothpaste, soap, underwear, socks and shoes, I could get cash from the office as long as I provided an explanation for the need and provide receipts if requested. I headed straight for Lambino's Tailors on lower Session Road to pick out some Ramie fabric and get myself measured for some new pants. Then I navigated the department stores up and down Session Road picking up the additional items I needed.

The time went quickly, I spent my days at the library or in my room reading the books on my English required reading list. It didn't bother me that there weren't any kids around, I'd watch a little TV after supper at night, sometimes some of the teachers would invite me to go to the movies. The following week boarders started arriving, one one day, two the next and by the end of the week the dorm was full. Next door was a tall, gangly kid from England, Gordon Strachan. He kind of looked like a cross between David Bowie and Mick Jagger. He had a great stereo system and a huge record collection. He didn't think too much of me but I thought he was alright.

That first weekend before school started I learned the meaning of "a woman scorned". I found myself lying in front of the fireplace between two girls, one two grades above me and the other one grade below; we were watching the flames and listening to Jaime play his guitar. I liked the older girl better, but it never occurred to me that she would even consider me. So I turned my attentions to the other girl. Bad mistake, not only did she turn out to be crazy but the other girl was really pissed. Scary pissed. Over the next few weeks she took time to let me know how I screwed up and what I was missing out on. I already was miserable from my choice and she really seemed to enjoy twisting the knife.

After two years at Brent, Jaime and I had developed our own rituals and routines. That first Sunday night before school we selected a table in the dining hall that was to become "our table" for the next three years. Located next to the windows in the center of the hall, we had a fine view of the evening sunsets. Jaime sat at the head of the table with me on his right. Leigh Gilmore sat on his left and three new boarders Cecily Drury, Lulie Lawry and Leeanne Colvin joined us. This league was not set in stone, depending on how we were getting along the members changed, but basically this was our group.

The school year started and right away there was a tangible difference in my English classes.
Guissepe de Rugiris aka "Rug" was a whirlwind on two feet. He introduced himself and then announced that we would start each class with a vocabulary quiz, not only that but we would have these quizzes daily for the remainder of the year. Most days the class would end with another test on the days topics. Right after the quiz he launched right into literature. His classes were whirlwinds too. Besides the text books he would assign one book a week, sometimes two, and that was Di riguer, a mash up of world literature from the ancient Greece to the Americas. Austin, Borges, Cervantes, Crane, Chekov, Eliot, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Knowles, Potok, Remarque, Salinger, Sophocles and Steinbeck in no particular order. Our heads were swimming with new characters: Asher, Agamemnon, Beowulf, Clytemnestra, Electra, Holden, Phineas and Silas. To help us keep up he showed some of us some speed reading techniques.

His classes were a mix of history, poetry, opera, literature and declamation: Rug would chant, recite, yell, sing and laugh, always pushing us to analyze, think, ponder and contemplate. What is this book telling us? How does it make you feel? How does this relate to your own life? What are the parallels? He was changing the way I thought, the way I viewed the world. I would never see things the same.

Part 30: Prodigal Summer

2010-06-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

"And I am not worthy to be called thy son:
make me as one of thy hired servants"
~ Luke 15: 19

"The Prodigal Son returns!"

This was my father's standard form of greeting now that I was away at boarding school. From the moment I arrived at our house on the outskirts of Tacloban I knew it was going to be a miserable summer. OK, to be fair, I already knew it was going to be miserable before I got there.

Dad's favorite parable from the Bible is the story of the Prodigal Son. I never liked the implications that went along with his salutation. A little young yet to be a regular patron of gambling joints, dirty bars and brothels, I could only assume that he felt that my time at Brent was equivalent to squandering away the family fortune. Although he went to great lengths to state his views on this subject, he never slipped rings on my fingers or sent servants to kill the fatted calf for a feast. I always felt that he was waiting for me to beg for forgiveness, ask to live in the pigpen and fight for scraps with the hogs. I didn't, so instead he set me to work.

Within hours of my arrival I was busy painting the same bodega I had painted last summer, Keith came strolling by on his way to the kitchen for a snack, he paused and smirked.
"I told dad the shed needed painting"
He was not too happy to have me home, my being there tipped the power balance between the four brothers. When he left I quickly slapped some paint on the big 8x8 posts that held up the water tank. I knew he would be back shortly to gloat. Sure enough he soon came back with a bottle of pop and a piece of cake and leaned up against the water tower to watch me work. I painted in silence while he made snide remarks, secure in the knowledge that payback is a bitch.
"Watching you work is making me tired, I think I'll go watch some TV"
He went into the house and I stopped mid brush stroke to listen for the eruption that was about to begin. I could hear the sounds of the channels changing on the TV.
Sure enough, there it was. A hollow THUNK made by knuckles on the skull followed by "*!#*! you are getting paint all over the *#% couch!" Then the swish and swat, swat, swat of metal hitting flesh as the Sword of Damocles was applied to his posterior.
My stomach turned over. Screams. Crying.
Somehow I had forgotten how bad it got; my revenge made me sick. More cursing and swatting. I hurriedly turned back to my painting, the sound of my brush drowning out the crying now turned to stifled sobbing. I turned my thoughts back to the previous two weeks and my best friend, Jaime.

Two weeks prior I was back at the dorm, my trunk was already packed and labeled for storage, my little suitcase sitting by my bed. I was watching Jaime packing up his stuff, his father would be arriving in the morning to pick him up. I kind of wished my family were more like his. There was always lots of hugging and laughing when they arrived for one of their frequent visits during the school year, lots of tears when they left. Then Mrs Pettitt came into the room and handed me a telegram: it was from Mom and I had permission to go! Two weeks with Jaime and Mark Becker!

In the Beginning, Jaime and I were thrown together by the fact that our beds were next to each other in our big common dorm room, as we got to know each other better we found many similarities in our backgrounds. Although he had been in the Philippines seven years longer than I had and could speak Ilocano fluently, we both had grown up in remote, rural areas of the Philippines and had spent more time with Filipinos than with Americans. We were comfortable in our "Filipino" skins and were used to a more Spartan lifestyle, we ate and enjoyed the foods of our regions from the most simple to the more exotic. We both had loud, noisy households, our parents were hard working and independent, we each had three siblings and we had been raised by a large extended family of students and helpers.

There were a few "lifer" missionaries living in various remote parts of the Philippines who had "gone native". When they showed up at the Mission Guest House in Malate with their kids they really stood out, they were uncomfortable and awkward, speaking heavily accented English.

Jaime and I were almost, but not quite, to that point: the remoteness from all things Western and other American kids had really left an imprint on us. Going to Brent was a momentous change, thrusting us from a rural provincial lifestyle into the Western World. From the moment we met in August of 1971 we instinctively drew closer to each other. We both joined the Boy Scouts and signed up for the same extra curricular activities. We both shared a love of reading and going to the movies. Already good buddies when the 1972-73 school year started, by the end of the year our friendship was firmly entrenched. He was charismatic, outgoing, more athletic and smarter; excelling was what he did best. I wasn't much of a challenge for him, but every now and then he gave me a break from his relentless level of competitiveness. He would talk to me way into the wee hours when he was unhappy or frustrated and he knew that I could relate to the things that were bothering him. I guess I made a pretty good sidekick, although I think he wished I had better skills with a basketball and at least some kind of musical ability.

Jaime's dad picked us up at our dorm the next morning and we headed out. We would be making several stops before we reached their home in the town of Solano, north of Baguio, in the Cagayan Valley, the rice basket of the Philippines. This was Jaime's stomping ground, he knew the area as well as I knew Leyte. The scenery was wildly varied, from the rugged mountains to the rolling grasslands that conjured up visions of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I daydreamed about Hobbits and Orcs while Becker, Jaime and his dad chattered away in Ilocano; occasionally I would catch a word or phrase I would understand. This made me the butt of some jokes by Jaime's dad. I took it in stride and Jaime made a point of using English so I was not too left out. We made some stops at churches in towns where they used to live; at Bayombong and Tuguegarao where we slept on the concrete floor of the church.

Summer was in full swing in the high plains. By the time we got to Solano it was already very hot. We went to bed sweating and we woke up sweating. We sweated all day long. The only relief was to take a bath in the open air bath house located just outside the kitchen door. Jaime's dad would coat himself with talcum powder every day after his bath. There with a tabo and a bucket of water we would douse ourselves, soap up and rinse away the sweat, sometimes twice a day. The house was a big rambling old two story with a large tree filled yard surrounded by tall concrete walls. We would get up early, the droning sounds of cicadas a background to the enormous silence of the morning heat. Breakfast was instant coffee and fresh pandesal, sweetened condensed milk used for creamer and a topping for the rolls. In the early morning hours we would take a bucket and collect the giant snails that crawled along the walls (the same kind of snails my dad crushed and fed to our chickens). Then, filling the bucket with fresh water we would rinse them off. Some of them must have known what was coming because they kept trying to crawl away. On the stove a big pot of salted water was boiling and they scooped the snails up and dropped them in. When they were done Jaime would grab one and suck them right out of the shell. I could not do that yet, but did dig them out with a fork. The food here was familiar yet very different than I had experienced in the Visayas. Here various forms of lugao, sometimes with fish, other times with chicken, beef or pork was served over rice were common at every meal.

Jaime's parents had come out to the Philippines separately from the US in the early 50's as single missionaries. They both spoke Ilocano fluently, but still maintained a faint echo of their American accents and would frequently switch back and forth from English to Ilocano during their conversations. While his dad was deceptively quiet and soft spoken, his mother was slightly more boisterous. Their home was filled with guitars, laughter and music and they sang the evening prayer at dinner time. I never saw any of the kids punished, whenever they did something he didn't like he would give them a look, say their name and they would burst into tears. The worst punishment seemed to be when he would say "I am so disappointed in you"; this was so crushing to Jaime and his siblings. His father continued to take great delight in teasing Becker and I. Apparently my buttons were easier to push than Becker's, because he soon devoted a great deal of his free time on me. When I couldn't take it any more I would get up from the table and go outside. He would say in Ilocano to Jaime "I think I hurt his feelings" and call for me to come back. I didn't understand it and asked Jaime why his dad was always picking on me. He didn't really have an answer and just brushed it aside. Most of the time it was simply teasing, but other times it seemed more specific. I began to realize that unlike my father he never criticized Jaime. Instead, he voiced his concerns about Jaime through his conversations with me. When he wanted to talk to Jaime about smoking he would "Say, Mark why do you have cigarettes in your pocket?" Well, they weren't just mine, they were communal property. Because he was so well known in Solano, Jaime had me go to the Sari Sari store to buy cigarettes and alcohol. Jaime's dad always managed to find out about it. I was a good soldier and did the deed and took the heat.

The big event for them that summer was a wedding, one of their students was getting married. Jaime's house was packed full of people, lots of singing and guitar playing. There was a huge meal after the ceremony followed by more singing and then more food. At some point we wandered outside to escape the hubbub only to discover that despite being Methodists there was quite a bit of drinking going on outside the gate in a dark corner. The groom invited us over and we managed to take a few swigs of beer and some rum before Jaime's little brother was sent with a message "Dad wants you to come in now." I thought we were going to really catch it and steeled myself for the expected explosion. His father was waiting for us and proceeded to give Becker and I a lecture on the perils of underage drinking and then he quietly said "Maawatam? do you understand"
"Wen" Jaime whispered.
Then he said very softly, in a whisper that roared,
"Kababain ka"

That night as I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, I pondered his life and mine, wondering which I'd rather have. The prodigal sons were chaffing at the bit.

Part 29: Dorm Daze

2010-05-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

"I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets...; My mind's distracted and diffused; My thoughts are many miles away; They lie with you when you're asleep..."
- Paul Simon

Both Jaime and I were growing. Well, you could actually tell Jaime was getting bigger, I was just not getting any shorter next to him, so it just looked like I wasn't growing. We were always starving by supper time. Domingo, the waiter in charge of our table, tried to keep our bellies full by sneaking food when the other waiters were not paying attention. This usually was not a problem as there was always food leftover on the other tables. Most of the boarders complained about the food and would not eat it, which kept Freddie busy cooking burgers and fries right up to the time he closed the canteen. After supper these students dipped into their own larders or patronized the dorm canteens. Anything to keep from having to eat our weekly boarders fare; Shepherd's Pie, Tuna Casserole, Creamed Chipped Beef or Chicken ala King over noodles or toast, that some kids called shit on a shingle. While it was nothing like Auring's cooking I usually was too hungry to care. Most of it was pretty good and there were always lots of fresh vegetables. Domingo liked that we ate our veggies and would always bring us more from the other tables. Sometimes this was the only thing left over and one night Jaime and I really went to town on the steamed cauliflower. Bowls of it. A little salt and margarine and it was just fine. We hungrily shoveled down about three full serving bowls a piece, a sure recipe for disaster.

My roommate was away for the weekend and Jaime was in my room spending the night. I had the covers tucked in tight around my neck and was desperately trying not to pass gas when I heard Jaime let one go in the bunk next to me. A loud, long drawn out affair. We both cracked up laughing and that made me fart too. We laughed some more and that made us fart more. As those of you who have had cauliflower gas know, the aroma is deadly; the scent of which made us laugh harder, which in turn generated more explosions. This went on for quite sometime. We were getting dizzy from all the fumes so at some point I got up and stumbled over to the windows to let in a little fresh air, never dreaming that the gases escaping from my room would now be sucked in to any open windows around the dorm.

During a lull in the gas barrage we heard our dorm master, Mr Pettitt in the hallway asking Norman if he smelled anything: "Can you check the toilets down here and see if there is anything backing up? I can smell it upstairs but it seems stronger down here."
We burst into laughter again and Mr Pettitt knocked on our door and stuck his head in. His face got all screwed up like he was choking and he grabbed his nose and leapt back out of the room.
"Oh, Jeeezuus! You Guys!!! Open a damn window and air out this room!"
Between fits of laughter and more farting I pointed at the wide open windows and choked out They are!

I was becoming more aware of how time seemed to stop or slow down at Brent. Some weeks so many new and interesting things would happen that it was hard to process them all. Other times a weekend would seem like it lasted a month. Then all of sudden there was a change to remind me that time was moving on. The "new dorm" was like that. I don't ever remember seeing any workers, all the construction seemed to go on while we were in class. It grew so gradually that we barely noticed the day to day changes, it seemed that it always had been under construction. One day it was just a hole in the ground with stakes marking out the footprint and the next the Board of Directors, parents and alumni showed up for the ribbon cutting ceremony and an open house to show off the new structure. It was strikingly out of place amongst the old, turn of the century green and white wooden buildings around campus; it was a reminder that time was marching forward, even on the timeless, ageless Brent campus.

Three stories high, a modern concrete and steel exterior and on the inside parquet floors, mahogany paneling throughout and a massive fireplace in the main sala. Each floor had its own sala, the top two overlooking the main floor living area. There was a large kitchenette on bottom floor, and a TV room in the basement. The rooms were enormous by previous standards. Although the original blueprints called for each room to have a balcony, this feature had been eliminated much to our disappointment. The best thing of all were the gleaming modern bathrooms, all white tile and chrome. Each floor had its own, with plenty of sinks, shower stalls, toilets and urinals to insure a minimal wait in the morning. The girls were extremely jealous of the new building and wondered why the stinky boys got the fancy dorm. We couldn't wait to move in and were sorely disappointed when we found out we would have to wait till next year to try it out. However, one weekend the water heaters went out in the Infirmary. Mr Pettitt told us we could go across the way and use the showers in the new dormitory. Most of the dorm turned out, grabbing our towels and shaving kits and headed across, each one picking a floor and shower to try out. It was wonderful, lots of hot water, clean, no peeling paint or musty mildew odors. With so many shower stalls we all got done about the same time. We were walking through the main living area when someone said "Let's Streak!". Back in early 70's streaking was front page news, for Brent boarders it was old hat, a common hazing punishment was to be turned out of the dorm naked. Within seconds we all had our towels over our shoulders and whooping and hollering we raced across to the Infirmary. I don't know if Brent has ever had so many naked teenagers running about at one time before or since.

For some reason, the last few months of school seemed to go by in a flurry of activities; Field Day, Moving Up Day and Final Exams. Some students were dreading the exams, but I was more worried about what came after that: summer vacation. I wasn't looking forward to heading home that year, so when Jaime invited Mark Becker and I to spend a few weeks at his home in Solano, Nueva Viscaya I eagerly accepted. I had written my parents to ask for permission and was still waiting for a reply.

So, I was despondently walking back to the dorm after my last final exam when whizzz! a piece of chalk flew past my ear. This was quickly followed by several more projectiles that bounced off my head. I looked up and there was Mr Jenista grinning at me from the classroom window.

A former Brent student himself, he was the dorm father of Hamilton Hall and taught Southeast Asian History, my favorite class that year; he was my favorite teacher during my time at Brent. He was strict, smart, funny and knew how to make history come alive. I looked forward to his class everyday.

I usually sat at his table at lunch time during the school week; Pat Dillon, Kent Rounds and I would try and sneak vinegar or patis into his drinking glass when he wasn't looking. He would take a sip, stop and a ghost of a smile would play about his lips. This was either good or bad depending on his mood and the situation. We had a good relationship, I worked hard, studied and got good grades and he reciprocated by putting up with my antics. On the first day of class he read through the syllabus and gave us the class rules.
"Pay attention, listen carefully and take notes, I will not repeat myself."
Excuse me sir, what did you say?
"I will not repea..." that ghost of a smile played about his lips.

So, it was no surprise to see him there throwing chalk at me. School was over for the year and he was getting some payback! I gathered up the pieces of chalk that littered the ground around my feet and began firing them back at him. He ducked, laughed and threw more at me. He was a much better shot and seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition. I ran around to the other side of the room and climbed through a window to press my attack. He raced to the window and picked me up and and unceremoniously dumped me head first out the window where I lodged face down in the hedge. I couldn't see very good and I seemed to be stuck; I felt a sharp pain in my left eye. Mr Jenista came out with several of my classmates and they pulled me from the hedge. My face felt warm and sticky and I reached up to feel my eye when someone grabbed my wrist. "Don't touch it!" he said as he propelled me towards the nurse's office. One of the small branches that had stopped my fall had broken off and a piece of it was now sticking out of my eye socket. We reached the clinic and the nurse looked at me and said "Oh it's you again." She always seemed to be a little put out when we came to her to tend to our injuries. I had been in the month before after fracturing my hand during a rough game of 2 on 2 basketball with Pat Dillon, Jaime and Joey Butler. She got on the phone and called Dr. Pavia to come over to Brent and look me over and while we waited for him to arrive she cleaned the blood off my face. My eye was really hurting now and I was starting to panic about the possibility of losing my eye. The doctor arrived and carefully removed the stick and put some dye in my eye which really burned. He wanted me to open my eye and that was really hard to do, but I finally got it open. Other than some scratches to the cornea and a gouge in the corner of my eye socket, it seemed to be OK. The stick had broken off before it was driven in too deep. He put some ointment in my eye and put a heavy gauze patch over it, gave me some pain killer and told me to lie still for a few hours. By the time I got to the dining hall that night everyone had heard about it and came over to gawk at my black elastic eye patch, the fact that it covered a slightly bloody piece of gauze greatly enhancing their sympathy and my status. Mr Jenista felt real bad and at dinner that night I played it up for a while, but I liked him too much to keep it up for long. I did, however, have a deep pink scar that ran from the bridge of my nose to the edge of the eye socket. I used to turn my head so the scar would show and tap my nose just to pester him.

Part 28: East of the Sun, West of the Moon

2010-05-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"

~Rudyard Kipling

"Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
'Neath the cover of October skies"
~ Van Morrison

Most of the boarding student rules revolved around preventing smoking, drinking, drugs and sex. None were very effective. A big priority for the dorm parents was keeping us occupied and out of mischief, to us it seemed to be their sole mission in life. Many kids were well versed in the arts of evasion and concealment and we kept them on their toes during the school week, but especially so on the weekends; we were a handful. What they and the administration didn't seem to understand was that most of these skills and vices were acquired long before they ever got to Brent.

One weekend we were just hanging out around campus and a friend of mine said "you want to see something? " We went into the empty senior lounge next to the dining hall and to the restroom where he pulled the medicine cabinet out of the wall. There in the now empty nook was a little ledge formed by the 2x4 framing studs and on it were a syringe, an oil lamp, a spoon and a length of rubber tube. I was shocked. I knew some of the older kids smoked pot, but I had no idea that this was going on. We had just seen the movie "Dusty and Sweets McGee" in gym class. I hated shots and needles and the scenes of the addicts injecting heroin into their tongues really freaked me out.

After drugs, the faculty were especially concerned about keeping the boys and girls from teaching each other about the birds and the bees. This was especially difficult on Brent's big campus, there were so many places a couple could sneak off to.

So, the Faculty opened and staffed the library on the weekends, they organized weekend volleyball and basketball games between students and teachers/staff. They took turns chaperoning trips on Friday and Saturday nights to the Pines, Session or John Hay movie theaters. I participated in as many of those activities that I could, even the ones I wasn't really interested in. But the one activity that Boarders rarely skipped, the most fun form of school sponsored Boarder entertainment were the beach trips. It was counter intuitive really, putting boys together with girls in their swimsuits, because a lot of students on these trips broke most of the aforementioned rules.

For most of us it was simply a great way to get away, and for the boarders it didn't cost anything extra. Day students could sign up too, they just had to pay for the meals. Most of my friends usually went and I don't think I ever missed a trip. The long, wide white sand beaches along the Lingayen gulf were free of trash, the water clear. Vendors would rent inner tubes for fifty centavos and we would hook ourselves together and float down the coast. Older students would sneak down the beach to one of the Sari Sari stores where, for a peso they buy a cold bottle of San Miguel beer or a pack of cigarettes. After supper we would watch the sunset, then sit around the campfires, playing guitar, singing songs, roasting marshmallows. It was very romantic and many relationships blossomed after one of these trips. We would get up in the middle of the night and swim in the ocean, under water we would wave our arms, causing the phosphorescent plankton to light up like a scene from Fantasia.

So, once the monsoon season started to die down, sign up sheets started appearing on the little table in the dining hall. Sometimes the trips were just for the day, most often they were overnight campouts. We would load up the bus and head down the mountain to one of the many resorts located near the town of San Fernando, La Union. Cresta Ola, Long Beach, Nalinac and Bauang were just some of the places we stayed. Or rather, campout at. While the students pitched tents in a coconut grove near the beach, some of the chaperones would get a room or two. This way we had access to showers and flushing toilets and sometimes a swimming pool. Depending on how many students signed up, the school would send a corresponding number of cooks along and sometimes the school nurse.

We are on the bus going back to Baguio late one afternoon, I was sitting on the rolled up tents in the aisle near the back of the bus. A senior and his girlfriend were on the seat next to me, on the other side were Norman and Angel. A couple of the teacher chaperones were sitting four rows up and they kept turning around and glowering at the couple next to me. When we finally arrived back at Brent they pounced on them as they alighted from the bus. After a brief argument, the boy was ordered back to his dorm and they escorted the girl back to Hamilton Hall. The word quickly spread, Toy and Becky were in trouble for engaging in sexual activity on the bus! They were being recommended for expulsion or suspension. We couldn't believe it, we had been sitting right there talking the whole way back and had not seen any illicit behavior. Norman was outraged and spent the night cutting up pairs of black dress pants into 3 inch wide strips to use as armbands. He went room to room the next morning instructing us to tie them on and wear a jacket or sweater over it. My roommate didn't want to wear one, but I said I would. One of the girls in Hamilton Hall had been working on the same thing and she passed around the home made armbands to the girl boarders. Before flag raising that day Norman handed out more of them to the day students. Some students were afraid to wear them, but many did. Then, right before the flag raising ceremony, at his signal, we all took off our jackets or sweaters. My heart was pounding wildly in my chest as I followed suit. Some students bowed their heads and raised their right arm, fist clenched as the athletes had in the 1968 Olympics. Most of us just stood at attention, eyes fixed straight ahead. We heard the gasp from some of the teachers and you could feel the ripple of fear run through the crowd. It was scary and empowering at the same time. Like most things that happened at Brent, it was the climax to what would be a rather anti-climatic day. After flag raising Norman and a few other students met with Dr McGee and Mr Craig and presented their frustrations with the charges. Eventually this would lead to Toy and Becky being given separate disciplinary hearings where they both were acquitted. Still it was exciting, even if only for a brief moment, to be standing up against something we thought was wrong. Student Power!

I went on another beach trip later that school year, this time it was just a small group of boarders and we all fit into the maroon Chevy suburban type vehicle that Brent had. One of the kids parents worked for Voice of America and had reserved the guest house down at the beach for us.

The VOA maintained a guest house at their relay station which was right next to the US Air Force's Wallace Air Station located along the tip of Poro Point. Although there was a winding staircase down the cliffs to a tiny secluded private beach, one of the big drawing points was the large swimming pool. The guest house was appointed like an American style motel: carpet, TV (with American programs!), American sized beds and comfortable mattresses. We spent the afternoon swimming and then went over to Wallace Air Station to have milk shakes, burgers and fries at the rec center. It was a little strange after being in the boonies all these years to find this tiny little corner of America right here in the Philippines; odd to think that all the food we were eating had been shipped all the way from the US out here to this little base in the tropics.

When we got back to the guest house we found that we had locked our keys inside our rooms. I went around back to see if by any chance someone had left a window open and as I turned the corner of the house there it was.

Rising up out of the South China Sea was an enormous, almost blood red full moon. I had never seen anything like it before, I have never seen anything like it since. It seemed to fill the entire horizon and I awed and humbled by its immensity. Forgetting why I had walked back there in the first place I was drawn towards it, till at last I was standing on the edge of the cliff. I felt rather than saw Kathy come up beside me, she must have come to see where I was. We stood there in silence for what seemed like hours, watching the moon slowly rise. I knew she could feel the strength and power of the moment too.

I really liked her, but for some reason could never find a way to express my feelings for her. Now here she was, next to me in this most romantic setting, I could feel the hairs on my arm brushing against hers. I knew her fingers must only be millimeters away from mine. I wanted so badly to take her hand in mine, but I couldn't make my hand move. I don't know if it was fear of rejection or simply that I didn't want to ruin our friendship if she didn't have those kind of feelings for me. Maybe it was both.

We watched the moon rise, the orange light mirrored in the sea below us. Then we quietly walked back to the guest house, having never said a word. My heart ached. Our magic time had come and gone. There would never be a moment like that between us again.

Full moons always make me think of all the things in my life that might have been, they especially remind me of that night.

Part 27: Of Mice and Men

2010-04-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

"Tell me like you done before,
about them other guys and about us...
"Guys like us ain't got nobody in the world
that gives a hoot n' hell about em."
~ John Steinbeck

"Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me, what's my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me"
~ Roland Orzabal

It is funny how real life mirrored the books we were reading. Maybe that is why the book one person loves is a book another person can't bear to read, because a story hits a little close to home; somethings in life are just too painful.

If you look carefully at the class photos in the yearbook you can see the the guarded looks, the uncertainty and fear in some of the faces.

New Kids: we all bore some scars. Having become global nomads at a young age, some having been ripped from parents that loved them, some from parents who were indifferent at best. Transferring from country to country, school to school, most of us were inwardly nervous those first days, weeks and months. Would we fit in, would we be accepted, would we have friends? Brent was pretty good at absorbing new students into the group, but there were always those who were on the fringe, those that kept to themselves and never seemed to make friends.

The 1972-73 school year brought a wave of new students to Brent, the U.S. Department of Defense parents were sending their kids out of the war zones. In January we got another batch of new students, a mixed lot of private business and military related kids. Some were boarders like Robin Ennis, Terry Drye, Leigh Gilmore, Beth and Kathy Duncan, Bill Rassmussen and others were day students: Anna Marie Franco, Dayne and September Florence.

Leigh, Terry and the Duncan sisters soon became part of my circle of boarder friends. They joined me, Jaime Case and sometimes Peg Hamill at the same table at supper time. I really liked Robin and Kathy. Kathy was blond with pretty eyes and a big smile, we became friends and would go shopping or to movies together but that is as far as it ever went. I didn't understand yet that just because you like someone in a certain way doesn't mean they like you in that way too.

Robin was a cute little redhead and because I liked her I teased her. A lot. I was an ass. The more I teased her the more she didn't like me. One day, fed up with me, first she blurted out something that I didn't understand, and then something else that I did; I avoided her after that. Later she apologized and I guess she meant it, I told her I was sorry for teasing her; but there are some things once spoken that always stand between two people.

We all had our little quirks and peculiarities: my roommate would wash his pens and pencils, scrub his notebook and school book covers; Jaime's leg would bounce up and down at the dinner table causing the silverware to vibrate; he had this habit of tearing up paper into tiny little pieces which was quite annoying when it happened to be your homework. Beth had a loud booming laugh and if you got her going she would snort too. Kathy liked to try different things on her ice cream: salt, pepper, soy sauce, ketchup, mustard, vinegar and the salty fish sauce called patis. Terry was quirky and eccentric, she could be very quiet, proper and reserved one minute and the next she would cuss like a sailor; I learned some new words from her. Leigh was loud and boisterous with a sharp tongue and burning wit. Then there was Matthew.

Matthew was a little weird and he made people uncomfortable. He wasn't ugly, he wasn't dumb, he made OK grades, it was just that when he opened his mouth the words came out wrong. When he spoke this goofy smile played about his lips and this didn't help things either. He would hang a sock or tie out his window. Norman asked him why and he said that all the windows looked the same and he wanted to know which room was his when he flew back to the dorm at night. Sometimes he would get shoved or punched, sometimes someone would stop the bullies, sometimes not. He had this piercing stare that was magnified by his thick glasses, sometimes when you found him staring at you it felt like he was reading your thoughts. This seemed to bother the girls quite a bit. Like most loners he was observant, cataloging the words and actions of those around him, storing it up in some vast database. I think he was lonely and like anyone else, he wanted to be liked, he wanted to have friends. So, he tried too hard and the harder he tried the stranger he seemed, the more he was ostracized. Mrs Pettitt tried to get the guys to include him, but because he was different he scared people. I was a bit of a loner too, spending my free time in the library reading while the other boys were down at the mini court playing basketball. I could feel the pain he felt at being left out and sometimes when we in the sala watching TV he would sit next to me because I was the only one who would let him. He was polite and solicitous of other people's feelings; he had a funny sense of humor, but still I never really knew him. Mathew had a favorite expression "Buck Up", which he proffered whenever anyone was down. He never said what he felt, rarely spoke of what he was thinking. The way he was treated made me begin to review my own actions and inaction, not just with him but with everyone.

I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, feeling guilty about teasing my roommate for washing his bar of soap, pondering the injustice of the world when I happened to look at myself in the mirror. And it struck me like thunderclap, now all the innuendos and slights, the subtle slurs became clear. I did not fit into the cookie cutter mold, I was not up to the common standard. What I saw in the mirror shook me to my core, I was seeing myself for the first time: a skinny kid with dark brown eyes and jet black hair. Now I comprehended the words "you ugly, stupid dirty little Flip" and how it applied to me. Now I knew why some girls wouldn't consider me as suitable; and all this time I thought we were the same. Sure, I knew that some people had blond hair and some people had black hair, but I thought that was just part of the variety of nature. I didn't realize that distinctions were being made, you were constantly rated: your weight, the straightness of your teeth, shape of your nose, color of your hair, shade of your skin, cut of your clothes or the accent of your voice. It never occurred to me before, I thought I was just like everyone else. The box was opened; I wanted to go back to being naive again.

Because we were always looking for things to do, a bunch of us boarders signed up for The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) workshops. They sent up some instructors from Manila to do classes at Brent. These workshops were to teach acting techniques and we did stuff like learning to project our voices, enunciation and pretending we were inanimate objects like trees or chairs, or animals like cats or dogs. I am not sure if we actually learned anything that stuck with us, but we had fun. It was a break in the routine, we could be out of the dorm at night. Jaime and I bummed cigarettes off the instructor:"Mr Slim Menthol 100s" and tried to act cool, we thought we were pretty hip.

One evening we gathered in Binstead Hall to do some "past life" exercises; the idea being that an actor can use those experiences to help them flesh out a role. It was a simple drill, where we sat in a semi circle around one individual who held a flashlight and shone it up to their face. We each took turns sitting there in the dark with a flashlight shining up at our faces, trying to imagine what we were in a past life. Then each member of the group would take turns saying what they saw and lastly the person who had the flashlight would tell what he imagined. In the 1973 post Rosemary's Baby era there were some in the group who were very uncomfortable with this Ouija Board like activity. Some were extremely nervous at sitting in the dark calling up past lives. But at first it was pretty boring and uneventful. Then it was Matthew's turn and after several minutes as he sat there I saw his thick glasses fade away, his hair was streaked with gray, his t-shirt turned into a collared shirt and heavy cape. It kind of looked like he had fangs. I guess someone else saw it too, because one of the girls shrieked making everyone jump, then we all started nervously laughing and talking and the facilitator turned on the lights.
"I was a vampire" Matthew blurted out of turn. I was a little uncomfortable because I had seen something like that too. Maybe it was the power of suggestion because some of the others said "I thought that too!" The facilitator tried to get things back on track, getting us to tell what we saw, but Matthew interrupted again to say "I killed her", pointing at one of the girls in the class. She was visibly upset and refused to stay for the rest of the session. The incident was reported to the Headmaster, decisions were made, phone calls placed.

Well, that was it. In this day and age of "zero tolerance" it would come as no surprise, but back then it was a shocker. Within a few days Matthew was taken out of school and sent for psychiatric evaluation. He never came back.

A month or so later found us nervously climbing the stairs to the Faculty Lounge in Ogilby Hall. Matthew's mother had come to Brent to speak to some of the upper school students and boarders at an assembly. None of us knew what to expect. One of the students in front of me said "this is so sad". I blurted out "Buck Up!" which caused her to laugh, releasing the tension. I remember thinking how brave Matthew's mother was to come before us and talk about her son. The headmaster's wife stood next to her and gently held her arm as Matthew's mother spoke with a quaver in her voice. Gently and clearly she told us about his condition, of the happy little boy she had raised, of the young man he now was. She told us "I know some of you are hurt and angry about him being taken out of school. I want you to know that he truly needed help and getting this help will make him better. I am hopeful that one day I will have my son back" Then she smiled through tears as she read a note that Matthew written telling us "to be happy for him" and "not to worry and buck up"; about his "new friends in the loony bin". It was a good letter, funny and self deprecating. But I couldn't help thinking that just because he really did need psychiatric help that didn't absolve us from the way we treated him. He was a better person than the rest of us. His letter made me think of a book I had read "Flowers for Algernon"; maybe Matthew had read it too. Here it is, an excerpt from the book by Daniel Keyes:

"If you ever reed this Miss Kinnian dont
be sorry for me Im glad I got a chanse
to be smart becaus I lerned a lot of
things that I never even new were in
this world and Im grateful that I saw
it all for a little bit. I dont no what
I did wrong maybe its becaus I dint
try hard enuff. I remember I dids
something but I dont remember what. 
Good-by Miss Kinnian and Dr Strauss
and evreybody. And P.S.please
tell Dr Nemur not to be such a
grouch when pepul laff at him and he
would have more frends. Its easy to
make frends if you let pepul
laff at you. Im going to have lots
of frends where I go."