"A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE"

Part 2

I finally joined my three friends from Bayan Luma on my sophomore year, 1973-1974, when I was assigned to Section 1, I figured I must have done well on my freshman year.  This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the other boys in this class.  There were less than twenty of us boys, and we became close, most of us still good friends until now.  Some of us would even go to college together a few years later.  I recall going to Felino "Joey" Livelo's house in "Cuatro Cantos" after school hours to play chess and basketball.  While my classmates were picking their brains on a game of chess or practicing their shooting skills in basketball, I worked on improving my reading and comprehension skills.  I read Hiwaga, Aliwan, Pioneer, Love Story or Wakasan "komiks" at a sari-sari store across Joey's house!  I became an avid fan of "Zuma", "Anak Ni Zuma", "Mong" and "Bakekang", following up on their weekly adventures, but sadly lost track of them when I had to leave the Philippines.  I was overjoyed when "Bakekang" was made into a movie, with no less than the superstar herself, Ate Guy or Nora Aunor, in the lead role.  Kislap was my magazine of choice for gossips about the local celebrities,  especially my favorite bold stars - it gave me additional information aside from the ones I got from Inday Badiday's show.  I didn't like Liwayway that much because except for a very few illustrated stories, the rest were in text form.  I lose interest halfway through the story because I can only understand the plot better if there are accompanying pictures or illustrations.  Though I played chess and basketball to some extent, I had no intention of becoming another Eugene Torre or another Freddie Webb, I always thought that reading these intelligently-written literary masterpieces (the illustrated variety!) were more important.  Incidentally, chess was very popular in the Philippines in the early '70s, with Torre becoming an International Master in 1973, and later the first Filipino grandmaster. American Bobby Fischer was the reigning world champion.  The controversial Florencio Campomanes was the Asian representative at FIDE, the world chess body, and later served as its president.

On Saturdays, we had Boy Scout meetings at the Imus Pilot Elementary School grounds just across the street from II.  Scouting was mandatory for boys who were sophomores and juniors.  On our report cards, it appeared as "YDT", but I cannot recall the complete meaning, it must be my fading memory.  We had camping trips to different places, but the most memorable one for me was when we camped by a sugarcane field in Dasmariņas.  It was raining most of the time and we slept in wet ground under tents that were leaking - the tents were not canvas but fashioned from rice sacks.  Try sleeping with your feet under water!  Sugarcane for snack was plentiful.  There was this guy named Jose Orland Papa from Carsadang Bago who was feasting on it all the time.  If you were to ask him for a piece of his sugarcane, he would gladly lend you his hunting knife and tell you to cut your own sugarcane stalk!  The sugarcane field served another purpose - it turned into an instant CR!  As Scouts, we had to improvise, as we were "Laging Handa!".  Another unforgettable camping trip was in Malagasang in a place called "Simboryo", when one of the scout leaders forced me and Gregorio Bermejo to demonstrate mouth to mouth resuscitation as part of our first aid training!  AIDS was still unknown then, infection did not really cross my mind.  It was the thought of two mouths on a steady Boy Scout diet getting into contact that made me cringe.  Menu for these camping trips were sardines for breakfast, sardines for lunch and more sardines for dinner - not all the time, but most of the time.  After this so-called demonstration, I must have spit out anything from my mouth the next hour or so, and so did Greg, I'm sure!  It's really ironic that many years later, this scout leader would take my official wedding pictures, one of which is me kissing a real woman - my bride!! We had for our crew leaders, Melito Darvin and Liberato Virata.  We sure gave them lots of headache - we were a bunch of clowns!  The best in cracking up jokes were Alex "Bibing" Camungol and Epitacio Tined, with these two guys around, you'll be laughing all the time!  They were as close as you can get to a stand-up comedian, they were that good.  It wasn't easy to purge your system of Scouting after enduring three or more years of it, so that even many years later after high school, before going home after a night of guitar-playing, singing America, Eagles and Jim Croce songs and of course, downing a few bottles of our favorite beverage, San Miguel Beer (or Ginebra San Miguel if budget was tight), we would stand in a circle, raise our right hands in the Boy Scouts tradition, and recite, "May the great, great Master, of all good Scouts, be with us, till we meet again".

On the airwaves, some of the more popular tunes were Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree" and Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song".  Elton John, with his outrageous eyeglasses and before coming out of the closet, was way up in the charts with his many hits.  His "Skyline Pigeon" was very popular in the Philippines but didn't even make it in his Greatest Hits record.   The group Bread with hit songs "Diary" and "Aubrey"  was at their peak, and an up and coming rock band, Grand Funk Railroad, had a smash hit in "We're An American Band".  After jukebox kings Eddie Peregrina and Victor Wood, a new genre in Pinoy music started to evolve, the Manila Sound.  The group Hotdogs was credited as the trend setter with hits like "Pers Lab" and "Ikaw ang Miss Universe ng Buhay Ko".  They had a rival in Cinderella, whose "TL Ako Sa Iyo" was sung by lead vocalist Yolly Sasis of Malagasang.  It was in 1974 when the Philippines hosted the Miss Universe beauty pageant, won by Miss Spain, Amparo Muņoz.  She did not finish her reign on allegations that she was once a prostitute.  She starred in soft porn movies later on.  Miss Aruba, Maureen Ava-Vieira was one of the more popular candidates and even made a Filipino-produced movie.  A year earlier in 1973, Miss Philippines Margarita Moran was crowned Miss Universe.  Among the movies, mafia thriller "The Godfather" with a young Al Pacino, and horror flick "The Exorcist" with Linda Blair, stood out.  Years later, "The Godfather" will have a Pinoy version in actor Rene Imperial's "Ninong".  I remember Rene being interviewed in one of the noontime variety shows, when asked about the similarity between the two movies, his reply was "May konting pagkakahawig!"  Local quality movies included "Patayin Mo Sa Sindak Si Barbara" and "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang".  I say quality because they were different from the usual low-budget, mediocre-story, filmed-in-10-days, no-artistic-value, sex-themed, strictly-made-for-profit Pinoy movies - unfortunately, these were the ones that I used to watch and enjoy!

In March of 1974, many, many years before the word "Japayuki" came into the national consciousness, a Second World War Japanese soldier by the name of Hiroo Onoda came out from hiding in the island of Lubang, off Mindoro, which was his home since the war.   He stayed not because he enjoyed the movies of Merle Fernandez, Yvonne and Rossana Ortiz (yes, she was the original "Osang"), or the loveteams of Guy & Pip or Vi & Bot, but because he thought the war was still going on!  Pictures of him in his old military uniform and with really short hair presenting his saber to then-President Ferdinand Marcos were all over the newspapers.  It so happened that we had a classmate who had this kind of haircut, was light skinned and slim.  The boys started calling him "Onoda", which, to this day, is always remembered when his real name would come out during a conversation.  As a footnote, the real Onoda-san returned to the island of Lubang in the mid-'90s to visit what was his home for almost 30 years.  Oh, and he did not come to recruit more Japayukis.