By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
anymore. ”
He would tell me of new varieties of pineapples (one was Hawaiian) he planted around the house. There were also different kinds of masaflora (passion fruit) he would acquire and raise. They came in different sizes. But of all his plants, of great commercial value were the oranges spread over his humble residential spread. He was the main supplier of oranges in Sagada during market days. I am talking here of the late 50s and early 60s.
About a year after the second kiskisan (rice mill) was delivered there came some people who took it away. It was sold, I was told. When I was in the college of law, one of my older brothers told me it was bought by somebody from Bontoc, the province’s capital town, and it was still being operated at that time across the Bontoc Municipal Hall.
Sometime in the late 1990s I learned from another older brother that he was sent by the old man to study auto-diesel mechanic in San Fernando, La Union. As I gathered, it was to make sure he had a skill with which to make a living in case he did not finish college. Well, he finally did (becoming an accountant), but what foresight or hedging of one’s bets.
When this older brother was in college, I remember waking up at dawn while the fire was burning cooking pig food and our food and the old man would be reviewing all the items on which my older brother’s allowance would be spent. It must have been the last of repeated calculations before handing over the money as the bus bound for Baguio would be passing by from Besao Proper in a few minutes which he would board. Offhand I would say that the old man was “makwenta.” Every centavo must be accounted for. No centavo must be lost or misspent.
Another long time memory are sketchy glimpses of the boats along Manila Bay which sightseers would take. I was told many, many years later it was when we went to Manila for the graduation of Manang Dominga (now a Suanding) as a nurse from the St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing..
How was the brain of the old man? At one time I saw our eldest brother calculate in his mind the number of votes for each candidate in an election after the votes in several precincts were read out. His brain was like a calculator. Of course everybody in the community knew how good he was in playing all sorts of musical instruments (with all the mental subtleness artistry required) and how he could fix anything from wrist watches, petromax to motorcycles and vehicles (with the crude exactness required). He possessed the capacity for mathematical exactness all the way to the other extreme, the mental ability to be a musician which belongs to the arts that have no boundaries.
Our accountant brother also had the musical ability but I only saw this when he was not young anymore.
I don’t know how much of this was from the old man.
As to mathematical ability, it is there in everyone—across the board. I remember Manang Dominga saying that math was the easiest subject.
These are small memories but are very revealing on who was the old man.
It was only a few years ago that the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources started promoting in earnest fisheries in the hinterlands. But the old man was successfully doing it 50 years ago.
It was also just a few years back that the TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) started implementing its program of ladderized education where a student starts with a vocational course to acquire some skill by which he could earn a living while pursuing a higher education if he is determined to. What was sending our acountant brother 50 years ago to take up auto-diesel mechanic for?
Then there was the man from Bontoc who went to Besao, the end of the road if not the world, to buy a rice mill. Bontoc was and is still the capital town but somebody there had to go to Besao to acquire a rice mill.
To put things in perspective I was talking to a guy from Tarlac the other week and he wanted to put up a small rice mill. He said it would take millions of pesos to accomplish this retirement dream of his.
How about having a vehicle in the 1940s? You imagine how it was then. In the 1960s buying a pencil or pad paper in our town, as it must have been in most rural areas in this country was a major expense. So in the 1940s? It must have been a capital expenditure.
In brief, the old man was about half a century ahead of his time. And he had the brains and the determination and ability to apply what he knew in the practical world (all his kids finished college). While Besao doesn’t know anything anymore about him, perhaps even his grandchildren, he was, I would say, a great industrialist and agriculturist during his time.
Personally I have to take comfort in the fact that I started being a vegetarian and doing yoga in 1976. It was a crazy thing then, but those who are educated who seriously care about their health now (not to mention those in search of a humanitarian socioeconomic and political ideology) are into it. I could say that, at least, in that respect I am about 40 years ahead. Ten years from now people should be saying I was 50 years ahead.
If my older brother who is now a third-termer councilor in our hometown will become vice mayor, then he could say he measured up to the old man, if only politically.
But this is really for the old man’s grandchildren (including my kid when he grows up) to know where they came from. During bad times, when they are down and out, they should always remember that the old man’s great genes are flowing in their veins. Something in there is the ability to survive if notget ahead. If they never realized that, then it is high time they did.
Every kid of course needs a hero in his father (remember the movie Road to Perdition?) so when he grows up he could go out there and slay the dragons if necessary to achieve something. Too bad for me and some other kids similarly situated, my old man passed away before I had enough discernment to appreciate who he was. But for every misfortune a kid has to suffer, God makes sure he is blessed some other ways. I guess I was, still am.
Belated happy Father’s Day. **
