By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
He was always sitting on the rattan chair by the window. The chair was with curved armrests where one could fully relax—the butt would sink quite deep while the part of the chair that hits the lower thighs are higher, and the armrests’ slant follows this. The part of the chair on which your back leans is a bit inclined so your torso would be leaning backwards in an easy manner.
Day after day the old man would be sitting there by the window that looks out to the road with his gray hair and gray stubbles. If he was not looking at passersby, he was reading with eyeglasses the Philippines Free Press, a very progressive political magazine then, of which he was a regular subscriber. I remember the funny renderings of political figures in the magazine by its cartoonists to deliver the desired message. Sometimes the teeth became so big or the lips so thickened or the cheeks bloated, etc. The magazine was later closed during Martial Law and was later revived but it was emasculated of its chutzpa. It was never the same again.
As time passed, the gaunt face of the old man became more and more severe. The cheeks got deeper, the skin got paler. The coughing that always interrupted whatever he was doing became worse and more frequent, as his orders for me to stay farther so I would not contract his disease. Then when I was in grade four he succumbed to the tuberculosis he had been battling since I could remember. He was my father, Agustin Pekas.
So my world became just me and my mother who never went to school. My half-sisters and half-brothers were away studying or had families of their own with the attendant problems they had to contend with.
There was not the chance to know the old man. It was only much later that I could paint who he was in my mind.
I distinctly remember a small truck that delivered a wooden crate at the house in Kin-iway, Besao, Mtn. Province. I did not know what it was. Then there were some cementing and carpentry work on the ground floor at the back of the house. When things were finished there was this long industrial belt about four inches in width that went from end to end, sort of connecting a hulk of a machine to another machine at the other end. When you were small everything seemed big. It was a kiskisan or a rice mill. It was the old man’s second kiskisan. The first was in Payeo (a nearby barangay), which was also running at that time.
The first kiskisan was put up when my older brother was still a small kid (in the 1940s). According to him, his memory of the event were just glimpses which should be revealing as to his age then. The machine’s brand sounded to be of German origin and he continued operating it until a few years back when electricity finally arrived in the town. I guess an electric motor is more energy efficient and cheaper to maintain.
When I was not yet old enough to be in school, there was this rusted machine by the yard, on the side of the pig pen. There was the chassis or the frame of a bus the old man acquired and opeerated in the 1940s. The steering wheel was there and the transmission with the gear shifting lever (kambio) that went krrkk krrk whenever I was playing driver trying to change gears. The gears definitely would not mesh as they were so rusty. The engine was also rusty, but it was still there.
The last time I went home about 15 years ago, the engine block of the vehicle was still there. It must have been the first or the second vehicle in the town. The other family who owned a vehicle then was the Busacays’.
I was already a lawyer when I learned that the old man was once a vice mayor. His mayor at that time was a Busacay.
During warm days when the old man was still strong, he would ask me to go with him to his small fish pond by the creek at the back of the house to catch some tilapia. I would totally undress while he would be in his boxer shorts. There was a net to move across the small pond to corner the fish which would try to find refuge in the holes between the riprap stones. To be pricked on the hand by its sharp fins as I tried to pull one from a hole is a clear memory I still keep to this day. **
He would tell me of new varieties of pineapples (one was Hawaiian) he would plant around the house. There were also different kinds of masaflora (passion fruit) he would acquire and raise. They came in different sizes. But of them all, of great commercial value were the oranges spread over his 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 was delivered there came some people who took it away. It was sold, I was told. When I was in the college of law, my older brother 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 my other 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 acountant, but what foresight or hedging of one’s bets.
When he was in college, I remember waking up at dawn while the fire was burning cooking pig food or our food and the old man would be reviewing all the items on which his allowance would be spent. It must have been the last of repeated calculations before handing the money as the bus bound for Baguio City 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 as a nurse from St. Luke’s Hospital.
How was the brain of the old man? At one time I saw Manong Henry calculate in his mind the number of votes in an election after the votes in several precincts were read out. 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.
Manong Dunstan 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 Manong Dusntan 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 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. 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 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 Manong Carpio 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 you are down and out, always remember that the old man’s great genes are flowing in your veins. Something in there is the ability to get ahead. If you never realized that, then it is high time you did.** Uncle Pacol
