Breaching a 25-year Divide

By Percy D. Della

Everyone has a hometown. Real, adopted or imagined.

For someone who'd been away from the hometown for ages, it remained a dream tucked in the shadows of the mind.

The death of my mother at the ancestral home in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, brought me back to my hometown after 25 years of self-exile in America.

Finally, the mental shadows lifted and there it was -- my dream, my hometown in its entire splendor.

All of Cuyapo seemed to have cried with my family on the Thursday I arrived. I cried for my departed mom and for breaching a 25-year divide -- at long last.

In a bittersweet homecoming, there were tears at seeing faces I thought I would never see again; tears as I learned for the first time of the deaths of close relatives, friends and elders -- who like my mom had
profound impressions on my life.

Amid the mourning, there was subdued joy because in the years in which I'd had no contact, whole new lives have emerged -- brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, new nephews and nieces, even grandchildren.

We -- siblings and cousins -- locked up tightly around one another, our childhood flashing before us -- realizing that the cycle of life has come full circle. We have become parents and reluctant grandparents. We
are privy once again to the joys and sorrows of young adulthood, of first dances and of crushes that turn to first loves.

There was a long, tearful reunion with my 81-year old father, a sweet man with steely Ilocano resolve. I have never seen him cry until that moment. Group bear hugs with friends and relations ensued -- especially
with the surviving kasugpon (farm hands) who were our sitters and protectors when my sisters and I were growing up. We treated these folks like family until they left to start their own.

Clasping hands and shedding tears with them reinforced my mother's advice to "take care of the little people on your way up, because you're likely to meet them again on your way down."

There's a small hint of a Horton Foote play to my homecoming.

My mom, realizing the end was near, practically dragged my father home from a comfortable life in California. To set foot on Cuyapo once more. And for good.

In a different sort of way, she replayed the wish of Foote's Mrs. Carrie Watts to see her hometown one last time in a "Trip to Bountiful."

Cuyapo was my mother's Bountiful, Texas. Mom was a country girl, having been raised on the land. She spent 15 years in America, returning to Cuyapo three times in that span. Still, she always hankered for the
country life in the old hometown.


I had always thought that Foote's distinctive feel for small town life was contrived for his plays and for the screen -- notably for his Academy Award- winning screenplay from the Harper Lee book "To Kill a
Mockingbird."


Until I came home and rekindled the strength and the beauty of such a connection.

Cuyapo could be Maycomb, Alabama in "Mockingbird," and even Foote's own real Texan hometown of Wharton. Like any other hometowns, Cuyapo has poignant stories to tell.

Life. Captured daily, shouts the tagline of the Sacramento Bee, the daily newspaper in my adopted city of Sacramento, California.

My real hometown does one better. It breathes life from moment to moment.

A stirring rural anthology, starring real people unfolded before me during my trip to Cuyapo.

The boy who endured juvenile pranks of yesteryear is now the town mayor on his third and last term.

The Genticar trio no longer sings, silenced by death.

The local thug, reformed but ravaged by illness, is very much alive.

The calesa (horse drawn carriage) has bowed out to the "kuliglig."

The phone -- both cell and regular-- and cable television have become commonplace.

The town square features a freshly erected monument, not to Benigno Aquino Jr--the hero -- but to a living faith healer.

The old numbers game thrives as ever.

His Honor Amado Corpuz Jr. would wail his heart out, when we his “uncles”, would slurp on the "ice candies" he peddled on sultry summer afternoons and hold out paying for the longest time.

Jung, as he is fondly called told me he got into politics at age 17 as the youth delegate to the town council. In between college, he served as a town councilor until the political kingpins of Nueva Ecija province --
the Josons -- tapped him to be their mayoral candidate before he reached age 30.

When he won his first term, the boy mayor changed the face of the town hall, taking away many visages, including the wooden swing in front -- scene of his character building bouts with us. Jung will be past 40 and
termed out come the next local elections. But not after leaving a legacy to Cuyapo, by way of paved roads, new edifices and mountaintop telecom relay towers that have defiled the local mountains.

The Genticar

Uncle Tito -- the remnant, the "ti" of the Genticar Trio is approaching 60 -- a forlorn figure left to warble Adios Mariquita Linda on occasion. A second cousin of my dad's, the gentleman has remained a bachelor all
these years -- finding no inspiration I suppose from the love songs the Genticar sang from the heart.

Oh how I loved to hear the Genticar make lilting music together. In my youth, the trio of Genny Olog, and cousins Tito and Carlos Cachuela was a perennial loser in amateur singing nights. Yet it became the toast of
wakes and the star of impromptu gatherings spiced by the spirit of San Miguel.

The toughie.

Erstwhile toughie Manuel "Sardinas" Velasco, still manages to draw a crowd willing to hear of his hell-raising days and expertise in penology.

I remember Sardinas as a handsome man with biceps as hefty as Popeye's. If looks could kill, he would have mowed down our band of cousins with his piercing eyes when we were young.

Now reed-thin, blind in one eye and held together by a cane -- he strains to keep his chin up in a show of street braggadocio that refuses to die. But at age 66, he admits privately that his bout with diabetes ranks as the biggest fisticuff of his life.

The Kuliglig

A quarter of a century ago, the town proper, known as the paradaan teemed with people only on Sundays for the weekend tienda. Today, people of all shapes and sizes come out of the woodwork on a daily basis.
Navigating the maze of humanity are the ubiquitous pedicabs and a new mode of transport.

It appears that the elegant calesa has fallen by the wayside, to a contraption called "kuliglig."

Spewing gas fumes while carrying 10 passengers at the most -- the kuliglig is actually a Kubota tiller put to profitable use after harvest. Rather than keep it idle, farmers have fashioned a carriage for the machine to pull and haul off barrio folk to town. The kuliglig adds more damage to the ozone, along with the smoke belched by cars, buses and pedicabs, and from the burning of leaves and thrash.

Texting Mecca

If Los Angeles is the freeway capital of the world, the Philippines must be the texting Mecca. It appears that in Cuyapo and everywhere in the archipelago, everyone lives and dies by the cell phone.

I have witnessed my editor-friends text and get text nonstop. In our neck of the woods, palay (rice grain) dealers text current prices to each other. Students text homework notes back and forth. Housewives swap
recipes by text. Even a call to gather at sundown for cocktails at someone's veranda or under the mango tree is text to the usual suspects.


I heard that in the islands, most cell phones are mainly used for texting, since an actual call, both incoming and outgoing costs 10 times as much. Cell phones, it seems, outnumber the land-based lines. My dad has a bias against the cell-- because his children in the States reach out and touch him through the conventional phone near the altar.

If the universe has been drawn closer by the phone, it has shrunk even more because of cable television. From the comfort of my sister's grass shack behind the ancestral house, I had a thrill watching my Sacramento
Kings live as they beat the Los Angeles Lakers during the NBA's regular season.

The Faith Healer

Cuyapo's town square-- the presidencia (town hall) as centerpiece, the Catholic Church, Mount Bulalay as backdrop -- is pleasing to the eye. Yet, if photographed for posterity, the view would be a postcard from
the edge.

A monument to a faith healer spoils the balance.

The town's Ninoy Aquino Freedom Park bears no monument to the fallen martyr. But on almost manicured ground behind the hero's corner stands a huge bust to Alex Orbito.

Orbito, he prefers to be called "Reverend" Orbito is a former photographer's mate at a studio on Quezon Avenue -- Cuyapo's main drag.


By a stroke of fate, he has become one of the most sought-after psychic healers in the world. Even Shirley MacLaine, the Hollywood actress may have unwittingly fattened Orbito's wallet by mentioning the "reverend"
in her best selling book "Going Within." For book hunters, Ms. Mclaine's piece, subtitled "a guide for inner transformation" tackles such topics as self-meditation and psychic surgery.

Why Orbito merits a statue and not Ninoy, beats me. Town managers shrug and laugh off the question. Cuyapo is ripe with speculation that the monument is a harbinger, that by political sleight of hand, Orbito would pull a Ramon Labo. (Faith healer Labo got elected and then defrocked as mayor of Baguio City --the summer capital of the islands).

The pundits say the Orbito monument is a crying shame that cries out for national authorities to probe.

The Numbers Game

Police flaks who say jueteng has been stomped ought to have their heads examined.

The archaic numbers game is alive and well in Cuyapo. If it thrives in my hometown -- it follows that jueteng prospers in countless towns of the archipelago.

While in Cuyapo, I ventured to wager a few pesos -- without expecting to win -- if only to help out the kubradores (bet collectors) who have been town fixtures since I was a kid.

I have always admired these foot soldiers of the illicit game. Although they lead almost mendicant lives, their spirit stays high, and their enthusiasm remains rabid for people who bet. On a wing and a prayer, they hope that someone among their customers would hit big -- to partake of the pot in porciento (percentage) and the balato (handout) from winners.

One kubrador-- dirt poor since my wonder years -- has found a new but wearisome way to help bring rice on the table. From the wee hours until the break of dawn, he and his brood would appear at grain bodegas --
painstakingly scooping measly amounts of rice grain from the pavement and the ground. He has unearthed a treasure from the crumbs of a previous day's transaction by the rice barons.

My daily walk around town took me to the neighborhood of the rice gleaner. His kids and nephews squat on the ground, brightened my day with smiles as they weaned the grain from the chaff of a few kilograms of palay -- a bounty by their standards.

If I could walk away from the workaday world without looking back, I'd be home in Cuyapo walking about town, smelling the rotten air and recording stories of faith healers and kubradores.

For now, I am content with the thought that during my short visit, death visited but good times also rolled.

In one corner of my mind, the kuliglig roars and the Genticar trio sings again.

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Postscript:

● My dad is alive and well, at the young age of 87.

● The boy mayor Jung Corpus was termed out -- replaced by his wife as Cuyapo mayor. But he has been elected mayor again.

● Sardinas Velasco has since died. It has been reported that he went home to his Creator, clutching a copy of this article-- which he proudly displayed around town when it was published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer eight years ago.

● The monument to a faith healer has since been torn down, on the strength of this article and concerned Cuyapo citizens offended by its annoying presence on ground reserved to honor true heroes.

● Of course, jueteng thrives as ever.

● And life in Cuyapo goes on.

Note:  This material was reposted from spxialumni.com