Down two memory lanes

I was caught in traffic on two main metropolitan thoroughfares lately: Quezon Blvd. and EDSA. Come to think of it, that is always how one is caught in these roads anyway (and most others in the city), despite U-turn schemes and yellow lanes. The problem is solved not with stopgap measures like these, but by rethinking the whole transit system and providing for real transit stops, layovers, taxi stands and inter-modal terminals. But this is not the subject of our article today.

Sitting in traffic, I remembered how little there was when I was growing up. We lived in Proj. 4 in Quezon City in the late ’50s to 1967, and these two highways connected us with old Manila and new Makati, the two destinations my family took us for outings and visits to relatives.

Traveling down Quezon Blvd. during the summer months in the 1960s was especially memorable because of an annual event I had always wanted to join: the Soap Box Derby. While the Bug Boys, led by dashing Dodjie Laurel, raced formula cars and rallied across Luzon, boys who idolized them started out with gravity racing.

The soap box derby was an American import that was an instant success when it was introduced in 1961. By the next year, 15,000 (a big number then, about the size of a full Araneta Coliseum) watched the races. Even the national government got into the act with President Elpidio Garcia declaring July 14 Soap Box Derby Day.

The races were held on a sloping stretch of Quezon Blvd. near the Pantranco Bus terminal (they had proper and modern bus terminals then). The racers, which were made of wood on a steel chassis, were joisted up 16 feet to a holding pen before they were released. Close to 300 entries vied for the title, with races going on for two days. In 1962, the winner was Mario Enriquez who clocked a time of 26.8 seconds down the 300-meter course, moving at a sizzling 30 kilometers per hour.

Comic relief was has via wacky racers with clown pilots and faux fumes bellowing out. The whole of Quezon Blvd. was closed to traffic and the area was turned into a gigantic field fit for a fiesta. The races were also aired on television, but the atmosphere was best enjoyed at the site (and yes, the air was still so clean then that you enjoyed being outside).

The Soap Box Derby was meant to teach young boys (girls were not allowed to race in the politically incorrect ’60s) "sportsmanship and self-confidence." The races were also part of a larger movement for "moral rejuvenation" that was gathering steam in those days as a corrective to widespread graft and corruption.

Edsa Memories

While Quezon Blvd. was a 99-meter wide well-paved road, EDSA was a lonely two-lane asphalt highway perennially in need of repair. Most of the traffic then was on the arterial roads leading to and from the center that was still old downtown Manila. The radial highways (EDSA is C-4 or Circumferential Road No. 4) were not anywhere as busy.

EDSA, or Epifanio de los Santos Ave., was not the original name of the highway. In the ’60s it was known as Highway 54, a designation given by the Americans. EDSA, in fact, was known by three other names. For a short while after liberation, it was known as MacArthur Blvd. Before that, it was known as the Circumferential Road. But the little known first name of the road was Diez y Nueve de Junio (19th of June), named after the birth date of National Hero Jose P. Rizal.

The highway was not a continuous stretch until the ’60s. Before then, it started from Taft Ave. and was broken by the Pasig River. A wood and steel bridge was built after the war. This was turned into a narrow concrete bridge in the late ’60s. The first bottlenecks were here until it was widened in the late Seventies. By then I was driving to work from Pasig’s Baryo Kapitolyo, and on days when traffic was heavy, it took an excruciating 15 minutes to get to Makati.

The portion of the highway from the crossing of Shaw Blvd. to Cubao was one of the scariest. Many salvaged bodies were thrown into the man-high cogon that surrounded the road. Holdups were frequent specially since lighting was limited and the darkness of undeveloped Greenhills and Ortigas engulfed the place.

From Cubao to Quezon Blvd., the road turned into a crater-filled lunar landscape that even Neil Armstrong would not venture out in his lunar module. The traffic thinned after Quezon Blvd. passing the dapdap-lined PhilAmlife Homes as it turned towards Monumento. This was another stretch of lonely highway with only Bonanza Restaurant to break the monotony. Bonanza was a popular venue for family lunches and dinners. Its roast beef was superb.

Today, both roads have mutated into sewers of traffic. Billboards instead of trees line 20 kilometers of uneven concrete. Pedestrians cross ill-designed bridges, and lighting is still uneven and nonexistent in stretches.

The Soap Box Derby lasted a decade, I believe, before it disappeared in the ’70s. There was a revival sometime in the ’80s in Alabang. Today, it would be hard to find a stretch of road to hold it in. The day July 14 or Soap Box Derby Day and June 19 are forgotten to most Filipinos. Maybe we should have an EDSA day and ban all vehicles for 24 hours. That would do wonders to clear what scientists at the Ateneo’s Manila Observatory have shown to be the most polluted corridor in the city. On the other hand, Quezon Blvd. is U-turn land festooned with (admittedly better designed) pink and blue pedestrian bridges. It has lost its original purpose as a grand boulevard to what was to be the nation’s capital, instead leading to the nation’s largest bedroom suburban city only now recovering (care of Mayor Feliciano Belmonte) its original shine.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at citysensephilstar@hotmail.com. If you have any pictures of the soap box derby or either roads taken during the ’60s or ’70s, get in touch with me at this address.