Roberto of Cabanatuan, a child of the ’40s

After my March 6 column "We Children of the ‘40s, ’50s…" Roberto Medina of Cabanatuan City responded by sending part of the autobiography he has written for his family. He wrote an apology:

You have to bear with me as I am not a good writer and, as I am under great pressure to earn a living for myself and my family, I have to transcribe my thoughts directly to the typewriter. I have to do this fast and without the benefit of editing as I fear that my memory may fail me soon. — Roberto Medina

My secret haven — a botanical forest

There are times when one is subjected to intense pressure which may lead him to become desperate. The effects of too much pressure is minimized, however, if a person experiencing it has a place to go where he can be alone to cool himself. It is a place where he can do anything without fear of being censured by anybody.

When I was ten years old, we lived in that little valley between the poblacion of Santiago, Isabela and Buenavista, a barrio of Santiago. The Calao River separates the poblacion and the valley. About ten meters at the back of our houses, a mini-forest was situated. It consisted of around three hectares, an ideal playground for a boy of ten years.

The mini-forest was our source of food, firewood, and leaves of various plants for many uses. The place looks like a park with small pathways leading to various directions. There were bamboos that gave us bamboo shoots, an edible variety of plant called "pong-a-pong", tamarind trees of various heights, wild guava trees that grew with abandon, duhat trees that thrived at the edge of the creek, and some other useful plants. It was in that place where I saw a tarsier. Apart from the food it gave, the place was also ideal for solitude.

How father’s beatings made me strong

My father did not allow me to play with our neighbors. He wanted me to be near him just in case he needed me, and there were many things he wanted me to do. I was only allowed to be out of his sight If I would be in school, was ordered to buy some merchandise from the store, gather some firewood, or did any errand.

I felt like a caged animal whenever my father was around. To be far away from him, I gathered firewood in the forest at the back of our house.

The mini-forest became "my green haven". It was where I spent many hours of loneliness which was often caused by the beatings I got from my father. Once, while I was softly touching my wounds, a very sad melody crossed my mind. I just let it play to completion. I realized that it was a melody I never knew before. I had it played over and over in my mind, so I could memorize it. Later, I placed some words in the melody so it could be sung. I had it titled "Beautiful Maria" in honor of a lady who was kind to me and gave me some food. I was 12 years old then.

Little did I know that my green haven would be my training ground for my future songwriting activities. It was also the place where my muscles became firm and strong because of the physical exercise I got from gathering firewood and climbing the trees.

Cousin Pole, my ‘teacher’

I had a cousin nicknamed Pole (Paul when he got older). He was more than a year older than me. He was more aggressive and more outgoing than me. Most often, however, he felt uneasy going to places without me in tow. As he was more foolish than me, my mother cautioned me to stay away from him. To her, he was bad influence. In his company, however, I learned some important skills.

Most members of my father’s clan were very receptive to learning how to play any musical instrument. Because of poverty, however, most instruments were beyond our reach. A hollow guitar or a ukulele was already a luxury to us, but even if we had it, learning how to play it was a problem. What my relatives did was to watch others play it. They took mental notes of the positions of the fingers of the left hand of the player, as well as the frequency of the strums made by the right hand. When at home, the observer, through memory, repeated on his guitar what the player did.

Among us, my cousin Pole had the keenest ear. He could memorize by ear the most complicated guitar chords. Since most of the time I was not allowed to go out, I just had to learn the chords from him, and he always brought me new chords he learned from some other guy. The first three chords that he taught me was G, C, and D. These three chords were sufficient to accompany a dozen or more songs. I used these three combinations in accompanying myself to sing "Don’t Be Cruel", a song popularized by Elvis Presley. These chords were easier to play using the ukulele.

Selling pandesal at dawn

In 1954, when I was already enrolled in Grade 1 at the Northeastern College in Santiago, cousin Pole asked me to go with him in his newly found moneymaking activity: selling pandesal at dawn. I accepted the offer because I would have the chance of going around the town and earn "baon" money for my schooling. At that very young age, I felt that I need to know more than just the four corners of our house. I also thought that since my mother gave me only five centavos as my daily "baon", I might as well do something so I could have a bigger allowance. I envied my classmates who had ten centavos everyday.

I peddled pandesal usually from 3 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. Within that time frame, I earned from 25 centavos to 50 centavos. Before sunrise, I had to go back home so I could prepare myself to go to school. This I did until Grade 6. My routine consisted of going to any of the three bakeries at about 2:30 a.m. The pandesal made by Santos Bakery was the most preferred by the customers; Sunshine Bakery’s pandesal was second preference; and Santiago Bakery was last preference. From any of them, I bought a peso worth of pandesal consisting of 50 pieces. My gross sales would amount to a peso and 25 centavos.

At 3 a.m. I would position myself in a place at the bus terminal. At that time, it was the only place where there would be some people. I enjoyed my routine at the terminal for it was also where the jukeboxes played music which I learned to sing.

At about 4 a.m., I would leave the terminal and proceeded to go around the town to dispose my remaining stocks. I went around at a radius of two kilometers reaching even the interiors of Barrio Mabini.

My career in selling pandesal went on till I was Grade six.

At Grade 6 I knocked down a boxer

As we were walking infront of a bazaar near the public market, cousin Pole got into trouble with somebody a little bigger than either of us. I know that my cousin really knew how to tease people. That must be the result of one of his pranks! My cousin, however, had a foolish plan in his mind. When the fellow made an attempt to hit him, he used me as cover. The man, about five years older than me pushed me and I fell to the ground with both of my elbows hitting the coarse sand. I was hurt a little bit. When the man attempted to hit me I grabbed his arms and I wrestled him till he fell with his back on the ground. I pinned him down and I hit his face many times like what I did to Pedro when I was in Grade 1. The man was hurt and he walked away as fast as he could.

A few minutes later, somebody approached us and said, "why did you fight that man? Don’t you know that he fights in the boxing arena?" I was shocked and I felt apprehensive when our informant even gave the name of the boxer which was "Rufy". Me and my cousin decided to leave the place as quickly as possible. I think that if I had known that my opponent was a boxer, I would have been immobilized by fear and not be able to hit back. I guess there are times when it pays not to know your opponent before a fight. What saved the day for me and my cousin was my strong and firm pair of arms which were conditioned to carry home two big kerosene cans full of water 20 times each day.

Lessons on the ‘birds and bees’ from Calao River

My mini-forest was adjacent to the Calao River where some people commune. It was a nice place for young and older women to exchange bits of gossips about what’s happening around. This they did while washing clothes.

It was also in that river where me and my neighbors learned the nuances of swimming. We learned many strokes by ourselves. Without a coach we did the butterfly stroke, the backstroke, the dog swim, the fish swim, etc. We also learned the art of swimming under water. A few times, I tried to imagine that my hands and feet were tied and then I dived into the water. I made it to the shallowest part where I was able to raise my head above the water to get air and to shout for help. With a little more practice, I thought I was ready just in case I meet the contingency.

Farther down south of the river, tall caimito trees abound a few paces from the banks. The place was deserted and one morning I ventured to climb one tree which was full of ripe star apples. From the top of the tree, I could see some ladies washing clothes near where I was. They could not see me readily for all around me were the trees and bushes. As I was picking a ripe fruit, a pretty woman about 20 years old walked a few steps away from the other ladies and nearer where I was. She tied a blanket on two poles and planted the poles in the soil about one and a half meters apart. I wondered what she was trying to do and she provided the answer when she started undressing! She used the blanket to cover her from the other ladies. I presumed that she thought nobody was infront of her. But there I was. I nearly fell from the tree when she removed all her clothes!

Planting rice is never fun

The intermittent periods that I spent in Buliran as a young boy consisted of many days of work and play. In 1956, when I was eight years old, I was drafted by my mother to join a large group of persons engaged in planting rice. In my first hour of doing it, I thought it was fun. Slowly after that, I began to consider this job as the most difficult I had encountered in my whole life in terms of physical exertion! My feet were submerged in water for at least ten hours a day because we did our work from dawn to dusk. There were days when the mornings were hot and sunny and the afternoons rained so hard. When I woke up in the morning of the second day I had a fever but still my mother urged me to report for work. My grandmother told me that my fever will be gone after a few days of planting rice. Surely, the fever was gone without the benefit of drugs but those few days where pure hell because my entire body was aching and I shivered from the cold water that enveloped my arms and legs. I did this difficult work not because I liked it but because my mother needed the money and she had already been given the advance a month earlier. To make matters worse, this backbreaking work yields very little money to the rice planter.

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Conclusion: Who are you Roberto Medina? What an enlightening story. A real Pilipino childhood epic!

After going through the "school of life" you must be a great achiever. Please write me what you are doing now.

(For more information please e-mail at exec@obmontes sori.edu.ph)