The English majors
The night before registration at UP Diliman in1966, Dad’s friend from way back, Frankie Sionil Jose, was at home reminiscing with Dad.
The talk veered to me when Mang Frankie learned I had just finished high school. “O, Hugo, anong kurso ang kukunin ni Minerva?” he asked. I had wanted to be an architect but had such poor marks in math my father dissuaded me; he said my structures would all fall apart.
“She was editor of their high school newsletter,” my father bragged, cajoling me to show copies of Eureka, our paper in Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (JASMS). I winced and blushed hearing this. “Ahh,” the great novelist said, “You should take up English, not journalism; journalism will limit your opportunities. Take up English and you can do anything — teach, write, be a reporter.” Then he added mischievously, “You should not take any subject under (naming a writer who had since been named a national artist, too, and had recently died), he will just mold you into his image.”
And major in English I did.
In the ‘60s, jeans and rubber shoes were not de riguer college outfit — we wore dresses and heels or pumps. Hurrying from one class to another was an athletic undertaking since the buildings were far apart, you had to run or take giant steps, you could not take the Ikot (there was no Toki then) since it would just take you farther from your classes and the 15-minute reprieve would be over. Soaked in perspiration and breathless, we would plop down in our seats giggling.
For a while, the JD and DM lines plied the campus from Quiapo to Balara and back, but when a student was run over, the buses ceased to exist in Diliman. JD konduktoras were very efficient and had their uniforms starched and creaseless. I remember one particular konduktora who addressed every student ma’m or sir as she escorted them to their seats carrying their books, eliciting amusement from one male, “Uy, sir daw ako.” As most local buses then, the red-and-orange JD buses were not air-conditioned but their roomy and comfortable wooden seats and courteous konduktoras made up for this.
Meanwhile, students in a hurry would share a taxi from where they usually took their rides, and each would be ferried to their respective buildings and woe to the last one to get down, she/he would usually fork out the biggest share.
We took pains get to know who the terrors were and who were mabait, because receiving any grade lower than 2 was bruising to the ego; but since you had to take the required English subjects anyway under a terror you just delayed the day of the inevitable. Sooner or later though, we had to face the fact that grades of 2s and 3s could also be fodder for the soul. The experience was humbling.
There were many beautiful women professors who remained single by dedicating their lives teaching Shakespeare, Milton, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Iliad, and The Odyssey, Genji Monogatari, and other classics.
I wonder where Professors Lorenzo, Marino, Realubit, Ventura, Ramirez, Hosillos, Highley, Feria, Damaso, Alcantara, Yabes, and the rest of the English teachers are now. All I know is that well-liked Professor Tupas died a tragic death.
UP was honing each student to be a Renaissance man or woman. We had to excel in our chosen fields, we had to know several languages (it was the year German, Russian, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese were offered); Spanish and French were staples. In sports, not only was swimming a required subject, a buffet of attractive sports was opened like fencing, bowling, and archery.
Once a week, we would rush to the Olympic-sized pool beside the Catholic chapel in the afternoons. We had to don black one-piece bathing suits with caps. My classmates in this class who graduated from UP Integrated school preened and shone — they were veterans of the pool. Oh, how we envied them! They swam like fish!
Nobody could graduate without taking swimming and the final test was to swim twice the length of the pool. By the time I made it to the second lap, I was gasping and almost in tears — the strain triggering the long dormant asthma. I’ve had it ever since.
Since there were no eateries like the CASAA, Chateau Verde, or Chocolate Kiss, it was at the cavernous Vinzons Hall manned by people from the HE department where we took our lunch, day in and day out. There, by the entrance of the hall, we would be entertained by a dark fellow with glasses whose anthem was Puff the Magic Dragon. I never heard him sing any other song. And then there was this stocky Caucasian girl with windblown hair who had the only red Mustang on campus; she was the daughter of the owner of the A&W, the “in” drive-in then. A&W had the frothiest root beer and the best burgers in town and, truly, you were served in your car.
Lunch at Vinzons was predictable: soup, a main course, rice, and a piece of pastillas to take out the umay. But one of the bestsellers at Vinzons was their egg sandwich — a boiled egg was halved and one section was slathered with the creamiest mayonnaise this side of the universe and tomato catsup and placed in a big bun. I loved it when the reddish mayo dribbled down my chin.
Vinzons Hall was the hub of student activities. Not only was it the center of gustatory satisfaction, it was also where the offices of the Collegian were located. The post office was located at the back and so was a forlorn-looking bookstore in the basement.
The lagoon then was just a watery hole in the middle of that expanse behind the administration building. Scraggly saplings dotted the landscape, still, during lulls in our schedules, this was where we converged — comparing notes, napping, gazing away or took to experimental smoking. Or we would be at the rear end of the Main Library, reading books prohibited (listed in the Librium Prohibitum) by the Catholic Church. We were so involved in our studies that there was hardly any talk about boys or chismis. The mall was just an inert concept of Sy, Gokongwei, and Ayala, so our activities were rather innocuous — going to Intramuros and Fort Santiago, visiting each other’s homes, watching a movie, or eating out.
In the late ’60s, classes were almost always cancelled during the days when organizers of rallies would go room to room or use the bullhorn to cajole us to join the rallies. Buses lined up in front of Palma Hall and these took us to the rally sites — almost always in Congress (now the National Museum) or Plaza Miranda. We echoed the slogans cued by the rally-organizers. We were angry and hoarse and spent.
In our English majors group, there were a dozen of us and as far as I know, the course had been put to good use. Rosalina Cruz (nee Bumatay) is now a language professor at the UP English department; Cynthia Oscar (nee Pedrosa) has been in Sydney, Australia for the past two decades and is teaching ESL or English as Second Language to migrants; Celeste Cantillep is with a law firm in Vancouver, Canada; Corazon Borbolla is now a fiscal with the DOLE; and I have successively been with the Solidaridad Publishing House/Gallery, the Eugenio Lopez Foundation, the National Economic and Development Authority, Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, and currently with the Philippine Information Agency. Unfortunately, we had lost contact with other members of the barkada who had migrated to the USA or elsewhere.
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Minerva Yonzon Quemuel should have graduated with the rest of her bakarda in 1970 but got married instead. She reentered UP in the 1990s and got a diploma in Comparative Literature then segued into taking some units in MA Translation Studies.
