My Home...

2005-11-15T19:26:00.000+08:00

Last Thursday night, spreading ourselves on the volleyball court in the oval, gazing at the stars, Abby and I let the cold breeze soothe our tired leg muscles and throbbing varicose. (Earlier we bumped into another friend and chatted for an hour or so standing on a street corner. We could’ve sat on the gutter but I guess we felt too old for that.) I tried to picture the empty grandstand during a lantern parade celebration when the place is packed with people from in and around the campus, security will be doubled, and vendors will highlight the place with their gas lamps.

Abby and I practically lived in the same neighbourhood for 18 years, went to the same kindergarten, elementary and high school here in CLSU, except in college where she earned her degree in UPLB. Since then, we only see each other every couple of months or so. Last June she also decided to pursue another course in Manila.Still a semester away from graduating, I remain quietly taking note of what our dear ol’ university is up to; every brand new landscapes, buildings, and covered walks complete with the Napoleon-hat shaped lintel.

Having most of my friends either studying of working in the city, I spent last year’s “lantern” with the neat company of my older sister and a couple of her friends who outgrew taking part of the said “lantern” long before I did. Barely able to find a spot in a place full with people and with little or no light, we managed to station ourselves somewhere near the pitcher’s hump in the baseball field. Neglecting to bring a mat or newspaper to sit upon (probably, though we denied it, we were a bit excited of partaking again in a celebration we’ve long since considered has only to do with the 20 and below) we didn’t even bother to find out if there’s spit in the area.

“You know, we only stayed for like 30 minutes,” I was telling Abby. “We cleaned our spot and Kuya Obeng said ‘O parang walang nangyari, ah!’ (Like nothing happened.) It used to be that we’d stay longer than that.”

“Maybe you guys are getting old,” Abby, half-jokingly, said.

“Yeah. . . sure. Anyway, my sister and I lingered for a bit, checked if we knew anyone from the band, or if anyone from the crowd was familiar at all. Eventually, she got tired of asking if I know this or that guy.”

I thought about those words – getting old. Some changes don’t come radically, and in this university one can hardly notice. But when it finally hits you, you’ll start thinking of going back to when everything is new, you’ll start thinking of a new place, you’ll start thinking of leaving.

Both my parents were born in Bulacan, studied and later taught there until the late 70’s when they decided to carry on with their careers here in CLSU. Literally and figuratively, the grass is greener here and it seems an ideal place to raise four children.

Even before I started schooling, I was already familiar with the university. At five years old, I was treading the long and winding road from our house in Sawmill to my mother’s working place then in Animal Science. Now, you know that you’re about 20 feet away from the building when you acquire a whiff of fresh grass topped with the formidable stench of water buffaloes’ excrement. (Even in our house now in Osmeña, on a rainy night, you can smell both the goats’ and the buffaloes’.) I probably got pretty much used to it though because I remember going as close to the side of the fence and just staring at them beasts. I was always fascinated with how they chew their food with their lower jaws coming out to the sides, and they seem to be doing it an awful lot. How can they masticate that long when it’s just grass?

I don’t think I ever got bored during office hours because back then, I could freely skim around to the back of the building to be readily entertained by chickens. At the front there’s a narrow canal with clear water flowing which welcomes any buoyancy test of hand-made paper boats. At that spirited drift beside the canal some professors would find me and sure enough, ask me to guard their parked cars. Like it’s going to get lost!

I have reason to believe that life back then was more feu de joie. When my sister was in kindergarten, their school’s Christmas party was held not in their classroom, not in a park somewhere, but in the Reimer’s Hall and naturally, at that time, if it happened in the Reimer’s Hall, a former movie house, it ought to be pretty grand, and it was in fact complete with a Santa who gave away free gifts.

There certainly was a lot to keep an elementary kid like me busy. Often, when my dad isn’t tied up with work, we’d rendezvous with my sister at the back of school after class, have goto at the COOP store then off to the lagoon to feed the fishes with bread crumbs. That place used to be teeming with aquatic life including a couple of species of water lilies.

In elementary, I was fortunate enough to witness three of the BIDANI festival right at the back of the school. BIDANI is like an agricultural celebration, a flashy one. What I remember quite clearly was the showcase of flamboyant bahay kubo or nipa huts. It’s rare. People would rather have their houses made of concrete.

The following year, the nipa huts were gone and more selling booths appeared. Then the third one (I think it wasn’t the same BIDANI thing anymore) the booths became agricultural-institutions oriented, all lined with pamphlets and posters of sea weeds, preserves and variations of rice products stressing our being SIGA “school inside the garden”.

One can only be a kid of this university if one has, in more than one instance, ridden a bicycle and has been familiar with the cracks on the asphalt or jagged side of the road that must be avoided. There were four or five kids my age that lived in the same apartment building in Azucena street and around only three bikes. But during summer vacations, even when there were occasional rains in the afternoon, we would trek the streets even to as far as Little Baguio, commonly known as Lingap Kalikasan (Lingap for short) and get a kick out of the adrenaline rush from almost having bitten by snarling dogs that have ran after us. Our refuge would be, of course, the bleachers in the university grandstand.

The bleachers and the field, silent witnesses to multifarious human (and animal) activities. It was a place to meet my friends in elementary during slow Sunday afternoons and reveille point on Saturday mornings at 0400 hours back in high school. Long before I became cadet captain of the Charlie Company, I’d join a handful of kids from the apartment and from the trailer houses and on we march to the grandstand where a game of moro-moro was taking place with a bunch of kids from the Osmeña avenue.

Then most kids grew up and grandstand games became less pushing and hustling. There were weekend afternoons when together with my older brother and sister and our dog, we’d go catch Frisbee and other folks in the area would fly kites. It was like a picture on subdivision ads.

I never thought I’d stay in this place for a long time. I have to admit that nowadays I find myself often thinking of leaving this place. This place which has grown to me more than I could say I grew up on it.

Memories of my childhood spent in Sawmill are always stirring in me. It’s funny coincidence, though not entirely unnatural, that we’d live in an exact same style of a two-storey house made of wood 17 years later in Osmeña Avenue. I know that a place grew on me when I’d see traces of it in the stories I read. The water tank tower at the back of our house in Sawmill is where Frannie and Harold painted their message for the few remaining souls to read in Stephen King’s The Stand. Our backyard changes into a coconut grove where Noel and other children in his neighbourhood gather fallen coconuts in the morning after the storm when I read Killing Time in a Warm Place by Jose Dalisay, Jr. The rice fields in front of our house transform into the shore of Maasin sea and our patio is where Mon and Nana Elang are having their conversation in Genoveva Edroza-Matute’s short story, Sana.

Every time I hear Eraserhead’s Cutterpillow album, I’d remember both my brother’s and sister’s room in the apartment where the three of us used to hang out, playing the tape over and over till it got worn out. Diana Krall’s piano and insistent drawl would take me back to when my high school girl friends got together for the first time in college and drank lambanog in our backyard. Even playing Bach’s Minuet would bring me to my parents’ old room where I practiced the piece in portable keyboard.

I may leave this place and maybe start anew somewhere after college. But I know that the bleachers, the bicycle trails, Sawmill, and my parents’ room in the apartment would come a-knocking on my thoughts one day and won’t even bother to wipe their feet.

by Mary Janice C. Bulaong, BSEd student, Editor in Chief, The Educator

On writing this article. . .
Listening to Joseph Esmilla, the violinist, Tchaikovsky’s None But the Lonely Heart made me want to cry but my face just crumpled and eased like it was having a fit. I took my violin from the top shelf when Elgar’s Salute d’amour came. At least, I thought, I know some of the notes in this piece. But alas, my E string was broken but I wasn’t as shocked as before. (Before, I even felt betrayed.) This is what my violin does to me. This is what it does when I don’t touch it for a long time. It gets back at me with a broken string, knowing damn well that I’m more yellow.

Retracing The Plowman

2005-11-02T21:30:00.000+08:00

It was Willi O. Pascual who inspired me most, to rediscover things from the torn out pages of old documents. He used to tell us fascinating things about retracing the past and connecting the essence of them to the present existence. And for this, I suddenly found myself reading the paragraphs, the articles, pages by pages of the 1954 copies of the Plowman…to rediscover things myself, to look for new meaning and somehow quench my thirst for the passion of documenting the evolution of a great campus paper.

I scanned the dusty shelf of the Filipiniana section of the university library to start my journey for this research. And as I went through the remaining copies of the Plowman, I discovered that sometime, between 1966-1969, the collegiate level of the then Central Luzon Agricultural College had stopped the publication of the said paper to give way for the CLAC Newsette which in the following year turned out to be CLAC Collegian and eventually became CLSU Collegian. I am not really sure of the transformation. I just based this conclusion from the available copies of the Plowman.

To my surprise I learned from Dr. Generosa Eligio, that the high school department had continued publishing the Plowman. It was in 1980 when the CLSU Science High School decided to change the name to The Researcher. And then, for the meantime the Plowman was forgotten.

In mid 90’s, according to Dr. Federico Perez, the present dean of the College of Agriculture, they tried to revive the existence of the paper. It was termed “the resurrection” of the old publication.

I even researched for the people who used to work in this CLSU’s first student publication, and who, might still be alive today. Hoping that I could gather stories from the past. Not to mention that I really need materials for the history of the Plowman which I plan to comprehensively write.

As I browsed the internet, I came across a letter to the alumni association sent byDr. Dalmacio Cruz, the 1949 editor of the Plowman and was the valedictorian of his class. I immediately took the opportunity of writing him thru the attached email address. I was hoping then for a good start, since, I believe, he could provide me stories about the early staffers of the paper.

Surprisingly, the next day, I received an email from the account of Dr. Dalmacio Cruz. It said:

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Dear Mr. Gaboy,
I am Pia Cruz the wife of Dr. Cruz. I got your e-mail and I am writing back in his stead.I am very sorry that my husband died last year after playing golf. He was in good health and we did not have any clue that he was to die from a stroke We were not prepared for it as the Drs. said he was recovering. He died at the Anahiem Medical Center.and now he lays at the Forest Lawn Memorial in the city of CYPRESS.

I am sorry............Pia P. Cruz

I was one year late and I really felt sad for that…

(I just found myself composing this article for 15 minutes. Thanx to technology, I was able to have a chat with Sir Ben while the writing is in progress. He was of great help! November 2, 2005, 10:12 pm)

Mabuhay ang Ika-100 Taon ng CLSU!

2005-10-31T20:52:00.000+08:00

Hi to all! We are on the process of establishing links to all CLSU Alumni out there for the CLSU Centennial Celebration in 2007. We are the ones in-charge with the Centennial Newsletter and Journal. Just in case you have memorable stories to tell regarding your stay in our university, please feel free to share with us especially those who graduated earlier than 1950.Mabuhay ang CLSU!

CLSU Centennial Newslink

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Retracing The Plowman

Mabuhay ang Ika-100 Taon ng CLSU!