Anything Pinoy

It’s only about 45 minutes by aircon bus on well-paved highway to the north, but I never had the chance to walk the streets of Tagum, during the last 47 years since I packed up and left this little dusty Davao del Norte town right after getting out of high school at UM Tagum High.

But, last week, during the National School Presscon where I was asked to lecture and judge hundreds of high school editorials, I saw an opening early in the morning to walk and feel the streets of the new, bustling Tagum City.

My early high school was spent in two schools in Davao City — Holy Cross and RMC, those early days when we pelted stones at each other’s school buses when crossing each other’s paths. Those days weren’t worth remembering until my family decided to move to Magugpo — that’s the old name of Tagum, a very dusty town in the old days.

Naturally, I didn’t expect the exact spot where my family lived would still be there: a small, wooden shack beside Osmena Street near the intersection of Rizal Street — the main road that cuts through the small town.

I remember my mother wanted to re-create the Filomena Dress Shop she once had in Zamboanga City where I was born. This time, it was a much smaller version with only one sewing machine instead of five.

But what made that little place so memorable were the big reproductions I made of the famous classical oil paintings of Fernando Amorsolo and Juan Luna. At that time, I could only paint in cheap watercolor and crayons, the only medium I can afford with Mama’s little allowance. But using pastel-quality crayons made it possible for me at that young age of 16 to capture the yellowish, late afternoon sunlight in Amorsolo’s rural paintings.

I had this deep passion to capture Amorsolo’s oils in crayon on cartulina, taped together to make the paintings look bigger. But the most challenging attempt at that time was to capture the essence and impact of Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium” also in crayon and cartulinas taped together. I can’t remember whether I was able to capture it exactly but the colors I used copying that famous painting are still etched clearly in my mind — the deep dark browns for the shadows, highlights in bright yellow, the anguish and terror on the faces of the Roman warriors inside that dark, blood-stained dungeon in the coliseum.

The last thing I heard from my mother before she died was that the “Spoliarium” was sold to a Chinese trader of a general merchandise store where the present “Denmark Appliance” store now stands. I walked to this spot last week and found nothing that would bring me back to those memorable old days. All around me I could only feel the vibrance of a fast, growing city.

Not a trace was left, too, of our old cubicled home fronting the old gym near the municipal old (now City Hall). This was where my 70-year old step-father set up a make-shift dental clinic to help mother tide over our living expenses. Here now stands the Magugpo Institute of Technology whose impressive edifice replaced the giant star-apple tree, whose sprawling branches and foliage darkened the place where we lived, its leaves-strewn pathway now replaced by a concrete parkway for the latest cars.

Oh yes, the church along Rizal street is still there, now named Parish Church of the Eucharist, although I’m still wondering whether the priests there change its name. Nevertheless the church today is still a good landmark for people like me re-tracing their steps in old towns where they grew up. That was why I was also looking for that old big moviehouse along Rizal where my family also resided during my last years in high school, where my early writings took shape.

Many of these memories have found their way into some of my fiction writings back in Davao City starting with my very first short story titled “Checkmate” about two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who won each other’s hearts on the chess board while playing chess in Tagum. After this piece of early fiction, more followed with some landing in the Graphic and the Free Press magazines.

That was why I wasn’t surprised why Magugpo (and now Tagum City) had been breeding so many creative people the past many years — writers, artists, singers, musicians, designers, etc. Their recent “Musikahan” was just one good outlet where they can show off their talents. There are still so many creative things about Tagum that haven’t been uncovered yet.

The “gold” in Tagum isn’t just what is dug and sold here, it’s also about the “gold” that one digs and finds in the soul….