My Aurora Hill Memories

There is something magical and mystical about arriving in Baguio, especially after a long spell of an absence. My old schools, the main drag which is Session Road and places where we, in the sixties, made the equivalent of hanging out with friends, the restaurants and snack places where I used to go with family, and braving a visit to the kurba at Magsaysay Avenue, opposite Lucban Elementary School, where I grew up. The house is no longer there: a church stands in its place, but still marvel how much the environment has changed: where mountains used to stand, are now residences, particularly the lower and upper Quirino Hills.

As I take in these places, so familiar and so strange, a tsunami of memories flood my mind. I remembered incidents and people I hadn’t thought of in years, decades even. I thought of things I’d done with my elementary school classmates, with my parents and siblings. How things appear to be much smaller now, or perhaps the world is actually a larger place. My husband and daughter hold very paltry memories of my mother (my father passed away before I was married), and hoping that my childhood memories would be made alive, and breathe life into the static images from old family photographs. I sometimes compare these memories with my brother and three sisters, filling in gaps and differences and in awe of those vivid images that continue to resonate forcefully with us.

My earliest recollections and memory push me back to the house on Rimando Road, which was named Aurora Hill Road during those times. My father came to Baguio as a teacher in Pacdal Elementary School, while my mother started a dry goods business, specializing in extending credit to people who worked in the various mines around Baguio, and which sometimes were cancelled on barter with gold nuggets.

Baguio the pioneer town then, had a number of government- built houses for their employees. In that area of Aurora Hill, there were six which were identical. A drawing number system was set up for allocations. These families were recipients of the six houses: Balagot, Cerezo, Concepcion, Domingo, Floresca, and Jose. Two of these houses were slightly bigger in area, and Mr. Jose and my father, both school teachers, picked the numbers for these houses, and it so happened that these were the last of the two numbers. Later on, my father had the dining room converted into a bedroom and a new dining room and kitchen area were built. Mr. Jose’s house had an open garage where my father used it to park his Model T Ford. The Floresca family included Eddie, husband of Maryann Zarza. Three of us: my two elder sisters and me, were all born in the same bed in the masters bedroom at Aurora Hill with Ms Rosa Caliao, R.N., attending. The bed was built by my father when he was a woodworking teacher in Butuan, Agusan, where hardwood, especially narra was in abundance then.

I cannot really recall that house much, but one of the memories which I cherish was playing with Alma and Marilou Lloren, who also lived in the neighborhood. One of our games with my sister Delia would be to pretend that the city health inspector would be sighted coming up Rimando Road with his black bag, to vaccinate the children who were out playing in the streets. So we would all dive under the narra bed, close our eyes tightly, and let some time pass, at least until after the imaginary health inspector would be on his way to other destinations. Another game was to pretend that a “Busol” was coming up the road: a “Busol” is a local headhunter, where it was still practiced in those times, in some interior areas. “Busol!! Adda Busol nga assideggen!!” Again, we would dive under the bed, close our eyes and fists tightly, and wait.

Another snippet of memory is the Cooperative Sari Sari Store, which I think was on the other side of Rimando Road from us. “Inka gumatang iti asukar idiay Cooperative Store!” or some other needed commodity, was commanded to my elder siblings (I was too young to cross the street.) Years later, I give myself the luxury of a chuckle, when I go shopping into one of the Coop Supermarkets in Geneva (my UN headquarters was located there when I worked for ITC-UNCTAD WTO), automatically comparing the humble corner store with the major Swiss chain (most of the Swiss would say it like “kurp”, no hyphen in Coop).

In 1950, the house at Magsaysay Avenue or Trinidad Road as it was called then, was completed. We moved out of Rimando Road, with our household effects and 25 avocado seedlings which were planted at the new house. If I am correct, the mother avocado tree still stands in Aurora Hill, which is currently occupied by the Romeros. These Aurora Hill avocado trees proliferated, as the family had, but that is another story.

Road construction by Aurora Hill women probably about 1915: photo from: http://adambaguio2009.wordpress.com/2009/07/