Linda Grace
Cariño
Baguio Stories
Saturday, October
26, 2013
JOHN Hay is
actually the name of a person. But to the Baguio native, it is the name of a
place, and has been for the last 100 and some years. The place was so named to
christen a US Army camp that had its colonial beginnings as precisely that, a
camp, from which US forces operated when they were in pursuit of Philippine
Republicans who had fled to these here mountains to try and keep the first
Philippine Republic alive more than a century ago.
The same place
was the subject of a lawsuit set forth by its Ibaloi owner, my
great-grandfather Mateo, but that is a long story already detailed in a number
of writings, not the least being our country’s own Supreme Court proceedings.
And those of the United States.
However, my
earliest recollection of John Hay is as a telephone number, 2101, from which
you could get connected to the Halfway House, and reach my dad. The visual
which accompanies this memory of a phone number is one of my mom in a Jackie
Kennedy-ish suit of deep, deep green, with a polka dotted blouse inside,
dancing with my father, one fine afternoon. He was in a shirt of the palest
green, the kind you didn’t have to tuck in, dark brown pants, and what we all
children called “holes-holes” shoes, the rage of the day, those old-fashioned
Florsheims. It was a slow dance, and the memory of it is as clear in my mind as
the layout of where they danced, the Halfway House.
As you entered
the place, to your left were deep red chairs and linoleum tables, lining up a
whole wall, from where you could sit and face the dance floor. Across the wall
was a slightly elevated platform from which a band played at night. Off from
the platform were the bathrooms.
If you walked
straight on from the door, you got to the bar, from where I was allowed to buy
chocolates, always, always, blue crunch. They came in a six-pack, looking
strange in a size different from how they were if you bought them in town. The
wall behind the bar was at an angle perpendicular to the wall behind the band
platform. And the bar faced out onto the rest of the place, the restaurant
part. Perpendicular to the bar, facing the side from where you entered, were a
row of slot machines my father was rather inordinately fond of. Many a time, he
let my brother Matt do the pulling; it seems the latter was lucky at the slots.
And outside the
restaurant was this patio from which you could see out onto the famous John Hay
green and likewise watch players tee off. One thing about that green. It always
looked really smooth, so smooth that for all of my operative childhood, I
thought that at the Nineteenth Tee, another John Hay spot, they had somehow
magically made it (the green) come inside.
The Nineteenth
Tee was, for me, the only place to get a now-difficult-to-find goodie, onion
rings, which I could eat just tons of. That and the base ice cream, which came
in a creamy blob on a cone with a flat bottom. And the steakhouse which opened
off from the Nineteenth Tee snack place always smelt like really good beef
a-cooking.
There are, of
course, other well-remembered snapshots: of Mile-Hi atop a small hill, of the
Officers’ Club, of cottages and buildings whose architecture and green and
white paint stamped “Americana” on the whole place. More specifically, there
was American military base stamped on it. As someone told me once, John Hay was
a “Little America.” Where there was this little chapel that had a 12:00 noon
Sunday mass. Dad used to drive my mother, my sibs, and me there, leave, then
fetch us at 1:00 p.m.
My pictures of
John Hay come in such snatches and snapshots, each snatch and shot a reminder
of another time and lifetime. My parents slow-dancing at the Halfway House, my
brother, a fat little boy with chubby hands at the slots, blue crunch chocolate
in that funny size, ice-cream on a flat-bottomed cone. The big picture is
always of a golf green so well-maintained, giant trees everywhere, and American
colonial architecture pervading. And the feeling of a being in a spotless,
pristinely neat place.
John Hay has a
place in my heart because it was one of a number of well-loved childhood
playgrounds. It is also a special place because as Baguio lost its feeling of
space due to a population explosion in the 80s and onwards, John Hay remained a
haven of space, along with the country club. Where the air stayed magical,
where the sky stayed in sight, where the landscape stayed blessedly not
littered by the continual sight of shanties and houses continually being built
overnight.
I have been taken
to task by some people who think that my sentiments are elitist. They say I am
wrong to hold on to a pristine, American picture of John Hay; they would have
“low-cost housing” on its green hills. So much land, they say, should be there
for people to be able to build on, for the homeless, the poor, the needy. I
maintain that it should stay a haven of space unmarred by the sight on it of
hordes and hordes of people and houses. Some of us need our space.
I also sometimes
keep company with a population that wails at the wind and howls at the moon
over the way John Hay now looks. The old cottages are gone, sold to buyers who
wanted to reassemble snapshots of the past into the present. The Halfway House,
methinks, was the first to go, to give way to a “clubhouse,” the current status
symbol which the middle class affects the minute it can afford to. Gone, too,
are the Nineteenth Tee and Mile-Hi, haunts of my youth. Up have come Townhouse
Models 1, 2, and whatnot, all mimicking the newer, suburban versions of the
American dream.
While these
versions are pretty in a generic way, they look new to me, like a place for
wannabes, who, for the life of them, will never understand the likes of me. Who
was friends with every tree on the old course. Who wined, dined, and danced
away at the Halfway House and the Officers’ Club to those tacky bands. Who
partied in the cottages, kicked back, went barefoot on the wooden floors. Who
took walks through the forest trails under the rain that washed the green and
the air. Who stopped when the signs said to do so. Who stole books from the
base library.
Luckily, such
snapshots of John Hay exist within the albums of history and within the hearts
of the old Baguio community. Certainly, the John Hay of old was a throwback to
the yoke of American colonialism in the country. But just as certainly, it was
for the Baguio community a haven of space and a repository of the wealth of
memories that define us.
They say that a
picture is worth a thousand words. Of John Hay, Baguio continues to have many
pictures, old, older, new, newer. To the one of the well-loved old place, these
are my thousand words.
Published in the
Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on October 26, 2013.
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/opinion/2013/10/26/carino-thousand-words-310659
