With the remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001 bombing of the Twin Towers in New York City next week, I cannot help but remember my father, Ka Tino. Shortly after that historic New York bombing, he penned his piece, “Trahedyan Twins Towers” –the various community papers in North America had published his article.
He was a self-taught poet; back home in the Philippines, he had a regular column, Doon Po Sa Amin, in the defunct Philippines’ Free Press Pilipino edition, edited by Jose “Pete” Lacaba.
His regular job at the Free Press was as an operator/typist of the Linotype machine, a kind of a typesetting machine; on the side, he had been writing his column.
He had the natural gift of playing with words and rhyming them.
Even in letters, he would write them in the ‘patula” way, which was why it was no surprise that he even wrote a balagtasan; and by simply looking for Ka Tino’s Balagtasan on the YouTube channel, you would know what I’m talking about here.
I want to write a lot of things about my father. When he was still alive, he used to tell me a lot about his life adventures during the” peacetime,” the Japanese time, our long-lost relatives, and the stories behind big happenings in our neighbourhood in Sampaloc. Despite his advancing old age, he had a fantastic memory, reminiscing stories way back then.
He prodded me to read and read to improve my English.
My father would regularly bring home copies of the Free Press magazines, and I believe reading those magazines played a significant role in my love for reading.
Every time I asked him about the meaning of some words I encountered in reading those magazines, his reply was always “read and read.”
I learned from him the art of making “pakikisama.” He was hard-working, and although we were not rich, we never missed a meal in our lifetime. But on payday, we had a long list of “utang” paid on his payday.
After doing his regular work at the Philippine Press, he would do some sideline work somewhere in the vicinity of Quiapo, on Raon, working in a small printing press. It was challenging work; aside from typing manuscripts, his machine—the Linotype—produced so much heat and the smell of lead.
Doing his kind of work was not easy, and from time to time, I would see him either sipping his coffee or taking a shot of gin, that famous Ginebra San Miguel—and of course, to keep him awake while working, he would puff his cigarettes which were always beside his chair.
Since I knew where he was working, from time to time I would visit him, and he would give me some money for my snack, and every 15th and 30th of the month, I would always go to Free Press’s canteen and eat there, and once he knew I was there, as usual, he would hand me some pocket money.
On weekends, my father would see his friends and drinking buddies for some drinks. My Tatay was a generous guy; he would always extend help to the needy in whatever manner. He learned his English by working—should I say linotyping– on the edited copies of the works of Brillantes, Kerima Polotan, Nick Joaquin, and Pete Lacaba.
My father has had his “Histoire ‘d amour,” as told to me by our eldest sister and that he had a girlfriend whom he left so he could be with my Nanay. My sister said, “when Tatay was going away, leaving her girlfriend for good, he saw her biting her tongue, bleeding, without saying a word to my father.
When I was 12 years old, I had the experience of talking to a young boy on the telephone while I was at the Free Press canteen; he claimed to be my father’s son.
The story goes like this “one of the employees at the canteen called my attention, telling me that my brother wanted to see my father, who was then working at that time. So, I picked up the phone and asked him who he was, and he told me he was my father’s son, and then I asked him the name of his father, he told me my father’s name, so I immediately put down the phone, knowing that my father was on the way to talk to him. I saw my father speak to him on the phone.”
I’d kept this little secret of mine until Tatay’s death in New York in 2007 at the age of 93.
Despite my father’s failings, what stood out the most was his working so hard to deliver our family’s basic needs, his generosity to extend help to others in whatever manner, and his being friends with anyone.
Because he loved to crack jokes, he was the life of social gatherings.