Here is a reprise
of one of my old postings that might give Sanrokan readers a rehash
of Pinoy life when America was still very politically incorrect.
It is based on
readings of stuff (one of which is Carlos Bulosan's "America
is in the Heart") regarding the not so pleasant lives of our
dying breed of our Fil-American predecessors, the so-called Manong
Generation. It is also based on conversations with aging manongs where
I learned that they were not exclusively Ilocanos.
I once had a fortune
as a guest at a Stockton, California home of a widow of a WW II veteran.
Her husband, typical of the manongs, belonged to a US army regiment
composed of Filipinos in General Eichelberger's Eighth Army. She had
hung his neatly framed discharge document on the living room wall
of her house.
In Chicago I met
another aging Filipino WW II veteran who was a radioman in what was
then the US Army Air Force. His military experiences were a bit different
from General Eichelberber's US Army Filipinos because this radioman
was the only Filipino, the only non-white in his unit. In his living
room there was a museum-style display of an olive green military radio
set, complete with antique vacuum tubes.
The barber below
is a fictitious character created out of those readings and conversations.
*****************
A Barber's
Letter
Chicago
March 17, 1966
Dear Eking,
So you are the
youngest of my brother's grandsons. I am glad you are coming to America.
By all means you
will stay at my apartment when you arrive, at least for a few days
or a few weeks. It looks like a dump but don't worry, I keep it clean.
It is in a dilapidated building located on a run down portion of Clark
Street. It is called a studio apartment but don't let that fool you.
It is not an artist's studio but rather a one-room affair where I
have a cot, a two-burner gas stove, a refrigerator, a small table,
two chairs, and a bathroom that has a clean but horribly discolored
bathtub. I can squeeze in a temporary cot for you.
I will help you
find decent housing more fitting for a doctor until a place is available
at the Cook County Hospital doctors' apartments. Hospital housing,
though subsidized, will cost you more than staying with me but I know
County Hospital will pay you handsomely even if you are only an intern.
I will lend you some money in the meantime.
Why do you still
use "Eking" as your nickname?" Change that to "Henry."
Your new American friends will appreciate that because they find it
easier to pronounce an Anglo name. It lessens their perception of
you as an unwelcome "furriner."
This is why I
am now known as "Willie" instead of "Guillermo."
I don't know if
your grandfather has told you enough about me. Actually, even if he
didn't, a lot has been written about us, the prior generation of mostly
illiterate Filipino laborers who immigrated to the United States during
the early American era in the Philippines. Your grandfather, the youngest
among my siblings, was very young when I left our hometown.
Back in 1916 I
stowed away on a ship to America. I was then 18. The next time I saw
your grampa was during the liberation of the Philippines when I was
already 47. I was a corporal in the liberation army and I had a chance
to visit our hometown. Your grandpa had a young son by then, your
father. You were not even born yet!
When your father
wrote me that you, his son, now a doctor, will be coming to Chicago
I immediately began counting the days. I am as excited as you are.
You will be my only relative in all of America. I am now 68 years
old and perhaps I will have at least one blood relative around when
I die. And a doctor to boot!
Now, don't think
that I am dying. I play golf and I still cut hair at the barbershop
downstairs. I was never able to develop a career as a teacher although
my diploma in education hangs proudly in my apartment. My degree,
by the way, was handy during WW II because at 45 I was still accepted
when I enlisted. I was assigned to army intelligence in New Guinea
and then I was sent to the Philippines.
After the war
I went back to being a barber here in Chicago. For a while I kept
applying for teaching jobs but I was never called back after the interviews.
Still my education was handy because, as was customary with my early
generation of immigrant laborers, I helped my less educated buddies
write letters to the Philippines.
I was married
once, but not to a Filipino girl. In my time Filipino girls in Chicago
- and there were very, very few - were mostly students from Manila's
elite who were horrified to be seen or identified with us. We were
mostly busboys and dishwashers.
When I went to
college in Urbana I was too busy at night washing dishes to have a
social life. I boarded free - I was the janitor - in an old house
in a black neighborhood. I came to know five Philippine government
scholars in the boarding house. After we got our degrees they went
home while I returned to Chicago, only to find that the jobs open
to me were always unloading meat and produce at the back doors of
restaurants. Then I learned to cut hair and became a barber.
The guys who returned
to Manila had become big shots. One became a cabinet member in the
Philippine government after the war and I heard that his portrait
now hangs at the student union in Urbana as one of the many distinguished
alumni whose pictures also hang there.
You are very fortunate
that you are among the early immigrants after the 1965 immigration
bill became law. Immigration quotas by nationality were abolished
by that law. I now have many new customers from the old country, new
arrivals who are your age. They hold white collar jobs all over Chicago,
an unthinkable phenomenon in my youth.
They are a cocky
lot, these newcomers. The other day I came into a discussion about
love and marriage with one of them. It irked me that he was totally
condescending of the American women that many of our crowd married.
Most of these women, as is commonly known, came from the lower levels
of American society. My own late wife, Eileen O'Toole, was a bar girl
like her mother. Eileen could barely read and write.
Eileen lived with
her mother in an apartment adjacent to mine above the bar owned by
her mother. Her father left home one day and was never heard from
again. When her mother died it turned out that she owned the building,
too, and Eileen inherited it. Eileen, knowing that I could read and
write better than even the Americans in her limited circle, asked
me for help in the inheritance and insurance papers.
It was probably
her helplessness - like I said she could hardly read and write - that
attracted me to her. She didn't know any relative because her mother
ran away as a very young girl from an Irish ghetto in Boston and never
returned. Eileen was a plain girl and although she grew up to be a
bar girl she was always youthfully naive. She actually had a healthy
body and silky skin inside the sleazy dresses and the mascara and
the lipstick that gave her an unhealthy, garish look distasteful to
a downtown office crowd.
Eventually we
got married and I was reasonably happy. One day I was at work and
she was asleep when fire broke out. Fire code violations finally caught
up with the dilapidated building.
She died in the
fire.
A slick realtor
paid me probably a mere third of the actual value of the now empty
lot that I inherited. For about a year I was drunk almost every night.
I realized how much I was in love with my plain bar girl. On cold
winter nights I would relive the times we wrapped each other in our
arms. At those moments we became oblivious of the cruel world outside
our door. My memories were not just about blissful sex. It was more
about our awareness of our mutual need for each other that made us
deeply in love.
She died in 1950
but I still visit her grave about once a month. We did not have children.
I never remarried. I never found another helpless Eileen. My oldtimer
buddies had been my family anyway. On lonely nights like at Thanksgiving
or Christmas I used to go to bars along Clark Street and there was
always a girl I could sleep with for a fee.
I wish someone
would write something about the tragic life of my plain bar girl.
Perhaps it is time to write about and appreciate the Eileens and other
girls of similar lowly circumstances who, inspite of their unsophistication,
unwittingly made life tolerable for thousands of young immigrant men
in an America that was then still politically incorrect.
Anyway, in my
celibacy, I discovered golf.
Let me go back
to my customer with who despised the kind of American women in our
immigrant crowd. His eyes suddenly lit up when a heavily perfumed
girl with revealing cleavage entered the barbershop looking for one
of her regular tricks. When I whispered to my customer that she is
a "working girl" my customer got excited. Would I please
make an arrangement with the girl?
So much for pretensions
of pristine morality...
The nasty thing
about this was that my new customers, these new immigrants, spread
the word about my "connections" with prostitutes. Suddenly
I became every newcomer's favorite barber/cum/pimp. In the meantime
I was the butt of jokes of my fellow oldtimers especially when girls
looking for tricks became very friendly with me, too, hoping that
I could furnish them tricks. I was teased incessantly that pimping
is more exciting than barbering.
This, Eking, is
my kind of world. I still speak Ilocano since most in my crowd are
Ilocanos. In fact, in all these years, we were never able to lose
our Ilocano accents. It is funny that when we are with our fellow
manongs from the Visayas or Bicolandia or elsewhere we talk in English
because we are all not quite proficient with Tagalog.
We have all kinds
of regionalistic cliques - Ilocanos, Pangasinenses, Visayans, Bicolanos...
you name it. In our younger days when we get into bar brawls against
Italians or Irishmen we become one Filipino clique.
When I introduce
you to my Ilocano friends speak Ilocano freely so they will be comfortable.
They - we - are a bit wary of new young immigrants because a lot of
them are so haughty like the early Filipino girls of our youth here
in Chicago.
Again, I look
forward to your coming. I will meet you at the airport so let me know
of the details of your flight...
Your granduncle,
Guillermo
a.k.a. Willie
* * *
Email address:
frednati@earthlink.net
