In Retrospection: I Made It by a Long, Long Shot

By Edgardo G. Calansingin

The Author began his story with his birth in 1931 in a small town of Murcia, Province of Negros Occidental and Negros Islands in an underdeveloped country of the Philippines in the Far East. Cresencio L. Calansingin, his father secured an employment as one of the swimming pool cleaners and Angelina G. Calansingin, his mother moved to the Mambucal Spring Summer Resort at the Provincial Government Forest Reservation area at the mountainside of Canlaon Mountain of Negros Islands. The couple transferred down to the Bago River Ferry Mambucal Bridge, two years later, when both secured employment as Toll Collectors of the Bridge. Bago River was an isolated location, six kilometers east to the Mambucal Spring Summer Resort and eight kilometers west to the town of Murcia. The Author at a very tender age had the river for a playground. He contracted ear infections because of daily diving into the water and swimming on the river. The infection spread and hardened his sinus cavities causing stammering of speech. Ignorance, neglect, and distances to the Provincial Hospital 34 kilometers west to Bacolod City, the capital of the Province aggravated his medical condition. The Authors father died when he was 6 years old and his mother remarried a year later. Then World War II broke out and the Authors paternal grandparents decided they took the orphaned boy under their custody in as much as the widowed mother married a widower who had two children by his previous marriage.

The Author at age 10 years old, worked with his grandfather, aged 56 years old. They cleared a two-hectare piece of land of abandoned sugarcanes, plowed, and harrowed the soil using plows or harrows pulled by the carabaos while each walked after each work animal pulling the farm implement. The Author stumbled many times after the plow handle every time the plowshare hit the resisting sugarcane roots that embedded deeply and securely to the earth. There were hundreds of rows in a hectare and hundreds of roots in a row and he stumbled hundreds of times while his grandfather looked after his welfare and waited patiently for his recovery and they went on plowing the fields. Plowing and harrowing the fields were two aspects of rice farming, they sat, knelt, and pulled away every weed from every root of the plants that competed against the plants for nutrients from the soil. They were hard labor but they needed the rice from the plants for subsistence. The Author discovered that chewing sugarcanes the whole day or eating root crops such as camote (sweet potato), cassava, and corn did not supply the required nutrition. He needed the staple food of rice and fish for daily existence. Food, shelter, and clothing were his grandparents preoccupation during wartime. They planted rice, camote, cassava, corn, beans, and mongo according to the months (season). They raised fowls for supplemental food. His grandfather was a skilled carpenter and they built a hut made of cogon grasses and bamboo tree materials. His grandmother assembled pieces of clothes and sewed them for his pants and shirt because he refused wearing clothes improvised out of empty sugar sacks. A group of marauders swooped down late one night and carted all their foodstuff, clothes, and they started all over again. His grandmother saw to it that they ate rice once a day while root crops made up for breakfast and dinner. They went half-hungry every day for months until they produced again the much-needed staple food.

Three long years of World War II was not a dream. It was waking up every morning, heading to the carabao enclosure, and taking the work animals to labor or to pastures whether under the heat of the dry season sun or under the downpour of the rainy days. Work animals need food too and his daily tasks included riding them to pastures. He grazed the carabaos to the tall abandoned sugarcanes for the animals loved chewing the offshoot sugarcane leaves, then he disembarked suddenly and went after the birds n

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469189420

Edgardo G. Calansingin

Edgardo G. Calansingin was born in 1931 in a small town of the Philippines, a third world archipelago of more than 7,100 islands and islets, an exotic country in the Far East. Orphaned by his father at age six, his mother remarried a year later. He lived with his paternal grandparents at the beginning of World War II, doing manual labor. A bleak future, misfortunes, hard labor, lost opportunities, and poverty—Calansingin underwent them all. Handicapped by a loss of hearing and stammering since childhood, he completed elementary, secondary, and college education. The book is a story of survival.

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Copyright © 2012 by Edgardo G. Calansingin.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Mambucal Spring Summer Resort

Chapter 2

Bago River

Chapter 3

World War Ii

Chapter 4

Back To School

Chapter 5

I Was Lost

Chapter 6

Central Luzon Agricultural School

Chapter 7

The Land Of Promise

Chapter 8

The Calling

Chapter 9

Point Of No Return

Chapter 10

The Pci bank

Chapter 11

Land Of The Free

I will never forget Rosendo H. de la Rama, first manager of the Rural Bank of Bacolod City Inc., who hired me as janitor. He opened for me that small window of opportunity. I also dedicate this book to Rodolfo L. Montelibano, who retained me after Mr. de la Rama left the bank.

To my paternal grandparents, for showing me the value of hard work and perseverance.

To Letty, my wife for her understanding.

To Chona, Alex, Susan, Rolly, and Yvonne—my children—for their love and inspiration.

Chapter 1

Mambucal Spring Summer Resort

Looking back to the beautiful setting at that time, I was five years old. I felt then like I was a kid lost among the beauty in the wilderness. The thick forest of tall trees, backwoods, and flora shaded the mountainsides from the glaring heat of the summer sun. Raindrops fell on tree leaves, branches, trunks, and down to the roots of the forest trees during rainy days. The alternating weather changes nourished the greeneries that emblazoned Mambucal Spring Summer Resort in green, yellow, and red ornamental plants. The cultured plants across the sloping mountainside became visible to the entrance road and kilometers away. The leafy banner grew on the slopes of the opposite valley but served as welcome landmark to visitors who patronized the spa. On the right side of the entrance road, cottages lined the slanting vale, some of them for lease, others for use of government personnel. My parents occupied one of them; my father worked cleaning periodically the swimming pool. The bathhouse with rental bathrooms stood on the left of the road down the bottom of the dell. The entrance road ended into a zone that accommodated traffic. A lone two-level building stood beside the semicircular glade. The lower floor served as a convenience store. The upper level housed the resort manager.

Visitors to the resort walked exploring the spa. They crossed wooden minibridges fording brooks where water lilies sprang and aquatics gamboled. Wide varieties of beautiful wild flora decked the waysides, and the greeneries magnified the scope of beauty and deepened the thrill of excitement. Fauna did not lag behind as birds of different sizes and colors made their presence known. Primates inhabited the tall mahogany and other hardwood trees; they thrived abundantly everywhere in the forest reservation. The waterfalls that poured incessantly gallons of water from a height were the main thrust of the exploration. An intrepid explorer that dared find out the sources of the waterfalls was in for surprises. He ascended the elevation beside the waterfalls only to discover one waterfall after another as he scaled the mountainsides and made his way through the jungle. A majority of climbers turned cold feet because ascent on rocky paths of the ravines was tortuous, arduous, and hazardous. The waterfalls sprang from a wall of Canlaon, a mountain eight thousand feet above sea level topped by an imposing volcano.

This body of cool and translucent water gushed from the earth and cascaded into seven rungs of waterfalls that earned the sobriquet Seven Falls. The first fall (bottom one) collected the downpour, and the resulting stream of current was strong enough to operate a turbine engine. The engine provided electricity and ran the nearby ice-making factory. The provincial government, owner of the forest reservation, constructed two rectangular bathtubs adjacent to each other. Both were large, accommodating ten bathers at a time. Pipes funneled hot water for bathers in one tub, and another set of pipes showered the bathers with cold water in the other bathtub. Bathers who took baths in the pool formed by the waterfalls preferred rinsing themselves in either hot water or in cold one. Years later, I viewed Sabbaday Falls, located just off Kancamagus Highway along Route 22, in Waterville, New Hampshire. I made my way down the banks and looked at the three-tiered Sabbaday

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Mambucal Spring Summer Resort attracted scanty visitors after three years of total neglect during World War II. The Japanese Army garrisoned briefly the Mambucal Training Cadre a kilometer away after the Japanese Army landed in Negros Islands in May 1942, until the Guerrillas ambushed Lieutenant Sakay, the Japanese Commander of the Garrison, at the entrance to the Bago River Ferry Mambucal Bridge. Lieutenant Sakay commuted on an unescorted car between the Garrison and Bacolod City. The Guerrillas killed his driver. Lieutenant Sakay suffered wounds on the head and the Guerrillas left him for dead. He survived, walked on foot another two kilometers to Hacienda Paz where the sugar plantation laborers loaded him on the truck and transported him back to the Garrison. The Japanese soldiers escorted Lieutenant Sakay to Bacolod City for medical treatments.

Falls dropped forty feet along Sabbaday brook. I stood amazed at the clear and clean water cascading down the rocks of the Granite State. I paused, I contemplated, and then I made mental comparisons.

From the cold and hot bathtubs of the Mambucal Spring Summer Resort, the waterfalls became a stream that parted the gorge almost at its center into two valleys. A pathway led three hundred meters to the direction of the multicolored banner. The greenery seemed to stand guard over a rectangular pool of sulfuric boiling water. Underground capillaries of sulfuric hot water found their way from the volcano into the spa. The well-tended vegetation that spelled Mambucal Spring Summer Resort and the boiling sulfuric water in the pond below the grassy banner, bubbling night and day, drew attention. They were sources of wonder.

The amenities that the other side of the stream offered added attractions to the spa. Two large pipes conducted water by gravity a couple of hundred meters toward the resort building and into the swimming pool located at a lower elevation than the building area. A descending stony stairs linked the swimming pool area to a domed bathhouse with rental bathrooms. The bathhouse area included a tennis court beside the building before the ground extended to the stream nearby. Potholes of boiling sulfuric hot water pockmarked the ground at the stream, so hot that the heat could cook poultry eggs. Back to the ovate swimming pool at the upper level of the area, two diving boards stood at opposite sides of the circular swimming pool. Foreign tourists exhibited their diving skills to the amazement of the locals while they frolicked on the expanse of the cool water. Women preferred using rubber rafts while they tanned under the heat of the summer sun. They left behind lots of Hershey’s chocolates, and I, together with children of other government employees of the resort, swam to the empty rafts and recovered the sweet leftovers. I never dreamed that one day in later years I would tour the inside of the Hershey’s complex manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, United States of America. This company intensified the manufacture of Hershey’s chocolates in 1928 and exported them to Mambucal Spring Summer Resort in 1936. Hershey’s imported foreign ingredients, including cacao beans from the Philippines, in the manufacture of confectionaries.

Mambucal Spring Summer Resort was a spa that Mother Nature created and nestled on a basin of Canlaon Mountain, hid the chasm under tall trees and tangled vines, and crowned the mountain ranges with Canlaon Volcano. The magnificent crater was visible kilometers away. The tang of the volcanic hot springs and the cool water from the waterfalls lent invitations to visitors. The climate, ambience, and tranquility attracted both local and foreign tourists for a day or so stay in the resort. It was for these reasons that local and foreign tourists spent summer vacations enjoying the beauty and the wonders of the spa. The fame of the spa invited the frequent visits of the governor of Negros Occidental, the speaker of the Philippines Assembly, and the president of the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands from Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

A couple of kilometers down the resort, the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands government utilized a portion of the national forest reservation for the Mambucal Training Cadre. The military installation quartered the trainees assembled from different towns of the province. The Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands organized under the tutelage of the United States of America that acquired the islands together with Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain under the Treaty of Paris of 1898. The new country needed the development of its national defense. The government cleared the region of trees, rocks, stones, and hills and leveled the area for barracks and drill grounds. The soldiers paraded, drilled, and skirmished around the expanse of the reservation. The shooting ranges allowed target practices. Mounds of stones piled for obstacle courses. The military erected scarecrows that served as imaginary enemies in hand-to-hand fighting exercises. Artillery batteries shattered the serenity of the forest when the artillery division zeroed in on the simulated targets. The medical corps simulated battled movements with advancing troops to the battle lines. The soldiers hiked six kilometers down to Bago River for a dip in cool water. In the latter part of the year, a group of soldiers was stationed at Bago River to protect the Bago River Ferry Mambucal Bridge. Signs of war were discernible, and the United States of America intensified military training of the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands troops. Soldiers from the Mambucal Training Cadre trooped in truckloads to the Banago Wharf in Bacolod City, capital of the province, when World War II erupted. They boarded transport ships to Luzon Island. They fought in the battles of Bataan and Corregidor Island in Luzon. Very few of them ever came back alive.

My parents transferred to Bago River as toll collectors of the Bago River Ferry Mambucal Bridge. The bridge, two hundred meters long, spanned Bago riverbanks. The bridge—constructed of wooden planks and posts, adhered together with nails and wire cables, and bolted together—serviced the commuters over the river. Fifty posts—on each side of the bridge and evenly distanced one from the other—lined the river from one bank to the opposite. Each set of posts consisted of ten logs tied securely together with wire cables. One end of the post embedded deeply into the bedrocks while the opposite end jutted twenty feet above the surface of the water. Wooden trusses bolted to the sides of the posts supported the wooden planks serving as a runway wide enough to accommodate a single vehicle traveling in either direction. Four additional posts reinforced the footings deeply into the riverbanks, one post on each side of the ramp of each bank. Strong wire cables adhered securely to the posts after stringing them through both sides of the bridge. The bridge was an important conduit linking Mambucal Spring Summer Resort in one hand and, on the other hand, the town of Murcia and Bacolod City, the seat of the provincial government that wielded supervision over the bridge, the cadre, and the resort. It was for these reasons that the provincial government collected tolls for expenditures of rebuilding the bridge every year that the flood destroyed the bridge.

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Bago River looked tame during summer. Illegal logging of forest trees that retained rainwater and kept water level high dried the riverbeds. The pre-war wooden bridge stood at the left with one end extending to the abandoned road visible a distance ahead. The present permanent bridge stood farther left.

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The Philippine Government constructed the permanent concrete Bago River Ferry Mambucal Bridge 35 years after World War II. We did not believe the Government Surveyors that lodged with us in 1938 when they indicated the highest promontory in Bago River banks as the site for the Bridge.

Chapter 2

Bago River

Bago River had its origin from northeast of the Marapara Mountain and flowed west to Guimaras Strait in the Visayan Sea. In our portion of this long and winding river, Bago River had four segments. One of the laps was a hundred-fifty-foot-wide body of water with strong currents accentuated by the presence of stones, rocks, and boulders, some submerged while the others jutted from the surface of the water, and all littered the distance between the banks. The presence of these obstacles aggravated the rapid flow of the turbulence and added velocity to the strong current passing under the bridge. Next to the turbulence was a cove a hundred fifty feet wide to the opposite bank from our side of the river. Another tumultuous turbulence ensured while the fourth leg of the segment was a body of water nine yards deep. From our perspective in our side of the bank, Bago River resembled an inverted foot with the leg representing the turbulence coming from a direction under the bridge. The heel looked like a quay and pointed to the north, in line with the opposite end of the bridge. The arch of the foot would be standing on a riverbank with the highest elevation among the riverbanks at the opposite end of the