IT’S THE Glorious Fourth of July – once most celebrated day in Angeles City, by virtue of its being the virtual capital of the veritable 51st State of the United States of America, Clark Air Force Base.
July 4. Clark AFB opened its doors to the li’l brown brothers, for them to savor America, in all its most delicious goodness, for the day. Only for that day. Though long enough to foster a lasting love for good old US of A.
And we remember:
IT WAS the best of times.
“Three hundred years in a convent and fifty years in Hollywood.”
Nowhere in the country is that anonymous wit’s encapsulation of Philippine history more manifest than in Angeles City.
The celestial beings that old Barrio Kuliat took for its name, a signal honor to the religiosity of its people.
Religiosity resonant in its main streets of Sto. Rosario and Sto. Entierro at which juncture stands the citadel of faith, the Holy Rosary Parish Church.
Religiosity celebrated not just in one but two fiestas in October. On the second Sunday, La Naval in devotion to the Virgin whose intercession sparked victory of the Spanish fleet against Dutch and British privateers in 1646; and on the last Friday, Piyestang Apu for Apung Mamacalulu or the Lord of Mercy.
At the opposite end of the moral divide stood – from 1903 – Clark Air Base, the largest American military installation outside continental USA.
And right outside its very gates evolved Fields Avenue, a virtual city of camp followers: All-night and all-day clubs featuring shows of the most exotic and erotic kinds, short-time motels and alley inns, beer gardens and massage parlors, women, women, women, of all ages, shapes and degrees of pulchritude, and – to be gender-equal – gays.
There too abounded the PX (post exchange) trade – of stateside goods smuggled out, purchased or pilfered from the Clark commissary. US Booster and Chuck Taylor. Baby Ruth and Hershey bars.
Hanes and Fruit of the Loom. Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. Benson & Hedges and Hav-a-Tampa. Apples and grapes. Playboy and Penthouse. Find them all, only at Dau and Nepo Mart.
At the Checkpoint, immediately before the Clark main gate, flourished literal wheeling and dealing – of used American gas guzzlers, from the sporty Mustang to the immense Cadillac, most prized by the locals as status symbols – whence arose an argot: “English Checkpoint,” best exampled when bargaining: “How low can you make it down, Joe?”
The Vietnam War spurred the city’s own gold rush, with Clark serving as logistics hub and forward base for the USAF’s bombing forays to stem the Red Tide – pursuant to the Cold War’s “Domino Theory” – about to sweep through most of Southeast Asia. And Angeles City all too willing to open its arms – and legs – to war-weary soldiers for their R&R.
So ruled the Almighty Dollar. So reigned the American GI. In the city denigrated by the defenders of morality as having been founded on the very loins of an occupying army.
That cudgel taken up by militants and nationalists finding conscientization in the damnation of the three isms shackling Filipino society, namely, feudalism, imperialism and bureaucrat-capitalism.
The perfunctory cries of “Yankees, go home!” rising to the belligerent screams of “Lansagin ang base militar!” in scores of protest marches and rallies routinely dispersed by head-bashing, truncheon-wielding elements of the Philippine Air Force’s Clark Air Base Command.
Still, and all – neither nationalism nor sovereignty ever been found to fill an empty stomach, as some wisecrack of a politico once quipped – the city and its citizens welcomed the American presence as all-boon and never-bane to their very existence.
Their economic empowerment solidly established, their social well-being firmly secured.
Having a cornucopia in Clark Air Base, ensconced in its pre-eminent status among communities, urban and rural, in all Northern and Central Luzon, Angeles City found little reason to fear, much less prepare for the unknown.
In the Epicurean ideal, the city rocked and its citizens rolled.
SO WE wrote in the 2011 book Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph in celebration of the city’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions.
Not without some pangs of sadness, the ghosts of our American past come back to us. If only this Fourth of July.
God bless America!
