PETER’S PINOY PATTER — JULY 2019

Bridge Generation

(Bridge Generation Filipino Americans are defined as born in America to at least one member of the Manong/Manang Generation that immigrated to America during the 1920-30s.  Sadly, the M/M  Generation is no longer with us.  T0day their children, the Bridge Generation — now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s — have dwindled to a precious few.  To help assure their experiences in America are not forgotten, BG news have been a regular feature of my blog.  The following mainstream account of their early years from the perspective of an anonymous and presumably non-Filipino writer,  provides a broader context of those years: 

Children of One of the Greatest Generations (by Anonymous) 

• Born in the mid 1920s to the early 1940s, we exist as a very special age group.
• We are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900s.
•  We are the last generation, climbing out of the Depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of  a world at war.
• We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.
• We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans
• We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available
• We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.
• We are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors whose sons died in World War II.
• We are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.
• As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside”.
• There was no Little League. There was no city playground for kids. Soccer was unheard of.
• The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like.
• On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave us newsreels sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons that were at least a week old.
• Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on the wall in the kitchen.
• Computers were called calculators, and hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.
• The “INTERNET’ and “GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.
• Newspapers and magazines were written for adults.
• As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
• The GI Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow.
• VA loans fanned a housing boom, thanks to pent-up demand coupled with new installment payment plans.
• New highways would bring jobs and mobility.  New cars averaged $2,000 full price.
• Veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.
• The radio network expanded from three stations to thousands.
• Parents, free from the confines of the Depression and the war, threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
• We were busy discovering the post-war world.
• We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; where we felt secure in our future although Depression poverty was deeply remembered.
• Polio was still a crippler.
• We came of age in the 50s and 60s.
• The Korean War was a dark passage in the early 50s.
• Russia built the Iron Curtain and China became Red China.
• Eisenhower sent the first “Army Advisers” to Vietnam.
• Castro took over in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.
• We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.
• Only our generation can remember both time of great war and time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.
• We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
• We are “The Last Ones”.
• Today, more than 99% of us are either retired or deceased, and we feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times”.

Bridge Generation Personality of the Month – Salvatore Baldomar, 86:  From the time of his birth December 23, 1933 in New York City, Sal’s formative years were spent in one of the Big Apple’s first Filipino settlements — Sands Street, adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Because of the street’s proximity to the water front, these early Filipino residents were predominantly seafarers.  And because Filipinos resided mainly in the two high apartment buildings on each side of Sands Street, the street soon became known by neighborhood residents as “Manila Alley”.  On “Manila Alley” were a Filipino barber shop, the Manila Karihan Restaurant, and Filipino VFW and American Legion clubs where cultural events were held.  The neighborhood was first settled by Italian immigrants who welcomed Filipino seafarers who first came in the early 1900s.  With the scarcity of Filipina women, Filipino and Italian marriages, including Sal’s parents, soon became commonplace.  (Marriages between Filipinos and whites in New York were legal.)  He encountered little prejudice growing up, which he attributes to the mestizo/a  make-up of his contemporaries who thus were protected by the more established Italian neighborhood.  Sal’s bi-cultural family history is reflected in the following story, “On pasta Sundays my father would ask us kids at the table, ‘What do you like better, rice or pasta?’  To keep everyone happy, we poured the pasta sauce over the rice.”  As a teenager Sal made spending money as a runner for Keno games in Chinatown.  At the same time he enjoyed New York’s rich cultural life.  He remembered watching the first production of the Broadway hit “The King and I” where most the children’s roles were filled by kids of Filipino heritage.  His own children were also influenced by the arts.  His two sons are in the film industry while his two daughters are in the visual arts.  Sal followed his father’s footsteps by marrying an Italian woman, Phyllis. He also followed his father footsteps as a seafarer, joining the Merchant Marines during the Korean War.  Subsequently, he became co-owner of a meat market only to lose the business to a deteriorating neighborhood and finally, after being burned out by riots in 1959.  These incidents eventually led to Sal and Phyllis moving to the San Pedro area — an area he became familiar with while he was in the Merchant Marines. I met Sal after hearing him ask a question at a Carson CA book signing in 2011, I immediately wanted to meet him. Why? — I had never met a pinoy with a New York accent!……………….  Although the June 20 Celebration of Life for Henry (Hank) Dacuyan, 87,  in Atwater CA drew a large number of mourners, it was also a reunion.  There to pay tribute to Hank — an outstanding athlete during the heyday of FA Youth club basketball during the 1950s-60s — were many former youth club players, now aged but still energized.  Hank passed away on May 28 after a long illness………………. Atwater-Livingston-Delhi FAs also Celebrated the Life of Caesar Alcordo,79, on June 13 in Modesto CA.  The fourth of eleven children, he was also known for his collection of cars that included a Tesla, Delorean, and Corvette.  Caesar died on May 30……………  Happy July Birthdays: Rosita (Adlao) Amen, Lydia (Antiporda) Galian, Dan Inosanto, Gilda Lum, Gloria (Magpiong) Salac, Rudy Modelo, Loretta (Pimentel) Orpilla, Candido Oyog

Pinakbet – News Across America

(Thanks to Mel LaGasca of Tracy CA for the following item)   Diane Paragas, director/writer, and publicist David Magdael, both with roots in Stockton, are just two of the many Filipino Americans associated with the award-winning film “Yellow Rose”.  The movie features the daughter-mother relationship of Eva Noblezada who received the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance and Lea Salonga, Tony Award winning actress for her starring role in Broadway’s “Miss Saigon”…………….. (From Berkeley CA comes the following item from proud wife Lillian Galedo — trailblazer, activist, and retired Executive Director of Filipino Advocates for Justice.)  On May 15 Stanford University Libraries added the work of David Bacon, Bay Area photojournalist, to its photography collection. Bacon has long documented the lives of farm workers, including Filipinos. “David Bacon’s career as a photojournalist represents working class history and social justice movements that transformed political landscapes internationally,” said Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, Ph.D., library specialist at Stanford……………… (And thanks to Rosalie (Salutan) Marquez of Santa Maria and President of the FANHS Central Coast Chapter for the following.)  Joseph Cruz, MD, breeds and raises purebred Arabian Egyptian horses worth thousands of dollars at his ranch in Los Osos CA to sell to Middle Eastern Sheik princes.  Dr. Cruz is a physician at California Men’s Colony Prison at San Luis Obispo and maintains a private practice…………… On May 7 Tom Cunanan, chef at the popular Washington, D.C. restaurant “Bad Saint”, was named Best Chef of the Atlantic Region by the prestigious James Beards Awards.

Musings

Countdown — Now minus 1 year and 2 months and growing: For the Board of Trustees, Filipino American National Historical Society — who have program and fiduciary responsibility — to provide critically needed financing to assure keeping open the Filipino American Museum in Stockton, the historic center of Filipino immigration.

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