Benny Goodman & memories of the south country

One of the first memories was that of the black thing, somewhere on a street called Maginhawa, unfolding discreetly into stacks of vinyl on the top shelf of a book case, near huge louvered windows with the screen barely hanging on.

But the phonograph player no longer plays, has long been out of commission even way before diamond needles for the turntable went out of stock in Raon, the sound it once made lost among the hawkers and sellers of day-old chicks by the church of the black Christ and instant panaceas.

Some of the vinyl has been moved to a place down south, south of Negros, listened to by an old man swinging in a hammock, swing low sweet chariot coming now to take him away. A little winged purveyor of light to balance out the black thing, memory blacked out by too much sun.

Then the clarinet could be heard above the din by the deaf man, it gave him courage and laughter, the records coming from as far as Guadalajara, as near as Cubao, yet still across the sea because the record store in Dumaguete Pelrico’s was no more.

Hunchbacks and grand dames came to life on the turntable, dancing at 33 and 1/3 rpm, April in Paris, I Love Paris, Autumn Leaves, songs from Goodman’s Paris album on the ABC label, bought in a store in Cubao near the old Fiesta Carnival, then taken on a boat in the economy section of a ship reeking with diesel and the hubbub of human perseverance.

But it was not only Goodman but Tommy Dorsey too, that album with the young Frank Sinatra that contained the song Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread), when mics were microphones large enough to hold in the hand complete with cord, not some silly cordless contraption one placed on one’s head like a hearing aid.

Not only Dorsey of the dorsal horn but Glenn Miller too before his trumpet or trombone or whatever you call it got lost in the skies of the second world war. Was it myth or fantasy that made him seem like Amelia Earheart to us all, a false alarm because anyway the black thing took the A-train when no one was looking?

Meanwhile, nameless dishes would be cooking in the kitchen, almost like jazz improv, spur of the moment balbacua, binakhaw steeped in lime and bark of siniguelas, kilawin topped by crushed chicharon, fresh fish tinola swimming in kalamunggay leaves and bits of ginger, goat caldereta with just a hint of spiciness to leave a tang on the palate.

Time was when we searched for a crankshaft for a jeep in the bowels of Sta. Cruz, Blumentritt side, got lost like the Count of Sto. Cristo, then found the sidestreet again a ways from a stale creekcond sem 2004-2005 spare parts and other greasy stuff, till we found the beloved piece that would make my father-in-law several thousand pesos poorer just to get a Don Antoy jeepney unit plying the Siaton-Dumaguete route again, across its nine or 10 bridges across the national highway.

During one such canvassing in crazy Manila, even taking the LRT to Blumentritt, we made a sidetrip to Chinatown, on Carvajal street, for snack and refreshments at the humble Mei-lin’s, while in the alley outside everyone was busy with commerce, a stone’s throw away from Ho-land’s hopia.

Apart from listening to Goodman and gang and cooking in the kitchen, dad-in-law was a fanatic when it came to reading the papers. The first thing he’d ask for, whenever someone would come from a trip to Dumag, was a newspaper. If we failed to buy one it was like original sin.

There was a letter to the editor he once wrote, the topic of which I now forget, but he practically made an art out of it, prose short and sweet typed out on a manual typewriter the kind you rarely see used these days in newsrooms, the mere classic font alone was already a message in itself, almost like the dream banner of one tabloid editor: small medium at large.

With his hearing aid on, he would engage anyone within shouting distance in raucous debate about the state of the nation, the market price of yellow fin tuna, the existence of Christ and church, jazz futures.

One good way to put a stop to banditry, the secessionist guerrillas and communist elements was simply to disarm them, he said. The trouble was that our law enforcers were not serious in defeating the outlaws, because without the bad guys, how would the supposed good guys look? They wouldn’t know how to comport themselves, much less issue press statements to the groveling media.

Lolo Dodong and Lola Nene were present at the birth of their grandchildren in Manila, taking the boat (Sulpicio, I think it was) days before the scheduled delivery. Lolo slept in a cot in the living room of an apartment off Vito Cruz, and sometimes the occasional vagrants knocking at the gate, one of them a woman who was "an agent of beggars" would rouse him.

The last thing I sent him was a book on Pinoy jazz to go with his stacks of collector’s records and Vi & Bot record cleaner, now a rarity even in Raon. He was going to market and cooking and fixing water closets up to the very end. On a Monday morning, he died with pesos and dollars tied with a safety pin in his trousers. He played one last trick on us, making us push his hearse all the way to the hilltop cemetery after the engine conked out.

Before the crypt was sealed we tossed in a yellow rose for the food he cooked, the music he played, the daughter he gave away. The World War II veteran Vivencio Tayko Monte de Ramos was 88.