Monday, October 09, 2006 Dacawi: Willy and company By Ramon Dacawi Benchwarmer
WILLY Cacdac was 85 days short of completing his third year down here as a dual citizen - Filipino and senior. The Baguio boy, media icon and former secretary to the mayor kicked the bucket last July 11, in the middle of an early afternoon cloudburst.
We were in Tarlac, on our way back to Baguio when we got the news. We came from the National Kidney and Transplant Institute where Maan, his younger daughter, obtained a sealed envelope containing his kidney biopsy results. We had just dropped by the brewery in San Fernando where Vic Quizon fed us and handed San Miguel Corp's support for Willy's fight against cancer.
Maan got the call, apparently from Rency, her mother. She started yelling "No!" and then sobbed uncontrollably at the backseat. My first thought was to ask Peewee Agustin, who was driving, to stop so I could give her a hug. My second was to find Willy's favorite Gin Blue bottle and pour some spirits on the rain-drenched ground. My third was to drown myself in Willy's drink. Instead, I froze.
By the pearly gates, Willy must have looked back, saddened by such insensitivity and indecision.
Peewee drove on. Suddenly, a truck tire rolling on the opposite lane flicked a pebble. It hit the windshield that suddenly turned white with thousands of cracks. We stopped for a plastic sheet we taped on the inner side, so the shattered glass shield gingerly hanging on won't cave in on us.
As if designed, the cracks before Peewee's view were less, allowing him to see, but still slowed us down. Rainwater slowly seeped into the cracks. When we reached the lower end of Kennon Rd., Peewee was groping for the road. It was dusk.
Then, before him, a glass splinter an inch-long fell on its own on the plastic sheet. The surrounding bits followed, creating a round hole that allowed Peewee to navigate. The remaining pieces held until we reached Willy's home in Pacdal.
The memory -- of that trip home -- stays. Willy had slowed us down, for our own sake.
We looked away when Maan rushed to her mother's arms beside the white coffin. I guess the envelope containing the biopsy results was never opened. All the while, we had looked forward to marking Willy's 63rd down here with. We had all the reasons to.
Those who preceded and received Willy in the big newsroom in the sky couldn't have let his day pass.
For sure, Willy did the cooking. It was his passion down here - as much as writing and guiding kids to write -- or plant a tree -- were. That's why his media colleagues still around this mortal plane miss him.
Simply put, to borrow his weekly column title, they miss his command of the kitchen, the news and lecture rooms. They miss his English, written and oral. They confessed so in the obits and during the wake. Some voices cracked, or were choked by laughter and tears, particularly during those eulogies under the influence.
In a way, Willy did that several years ago to kids he was trying to teach at the St. Mary's School in Sagada. To make them awake enough to listen, he drove them to laughter and tears with anecdotes. He soon found out the strategy muddled their learning process, after he overheard one of the kids telling her mother how funny the lecturers were.
The jokes sank in but we were not so sure of the lessons.
Even his fellow chef Swanny Dicang misses him for their rivalry in some cookouts down here, mostly at the Philippine Information Agency regional office. They crowded each other in the kitchen of director Helen Tibaldo. That time media gathered for the 40th day of Peppot Ilagan's own passing.
Their arguments bounced from the right meat slice to the "adobo" mix, to the menu, to whose cooking deserved to be the centerpiece. Willy came up with his signature "dinuguan," a hot mix of blood, meat, banana heart and chili pepper. It was a hit among the Wright Park pony boys who were regularly called to assist during media gatherings.
Not to be outdone, Swanny dispatched one of them to the market for the ingredients of his black beans special.
After grace, both quietly waited to see which dish would be finished first.
Peppot, editor of The Gold Ore Weekly that folded up before he did, was a genius in diplomacy. While here, he earned the full respect of lawyer Bembo Afable, now Judge Edilberto Claravall and the rest of the guys for averting alcohol-triggered fisticuffs with his wit and diminutive frame.
During the Swanny-Willy setto, however, he peered down from the cloud rim and just watched with impish delight.
Peppot's friends and relatives came early to help prepare the memorial picnic. Others in media appeared a little later, after the cooking was done and the table set. Such timing is an unwritten, well-kept tradition in the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) that Peppot and Willy served as president. No one knows who started the practice and how, when and where it all began.
Whatever. As soon as grace was said, the BCBC members scooped clean the black and dinuguan trays. It's a tradition. The two cooks beamed with pride.
I wonder, who could have baked Willy's cake up there?
Not Freddie Mayo, who, in 1997, made New York his exit point to the great beyond. He wrote some of the finest feature articles and essays on Baguio history. He wrote the best speeches mayor Luis Lardizabal ever delivered -- with justice to the prose. He did short stories and poetry and discussed literature endlessly during drinking sprees that lasted until dawn.
Yet Freddie didn't bake. Most probably, he served the drinks, with Ilocano writer Bagnos Cudiamat of "Apros ken Kudkud" fame by his side. "Take your cotton-pickin' hands off my gin," Freddie used to say. He swore to Bagnos it was just a quote from Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.
He couldn't say it before Steve Hamada, my editor and mentor at The Baguio Midland Courier. I miss Steve for the editing lessons, the drinking sessions and spirited arguments we had for over 10 years.
Mostly likely, the three begged off from having a tiny slice of the cake. It would have been messy for their constitution and on their shot glass hands.
Pioneer broadcaster Manny Salenga must have teamed up with friend Johnny Muller in a black-and-white version of "Ol' Man River," with Willy and the rest in the brown background.
Juan Tenorio, the popular radio personality who lost a seat in the City Council for running under his true name -- Romy Sacayanan -- must have been the emcee.
Their memory stays.-(e-mail: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).
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