The Del Monte Kid Experience

I would like to share my Del Monte story from the angle of shoes… well, to be exact, from the angle of “footwear”. It is important to make this distinction. This will become apparent later.

look at those white shoes!

Let me start my story by telling you about my 2 Grandfathers. You see, I am a 3rd Generation Del Monte Kid. My Del Monte story would not have come to be if not for my Lolos. They were one of those young, brave, adventurous men who went to migrate to this great island of Mindanao to seek their fortunes. My Lolo Serafin came from the far north of Abra and my Lolo Eufemio came from the not so far north of Leyte. On how they ended-up here in Del Monte is a matter of destiny but just like the Lolos of other Del Monte Kids, this is where they, for the most part of their lives, found home. It didn’t hurt that the Americans were here and started a pineapple plantation and brought with them some very cool and unique jobs e.g. my Lolo Serafin, as my mom would always tell us, planted some of the trees around the plaza; trees that were there to witness my misfortune when I fell to the ground in my first ever try to be like Lydia de Vega in a 100m sprint race (my cousin Cecilia won that race); trees that are still there to witness the football matches of the not so young football boys in the much-loved Deo Cup.

Anyway, my Papa (Loloy) and my Mom (Flora) came to the world at the time of the big war; they were practically born with warplanes flying over their heads. Because of the irregularity of the times, my Papa was born under a mango tree somewhere in Iponan (unthinkable these days, but my Lola was also a superwoman) which explains why he loves mangoes. My mom on the other hand had to have a baptism in Butuan City that was constantly interrupted by the sound of bombs falling off the sky. Every interruption would be coupled with “Hapa kamo!” which my great grand-ma would shout-out loud. However, by the time they were of school age, it was already peace time and they already found their way to Del Monte.

My Papa went to Sta. Fe Farm School and as the name suggests a considerable part of the school program is to plant all kinds of green stuff on the school garden. Because of that, my Papa would go to school on most days barefoot. He said -- what’s the use of wearing shoes when it would get “lapok” anyway… and if he would wear that “I-smuggle”, mabug-to lang… kay bug-at ang lapok. :-) My Mom went to Plantation Elementary School in Camp Phillips and would most often than not go to school either with a pair of Bakya or a 2-peso “I-smuggle” from the Chinaman (Pua-Tan). I have to explain at this point why it is ever called “I-smuggle” instead of sinilas. It had to do with the fact that these glorious stuff that the English-speaking world now call Flip-flops, used to be smuggled-in to the Philippines from China. :-) Anyway, my Mom did go to school wearing shoes -- but only on days when the Class Picture would be taken. I saw one of these pictures.  The nerdy ones (e.g. my Mom) who actually remembered to wear shoes on the big Class-Picture-day, were all seated in front; and the ones who forgot, well, their feet were hidden…. :-) 

 

So was the life of a 2nd Generation Del Monte Kid.  It wasn’t hard, it was just simple. What is great about it is, everybody got a chance to get an education -- it didn’t matter at all if one went to school with shoes-on or not.

When it was my generation’s turn to go to school at OLLES (Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School), it was sort of different. Life was still simple but I had to wear shoes. The good old sinilas were to be used only for after-school play-time with the neighborhood kids. Sometimes these pairs of sinilas that come in many colors would be taken-off and used as markers in the game of Patintero, or used as a critical, game-changing device in the game of Tak-si i.e. from a distance that is agreed upon by the players, one throws the sinilas to get the highly-valued folded “Marlboro” or “Hope” cigarette-packaging paper out of a marked circle on the ground.

Anyway, as I would recall, my shoes were mostly my older sister Dorothy’s old pair or some Ukay(2x) shoes from Malaybalay (i.e. mang-ukay is for my Mom, equal to a shopping spree at say Harrods -- a guilty pleasure). However, sometimes, only sometimes, we would make-tugbong (travel down) to Cagayan de Oro and spend a good part of the day in a shoe store called “Seven-seven” to buy new shoes for the new school season. I remember my Mom bought me there my all-time favorite:  a blue pair of Mighty Kid sneakers. The shade of blue had to match the school uniform -- that is my Mom’s sense of style. In fact, when my older sister first went to school, she used to wear a pair of white shoes because white goes very well with the school uniform (see picture below).

By the time I was 16, my shoe size is already the same as my Mom’s and my sister’s. So naturally, we would borrow shoes from one another. We still do this these days. The most recent example is on my big sister’s wedding day: my sister had to borrow my Mom’s pair of white shoes because, well because of pure excitement, she forgot to check if her pair were still in good condition. I have to say though that it is not only the female part of the family that tended to borrow shoes from one another. My older brother Leroy also used to borrow my Papa’s shoes particularly the nice and shiny Texan-made cowboy boots that Papa got as a Christmas gift from Del Monte. Because it was too nice and shiny, Papa would not use it to go to work – the good old black or white pair of rubber boots were more appropriate in the Feedlot. So my older brother would wear it to parties, and if I recall it right, even to Christmas midnight mass. By the time he was earning his own money, he bought himself his own pair of boots – which our friend Nareen (Sanchez) borrowed for one of those batch-costume-parties that Del Monte kids love to organize every Christmas season.

My younger brother Budoyz, on the other hand, grew-up to be the tallest in the family so at some point Papa’s shoes did not fit him anymore. My Mom would always say that it must be because of the Del Monte fresh milk that my big, little brother drank a lot of when he was a kid. Now, this habit of “drinking fresh milk” is one of the many good things the Americans brought with them. When I went to university in the big capital of Metro Manila and got to know kids from other parts of the country, I came to realize how unique to Del Monte this was. Fresh milk is not available in such good quality, quantity and price (thanks to Papa’s department) in many parts of the country. In fact, there were many things that were unique only to Del Monte, like having school buses for kids who live in the other Camps, or football, or having sports fests or Olympics in the summer where the participants are not only the employees themselves but also their kids. I remember my brothers got to have really cool uniforms for playing football and my cousins Manoy Mario, Manong Larry and Manong John were winning medals in Track & Field.

Now in addition to cool things like the local Olympics, there are plenty of other cool and crazy things to do in the summer. With the Pahuyo’s (Sandro, Yvonne, Riza), my best friend Kookie, her sister Nicky and their band of cousins from the Boyles clan, we would slide down on this steep incline behind our homes using only old cartons, play dakop(2x) on top of an avocado tree, speed-bike on those dirt road networks (which were meant for sprayers or harvesters) of that big pineapple field nearby with not only 1 but 2-3 kids per bike as we didn’t all have bikes.  I have to say though that our version of speed-biking is not for the faint-hearted, especially since crashing could also mean crashing onto the thorny pineapples, something our mothers would probably not want to know about.

When there’s not much action going-on in the summer, there were also other things to do. You see, my Papa, being a farm lad, never really stopped farming. While he was working for Del Monte, he would wake-up at 4am, go to work, come back around 5pm, and start to work on his garden in order to keep fit (pa-singot, as he would call it).  At one particular time in the summer, his garden was full of tomatoes which needed harvesting and he and my Mom offered us kids an opportunity to earn a bit of money. My little brother and I were up for it and were soon engaged in some sort of competition. I remember quite well that Budoyz would wake-up much earlier than me and would be out there earning away from 6 o’clock in the morning. I really tried my best to beat him to it, but as my best friend Kookie would know very well, waking-up early is not one of my strengths. I can’t remember now how much we actually earned that summer. What I do remember is, my little brother and I would walk around harvesting tomatoes barefoot. Yes, as my Papa would know very well, the ground would be so lapok that the plastic strap of the precious sinilas would just get ripped-apart.

Now you might wonder, why do I think footwear is a significant part of the Del Monte Experience? The reason is simply - most of us kids, for the most part of our time in Del Monte, would take ourselves from one point of the Del Monte Camps to another, not on a car, or a bike or a motorcycle -- because not everybody has one. Tricycles or tri-sikads, within the camps also did not exist as alternatives. Thus, a Del Monte Kid had to do a lot of walking – and shoes or footwear is a big factor of the walking experience. More so since a Del Monte kid has to do his/her walking in all kinds of terrain i.e. on asphalt roads, grassy fields, gravel roads, dirt roads, flat roads, valley roads, up-hill roads, down-hill roads, you name it – sometimes all these in one direction – AND absolutely rain or shine. So how can footwear be not part of the Del Monte story?

To this very day, my Mom still goes on a shopping spree at the Ukayan in Malaybalay. On my parents’ first visit to Germany, my Mom brought with her one of these Ukay2x shoes – that hurt her feet so much that after watching a Football match live in the stadium between Hannover 96 and Werder Bremen, she was walking at turtle speed. Needless to say, the Ukay2x shoes were immediately put out of service.

And almost immediately thereafter, much to my delight, it was my turn to buy my Mom her new pair of shoes (of her choice and sense of style, of course).