COOKING
UP SOMETHING FOR JACK
I
do not know Joaquin Manipol from Adam. One day he was ushered to my cubbyhole of an office. He directly introduced
himself without preliminaries.
“Hi,
I’m Joaquin Manipol,” he said.
The
sudden intrusion surprised him more than me. I was sure I flashed an irritable
glare. He broke the ice and said that he and my old man had gone a long way,
during the days of President Diosdado Macapagal. He looked fiftyish while my
old man was in his seventies. I figured he cut quite a decent figure as a young
man.
My
faint recollection of President Diosdado Macapagal was his picture hanging on the classroom wall of the public elementary
school known as the E.T.C.S. which I attended back in ’65.
I
really had no idea why the school sported letters for its name. Anyway, our
teacher said that the handsome man in the picture with straight, shiny, sticky hair, in an elegant
suit, was the President, so I thought he was somebody important for he wouldn’t
be staring at us little children as we try to read, write and count. Sometimes
the teacher would point her long stick at his picture calling us to pay
attention because the President was observing.
Now
what have I got to do with a stranger who simply came around from nowhere to
tell me he knew my father way back during the time of a forgotten President?
“Just
call me Jack,” he said.
He
went straight to the point. He and his associates, he said, were planning to
run a magazine. Well, actually he said, publishing had always been his cup of
tea. He opened his old fashioned leather case, and showed some of his stuff. I was
surprised he still kept old copies, of out of print magazines of a by gone era
and they rang a bell. These were exactly some of the old reading stuff my old
man used to bring home. The write ups and the writers were familiar. Probably
my old man was one of his avid subscribers.
I
asked Jack what’s on his mind. I anticipated he wanted to solicit some support
or convince me to invest in his new enterprise. I was wrong. He said if I would
be interested to write, he could spare some space. I told him, I’m a lousy burned out lawyer not a writer. He said,
lawyers write all the time. I said they do, but they only write for the one
paying the fee and they couldn’t care less if they muddle, or obscure, plain and simple things so
they would sound great and intelligent . But Jack was unfazed. He said his good
friend, who was also my friend, spoke highly of me. I asked him who might this
common friend be. He said his old pal Ompong, the witty attorney.
So
I got the picture. Ompong the mountain climbing goat of lawyer was the source
of all this trouble.
“And
what piece would you expect from me?” I asked Jack.
“Just
cook up something,” he said.
For
days I found myself looking at this blank space trying to cook up something for
Jack. The blank space was still as empty and vast and blank as my mind, I was
beginning to feel like a jackass.
So
here’s the deal.
I
might as well write about Jack who one
day showed up in my dreary life refreshing my memory of the days gone by, when
life was too simple, for an innocent boy to grasp why the solemn picture of the
President kept staring at him as he struggled to read, write, count, and recite
in class.
