My Aries

During the time I lived and worked in the U.S., when I tried building dreams, I moved around in an '89 Dodge Aries. I bought it for something like $500, from an elderly couple in one of the typical neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, several miles from North Hollywood, where I stayed with my brother, Bennett.

It didn't look particularly attractive: Oxidized paint, tires that were almost like racing slicks, interiors that could use a lot of cleaning and washing, a dirty-looking engine compartment and engine, and a trunk I swore could have sheltered a family of squirrels comfortably - dirty rags, old and stained newspapers and magazines, dried-up insect bodies, among others. But no human bones. I originally wanted something more late-model, but it was all I could afford. I saw the ad for it in one of those classifieds newspapers distributed gratis in the laundromat where I did my week's worth of laundry.

Prior to purchasing the car, I did some homework, and discovered that it was a finely built car in its time, built to last and compete with foreign makes, counted on to save the then-moribund American auto industry. This could be the reason that when I turned the ignition to test drive it, the engine came to life at first crank, without any hesitation, puttering, or misfire. I drove it, I think twice or thrice around the block, putting it through its paces, listening for some unusual sounds, feeling for some strange behavior. There were none.

It had no airconditioning, so I sweltered during summer; and no heating, that during winter I had to use gloves given me by my brother, so I could hold the steering wheel which felt as cold as icicles, and at the same time wore the thick outdoors jacket given me by my mom. I left very early for work each morning, before the sun was up, and winter mornings are unforgiving to someone accustomed to the heat and humidity of the tropics. The interior was very cold, and I could see my breath. This phenomenon actually amused me, and I began using it as some sort of indicator as to how cold a particular morning was. The more I could see my breath, the colder the morning.

In the company where I worked, I had colleagues who treated their cars as extensions of their homes. They retreated to the privacy of their cars during lunch break, munching on food brought from home or bought at a drive-thru window, while reading a book, the paper, or listening to the radio. I immediately took a liking to the practice, being generally introverted. Or at least, this was how I saw myself. I brought my lunch each day, homemade sandwiches all the time, the monotony broken only rarely by the leftover Chinese style fried rice I made myself for the previous night's dinner with Bennett. Sometimes I had an apple, or a slice or two of honeydew, or a small bunch of seedless grapes, or some baby carrots. My drinking water was from home, too. I tried all the time to live frugally, miserly even. Whatever little I earned, I sent almost half of it back home to my family. Occasionally, though, I gave myself treats, like those budget meals at Carl's Jr., less than $4 for three soft tacos or a full-sized burger with fries, and bottomless soda! If I ever ate more expensive food, and at a more expensive restaurant, you can be sure someone else footed the bill, either my brothers Benjie or Bennett, or my sister Belinda. They were fully aware I have a lot in common with a guy named Ebenezer. Humbug!

Then there were the people whose homes were their cars. Bennett and I once did our laundry where they had new washers and dryers, and we chanced upon a sedan parked near the laundromat, its interior hidden by blankets and shirts used as makeshift drapes. The car doubled as a home for two homeless men. I'm not naive, and I knew about homeless people in first-world countries, but seeing them in the flesh was somehow different. It was jolting, actually. That had to be my first time. Soon afterwards, I saw more homeless and vagabonds, the ones stereotyped in many a film, with grocery carts containing all their possessions.

I had a regular, a white family of five, who frequented the same neighborhood supermarket in North Hollywood. I went here straight from work, to buy food for dinner. I missed my wife's cooking a lot, and attempted to duplicate some of her dishes from e-mailed recipes. I chanced upon this family as I sat in my car on the supermarket parking lot, while pondering on the day's purchase. This family was efficient. They alighted from their Camry like troops alighting from an APC, and headed straight for the two imposing dumpsters. Then with their long, mechanical claws, the kind you could buy from toy stores or hobby shops, they rummaged and sorted and sifted and clawed and picked and smelled through the dumpsters' contents, coming up with still edible stuff like fruits and veggies and bread and saltines and even chips and beef jerky. When I first saw them, it felt like when I saw those two men living in a car. Soon afterwards, I began paying them progressively less attention. They became part of the landscape, like houses, people, street signs, and contrails, which I knew were there but hardly noticed.

The car-bound men and the scavenging family became for me epitomes of resiliency, a trait exhibited on a national level in my country. Year in, year out, we are visited by disasters and calamities both natural and man-made, and we always bounce back. We are decimated at times, but the temporary increase in mortality is never a cause for concern. It is no match to the national fertility rate. The country is literally a baby factory, and to service the promiscuity and prolificness, I've personally seen birthing clinics every two kilometers or thereabouts in some really big cities and towns. The unemployment rate continues to be high, and where men's bodies and minds are idle, the sight of the female anatomy offers interesting propositions, with nary a care for its proportions, or health and hygiene concerns. I now clearly see the reason why the Catholic Church is so opposed to aggressive population control. It wants to guarantee that the Filipino race will never ever become extinct. It was and continues to be an easy and profitable race to subjugate, and Filipinos should never run out. It is doing the country (and itself) a big favor, and so all you antichrists out there (and that should include me in the category of those who oppose the Church) should repent while there's still time. No way. Up yours.

Or it could be that the Filipino is genuinely prolific, or has been psychologically conditioned to be so. I come from a big family of six children; my dad's siblings also had big families, some of them larger than ours. My wife, too, comes from a big family. Machismo and big families seemed to go hand in hand back then. Nowadays, due to continually worsening economic hardship, ignorance and indifference have replaced manliness. A one or two-child family seems to be the norm; three at most, and beyond this number most people tend to form harsh opinions: Too promiscuous or too indifferent or too stupid.

My Aries was a reliable chap; pulled me through it all. Never, not even once, did it falter. If it were human, then it would be most akin to my wife who has always been there for me. One of my daily prayers was that I be spared from any kind of breakdown or even a flat. I definitely couldn't afford towing services if I had a breakdown on the freeway. God and my Aries obliged. I survived a nasty Pacific storm on the freeway one very late night, when I had to report for work to take part in an off-work hours inventory of the warehouse and walk-through refs and freezers. There were several instances when I unavoidably drove my Aries into unseen, deep pools of accumulated rainwater on sections of the freeway, pretty certain that the engine would die out on me. But it never did.

On better days, and certainly with better weather, my Aries got me around Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley, to my job agency to claim my paycheck, to the bank in Alhambra where I remitted money back home, to my laundromat, my favorite 99 Cents Only stores, WalMart, and Island Pacific supermarket in Panorama City. I made weekly trips to 99 Cents for my groceries, to Island Pacific for Filipino food ingredients, and specially the gratis Filipino newspapers. I took a copy of each kind, read them at home or at the laundromat while waiting for my laundry. It surprised me that while abroad, I missed everything Filipino. On the internet I looked for photos of familiar places back home: Malls, streets, buildings, churches; I watched four-day old "Eat Bulaga" shows (Now back home, I never watch it.); in December as I drove home from work I intently scouted for houses with a "parol," and when I saw one, immediately concluded that its inhabitants were Filipinos. Now back home, I again take everything for granted, and I think it's human nature pure and simple.

I drove my Aries for its last, long drive when I moved from North Hollywood to Palmdale, to spend time with other family members, weeks before my return to the country. It was a pleasant trip. The long, wide, undulating stretches of freeways were something I took for granted for most of the time I was there. Now, as I was nearing my departure, I felt that I would miss them, unsure of whether I would have the pleasure of experiencing them again. Yes, maybe. Maybe never.

I left my Aries with my brother Benjie so that he could sell it. He e-mailed me some weeks after I got back home that he was able to sell it to an old lady. That car certainly would have served that dame well, as it did me. She wouldn't have had any complaints about it, except perhaps about food crumbs on the carpet. I was always stocked with boxes of saltines and at least a bag or two of nachos, which I kept in the backseat, ready to be munched on, to keep me awake and alleviate hunger pangs on the L.A. freeways and side streets.