Coming from Jala Jala where I interviewed a classmate, we found Claudio Altamerano refreshingly napping by the roadside under the cooling shade of a mango tree. Sitio Mabiya in Bo. Malaya, Pililia, Rizal, is a small community if less than 100 families, accessible thru asphalted road from the highway.
Enchong’s loud guttural voice awakened him and looking disoriented, yet pleasantly surprised – his eyelids still drooping from interrupted sleep – he gladly invited us to hos house, only a few houses away where he offered coffee.
I can see, from where I sat, young children playing, both inside the house and in the small frontyard, and was tempted to ask, “Apo mo?,” “Marami uyan, classmate,” he smilingly answered as he turned his head to hos wife seated beside him who sheepishly seconded saying “sampu na iyan”. Enchoing jokingly add, “sampu pa lang!”
Odie, as he is fondly called, is from Pililia, the fourth out of seven children. His father hailed from Tanay while his mother was a native of Kalayaan, Laguna. Early in his parents’ marriage, they settled in Pililia where, on September 30, 1948, Odie was born. A proud member of High School Class ’64, Odie enrolled for a BSEE course in SIC, but getting the feel of driving vehicles, small and big, he stopped schooling after only one semester. It was this driving skill that brought him to different parts of the country, an experience that compensated somehow for his loss on the academic front.
At the young age of seventeen, just a year after graduation, Odie already drove a passenger jeepney on short routes. Reaching eighteen, he became a ticket Revisor and later on, Warehouseman, of the Markina Bus Lines. On his 20th birthday, he became a full-time bus driver in the same company. It was during this time that he met the young girl who will, later on, become his wife.
He saw her regularly as a passenger of the Marikina bus that he was driving. The year was 1968. She was young, barely 15, and fragile with a winsome smile. A freshman in high school, it even looked sacrilegious to fantasize her as Odie, at twenty, did. But he was smitten of the girl-not even a lady yet- and in one fiesta at B. Navotas Cardona, Rizal, immediately following a brownout, he kissed her. The girl, taken aback and sobbing, recovered, but, as innocently as she was announced to her Auntie the ‘relationship.’ The mores of the tine brought the elders seriously consider the situation since family honor, tied to a damsel’s plight, was involved and the decision was firmed up. “Ilagay natin sa ayos. Nagsabi na kayo, kaya dapat nang mag-asawa,” was the elders’ verdict, much to the fuming disapproval of the young girl’s father. The date: February 17, 1969.
The following day, February 18, 1969, Claudio Altamerano, 20, and Arceli Anebo, 16, married at the Aglipayan Church in Pilia, Rizal.
It was an uphill battle from the on. Using his driving skills, Odie became a Heavy Equipment Driver-Operator of Eccoi-Asia bringing him to Kalinga-Apayao. From there, he transferred to GPCDC Construction at Clark Air Base in Pampanga where he excelled himself coming out, in 1979, as a 2nd runner-up in the “Most Outstanding Craftsman of the Year” award. Subsequently, he worked as Operator of dump truck and backhoe with the CICG Construction in Masbate. Also in Masbate, he worked as Heavy Equipment Operator of the Atlas Mining for a straight three years. He has a two-year stint, likewise, as Transit-Mixer Operator of B.F. Metals, Inc. before coming back to the CICG Company in 1993. For a time, he worked also with a Japanese firm, the Tai-SI Construction Group as Backhoe Operator involving a big irrigation project. Reaching his prime in 1995, he drove a passenger jeep for three years and in 1997, with all hos children already married with their own families, he considered himself semi-retired, accepting only the light job of family driver on call. Sometime the year 2000, his wife Arceli, flew to Spain on a labor visa. She returns regularly on vacations, the latest of which was the two and a half months that covered the period of our interview.
Five children and ten grandchildren later, Odie can count his many blessings as he sat relaxed in a house of is own built on a 60 sq. meter lot titled in their names at Sitio Mabiya, Malaya, Pililia, Rizal His angels and their cherubims give him the leisure to nap at ease, exactly at the place where we found him. An enumeration would be most fitting: Myra, the eldest, born December 30, 1969, finished BSE, Math, and already married, with a child named Maricris. She has her own lot in Bo. Malaya. Their second, Domingo, born November 30, 1970, is a mechanic by experience, married with two children, named Leslie, 9, and Jayco, 5. Like Myra, he also has his own house and lot. Christina, the third child, born July 18, 1972, needed only one semester to finish her BSEED course, already married, with four children, namely, Dennis Christian, 10; Demi John, 7; Melanie Dawn, 4; and Dean Stephen, 1 year old. The fourth child Mhergildo, born June 14, 1977, lives with them, married, with one child, Mark Aundre, 6 months. Their youngest and namesake, Claudio, Jr. born July 24, 1979, is, likewise, already married, with children, Emerald, 6; and John Clyde, 2 years old. Like most of her children, Claudio Jr. has his own house and lot.
He walked us back to our parked Revo after the interview as, like parting shot, I commented on his thinning hair, most of it already grayish in color. “Orig ‘yan, ‘pre. Matanda na talaga, tayo,” he answered with a wide grin of his lips, while pouting at Enchong’s thick, yet similarly colored hair. I felt like ‘whistling in the dark’, as I silently maneuvered the car to the highway on our way home.
My hair, in its genuine state, was no different, only that it was colored black, a grudging concession to the current fad. Unlike most of them, I am still actively ‘on the treadmill,’ a faint excuse for my continuing, though losing battle against time…!
NOTE: The Class ’64 Graduates! is part of the book “FOOTPRINTS, Class ’64” written by Atty. Amadeo R. Fulgado, published in 2005.
