Oh, about sixty years ago, a much-traveled uncle advised me that if I wanted to become a good and successful writer, Europe and the Paris of Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre . . . was the way to go.  It would be la vie boheme--starve a little, smell the tobacco and the absinthe, live in a garret, get to know the grisettes of Montmartre, etc., (i.e., really live) to find my inner voice. 

As 1971 came to a close, I was forming a game plan for 1972. I was going to be twenty-four the following year, and something was compelling me to shoot for the USA instead—more my speed than France then—by the next August. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it—but somehow, 1972 felt like a make-or-break year for me.

I had been working three years in TV production and advertising in Manila after earning my degree in Broadcast Communication from the then-nascent Institute of Mass Communications of the University of the Philippines, but my inner clock was pushing me overtime for a departure date of August 1972.

In Stephen Sondheim’s yearnings for Anita in West Side Story -- “I want(ed) to be in America . . . “— where a lot of good and shiny things came from, where everyone looked like Doris Day and Rock Hudson, where everybody had comfortable homes with white picket fences and working home appliances, and everyone had beautiful, straight white teeth.

On a wildly idealistic level, the original dream was to be a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, lounging by the pool, tobacco pipe in hand, dictating scripts for blockbuster films to a pretty young thing, etc., etc. You get the drift.

Don’t get me wrong. Life in Manila back then wasn’t so bad as something to run away from. If anything, the good life was happening to me. We had just moved into a new home in one of the gated villages, was very employable, had many family connections, etc. But time stands still for no one. I really wanted to fly the nest, flex my wings and truly and really stand on my own. At the very worst, if my foreign “experiment” flopped, I could always come home and just chalk off the failed experience to “adventure.”

More pointedly, I was also hoping that I could get a book on the Hollywood musical—my other passion—published, and this scheme would only have been viable in New York and in the American marketplace. I had already written several chapters of the book when I left Manila then.

Even though Social Security was just getting formed in the Philippines, I knew that the US would offer a better and greater security net in my twilight years, not only in terms of funds, but also the latest care and treatment not readily available in a developing, third world country like the RP. Again, there was just this inner voice telling me that the US would have the critical mass to afford me kinder days in my later years, which the balmy archipelago could not.

Also, I was just getting to appreciate the phenomenon of the Olympic Games and always wanted a strong team to root for. Philippine teams barely made a mention. They rarely made it past the prelims and were treated like saling pusa (poor tag-alongs) at the Games.

Flash forward sixty years, this brings us to the 50th anniversary of my having uprooted myself from the old Islands and moved to that fabled land of milk and honey, the El Dorado of America (and not without connection, the Philippines’ most recent ex-parent country).

Indy, the Faithful and Fearless Guardian Dragon/Keeper of Secrets—50 years’ worth, watches over my treasure trove. Before the internet, email and cell phones, people wrote letters and sent greeting cards. (c/o author)

In Jesuit high school, it was a Julius Caesarean aphorism: “I’d rather be the first chieftain in a small, primitive village than the second Tribune in Rome.” At university, it was Manuel Quezon’s tenet: “I’d rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than one run like heaven by the Americans.”

I never thought parochially and, as they say, the world was now a global village, so I dismissed those revolutionary thoughts in the blink of an eye. Larger considerations and circumstances were at play. If I will be judged as a “weak Filipino nationalist,” then I plead guilty. I thought it was a pipe dream of Quezon; and it still is.

By 1970, I knew that Ferdinand Marcos was turning the country into his own personal fiefdom and cash carabao. At the time, my own father worked in a small mining subsidiary office of said bureaucracy. (And yes, while the US has skirted perilously close to being a corrupt federal government as well, there are still enough checks and balances, “guardrails” as they say, in place to keep the integrity of the ship of state intact.)

Perhaps my greatest motivation at the time was that life in Manila would be too comfortable. I was single, foot-loose and fancy free, so no strings to bind me back then. If I didn’t make a major change then, I would become too set in my ways to try anything new or drastic, notwithstanding the developments that, beyond my control, were starting to boil over, if I didn’t leave at that time.

Having always had this ability to see the forest for the trees, I followed my gut instinct and set late August 1972 as my departure date. Because I intended to depart and start abroad on my own sweat, I budgeted heavily until I had the airfare and sufficient pocket money to start with until I could get settled.

Adieu, Philippines

So, it was time to go. Nothing ventured; nothing gained. Even then, the US was already starting to crack down on single people entering on tourist visas and then overstaying and becoming T-N-T (Filipino code-speak for undocumented person).

I left Manila (hoping it was for good) in late August 1972. Most of Central Luzon had been battered by those yearly typhoons, and as the PAL DC-8 ascended from the old MIA, Manila below looked like the land of a thousand lakes.

In San Francisco, a cousin unexpectedly met me at the airport. While recovering from jet lag at his place, there was some hostage drama being played out on television, which I didn’t pay much attention to. As I was in transit, I was more occupied with pressing matters of getting resettled; thus, the whole impact of the terrorist drama playing out at the Olympic Games in Munich was lost on me.

Terrorist in a balcony of Israeli delegations at the Munich 1972 Olympic Village, which image I saw on TV out of the corner of my eye.

It was only years later that the gravity of the drama unfolding in Munich that week dawned on me. That was the global current event that welcomed me to the USA, but it had no resonance for me then.

The Big Apple or Bust

Once I was settled in New York a few weeks later, another major drama back in the Philippines unfolded. On September 21, 1972—coincidentally, my brother’s birthday—the insidious Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.

By that time, half a world away, I was already registered for a course in Writing for the Musical Theatre at the New School for Social Research ,the kind of school and class that you would find only in America. Meantime, the unforetold development back home in Manila completely changed things for me.

I was glad to have gotten out when I did; and returning would have been difficult at best. Not that I came from the most vocal ranks of the regime’s opponents, but the turn of events steeled my resolve to make the best of what I set out to accomplish in the US.

Bout of Homesickness

The first month or two of my arrival, even though I was living in the city of my choice, I did suffer pangs of homesickness. I missed my parents, our new home, and the comfortable existence I knew. However, fully cognizant of the fateful turn of events back home, I reminded myself that this might be my only shot.

To paraphrase another more famous or notorious immigrant to the US, Alexander Hamilton, when immortalized in a Broadway show some forty-five years later: No, I’m not throwin’ away my shot!! (When I first heard that extremely repetitive “song,” I thought Lin-Miranda/Hamilton was singing about pick-up basketball.) Also, I comforted myself knowing that better days would come, and using my God-given wits, everything would later turn out for the best.

Those New York Days . . .

There are many great things that I remember and always look back fondly on in my first years in New York.

There was, of course, Broadway; nothing on earth like it (OK, except London, but it is far chillier there). I got to see as many shows as my time, budget, and energy allowed. I also hustled a bit in that I earned extra cash by (and this was before TKTS came around) buying a pair of the cheapest seats and then selling them with a good mark-up, outside the theaters.

Then there was the late World Trade Center, a pair of clunky towers if ever there was one. When I arrived in New York, the two towers had just opened and everyone was just gob-smacked by their sheer size.

The late World Trade Center Towers of New York, 1972-2001.

In the plaza between the Towers, I witnessed the filming of the musical The Wiz and the 1976 King Kong. The North Tower held special meaning for me: twice, I ate at the Windows of the World restaurant there, the highest restaurant in the sky at that time, first on a date (May 1973) and the second time when my parents were in town (July 1980).

The North Tower’s lobby also later hosted the second location of TKTS where one could purchase half-priced Broadway tickets far in advance of the Times Square booth. Being inside the cavernous lobby, you were sheltered in line (never really long) from the outside elements unlike the exposed midtown booth.

My copy of the menu of *The Windows of the World* restaurant, May 1973. The inset in middle panel is a matchbox. Dinner entrees were only in the $13.50 range at that time.

When the Towers evaporated so ignominiously in 2001, a little of me also died that day. They were part of the Imperial New York skyline that I knew and loved.

A Temp’ing Career

I taught myself how to type (something never taught at Ateneo or UP at the time). This apparently was a survival skill in the US, and when years were lean (yes, even in the USA), augmented by word processing, these basic skills served me well in a “temp’ing” career.

I remember working a few days each at the American Bible Society in Cunard Line’s New York offices, at a New York museum, a city administration, in many law firms, at the 1992 World Figure Skating Championships in Oakland, at the organizing committees of two Olympic Games, and one season at the United Nations. The temp’ing allowed me to sample and experience various work settings—corporate and otherwise—and still left me with enough time and energy to write. I found that the law firms paid the best.

In Hollywood in 1984-87, I had a short steno gig at Paramount Pictures with a screenwriter whose credits included the original story for The Aristocats and for the French antiwar film, King of Hearts (final English language version). Most of the year, Mr. Screenwriter lived on a small island in Greece. Even briefly, I lived that writer’s idyllic life vicariously, and he gave me some shrewd writing tips.

Treasures of Manhattan and Pleasures of Central Park

There are other untarnished, enduring memories of New York. The summers of 1980 to 1983 are particularly memorable. I had my health; I shared a spacious 2-bedroom apartment in the Upper West Side for a reasonable rent. I was solvent and saving money. Broadway shows were still very affordable, especially if one knew about the TKTS bargains.

On weekends in the summer, if one wasn’t going to the Hamptons (yeah, I did that “Hamptons” thing once on a budget), you’d find me in Central Park playing volleyball with friends. There were two special coves we played in, not far from Strawberry Fields and The Dakota apartments. I was still living on West 86th street when John Lennon was shot outside his home on 72nd Street in 1981.

Around 1981, when I was already 32, I had taken up volleyball to make new friends and mend a broken heart. I really grew to love the sport and played it for some twenty years ,only giving it up when I reached 52 because my hips couldn’t take it anymore.

When my volleyball mates weren’t around, I jogged around Central Park’s “lake” which would later become the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. I did eventually glimpse Mrs. O herself twice in the flesh in the neighborhood of Madison Avenue and East 55th Street, near where the gaudy Trump Tower was going up. The advertising agency I worked for was right there, and I would hang out at the tobacconist/news shop where Jackie O would also often sneak in.

The onset of autumn colors around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir where she used to jog—as did I—but not together. What could be more Manhattan than that?

Once I got my US citizenship in 1980 and fully committed to a US and New York way of life—I got to experience the Manhattan/Queens zeitgeist, which Woody Allen portrayed most poignantly in his various films. Those New York years, especially the summer Sundays in Central Park, were the best, most carefree years of my youth.

Hits or Misses About the Old Sod

There are certain things I don’t miss about the Philippines:

· the stark extremes of rich and poor. Its dynastic politics

· the heat and humidity of Manila and its polluted air

· the over-population

· Manila still failing to regulate its growth and its horrendous traffic; and

· the gullibility of the Filipino electorate. Mga kawawang hangal; hindi na natuto. (How pathetically naïve; never learned their lessons.)

I’m glad I got out when I did, but I do miss the following (in no particular order):

· household-help, i.e, domestic PAs

· traditional, seasonal rituals like the Santacruzan, Holidays-time

· mahjong sessions, Manila-style, with family and friends

· freshly baked bibingka (rice cakes) on those Misa de Gallo mornings

· again, the parols (lanterns) and Christmas atmosphere.

A “CA” State of Mind and Body

Then came the Scene Spoiler at the end of Act I. The Big Bad Wolf showed up when I got diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the spring of 2007. At 59 years old, I thought I was in good health. Never smoked; never drank; tried to stay fit. But alas, it was not meant to be.

One of the unforeseen, splendid yields of my forced early retirement was the blossoming of my writing career. Not only have I written and published three books (more later), but in becoming a contributor for this publication, I have reconnected with my past and roots in so many pleasurable, incalculable ways.

You never know who you’re going to run into in the USA . . .

Author with three members of the Soviet women’s 1990 volleyball team, Goodwill Games’90, SeaTac Int’l.

At the United Nations gardens, NYC, in a sailor outfit for Halloween, 1983

Evolving Colors of America

Of course, after fifty moons, one comes to grips with the fact that the “land of milk and honey” isn’t all what it was cracked up to be. Nothing is. But hopefully, one will also have gained the maturity and perspective that home is where and what you make it. What place doesn’t have its warts and wrinkles that make it uniquely that sweet spot, unlike any other?

The land I now call home – 50 years, 50 states. I’ve lived in three US states, visited 28 of them and Washington, DC. Despite its flaws, it’s still a fun and glorious place. (Source: handluggageonly.co.uk)

Indeed, it is a bizarrely, cutting-off-your nose-to-spite-your-face kind of country where a pathologically corrupt grifter/con man gets to be elected president by uber-religious zealots despite losing the popular vote, and convicted killers get their even sicker gender re-assignment desires fulfilled while in prison on good people’s dime in certain states. What other country could support such WTF juxtapositions?

What country in the world first sent homo sapiens to the moon and fifty years later, produced 2.5 efficacious vaccines to curb a virulent pandemic in under six months? Never been done before and never rolled out so fast! None, ninguno, aucun.

I got to cheer winning US teams at the various Olympic Games. While the early book on film/stage musicals never came to fruition, I ended up writing an equally lavish and highly informative tome on a late-blooming, even greater passion, the secrets of staging those gargantuan Olympic ceremonies (having actually worked in three Organizing Committees).

The bible of the Olympic ceremonies—its behind-the-scenes stories, scandals, gossip, vignettes, secrets—everything you always wanted to know on the subject. Available at amazon.com. Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies: Garcia, Myles A.: 9780615315423: Amazon.com: Books

I am very proud of this book and was surprised at how much fascinating material there was. While it is a special-interest and pricey book ($35 on amazon.com but with over 140 images in full color), it was a great labor of love. It also earned me a membership to the International Society of Olympic Historians and an exclusive, backstage visit to the IOC Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. (A Tale of Two Olympic Museums — Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora.)

Regarding my affliction, it is on maintenance these days. The potion that keeps me alive today, at est. $1,400 a pill every three weeks, I could never have afforded in Manila. I would have been dead at least eight years ago. At the height of the Covid epidemic, the life-sustaining elixir was delivered free directly to my doorstep, all this from my monthly Medicare fee of $95/month. Again, yes indeed and sorry, Mr. McCarthy, it is Some Country for Old Men!

If only for this last matter alone, I thank Providence I made the right decision 52 years ago.

Overall, it’s been a great ride. Yes, life in the US is living in a hyper-competitive culture. Americans play hard and work hard. From that uber-competitive, unforgiving society, the wheat gets separated from the chaff; thus, more than any other country, you get all those Nobel Prize winners and Olympic champions rising to the foam.

My “Yankee adventure” continues, and I would like to declare as triumphantly as Edith Piaf did, Je Ne Regrette Rien. I have no regrets, except when I’ve felt inadequate, intimidated or less than up to the task; I take heart to what that wise lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, Jr., wrote in one of his songs for Oklahoma!:

I don’t say I’m (no) better than anybody else

but I’ll be darned if I ain’t just as good![1]

I often wish I had known, fully understood, and latched on to that affirmation earlier in life.

Hey, I hear the Grand Canyon calling and the Carlsbad Caverns beckoning in the spring. My hiking boots and walking stick are itchin’ to go.

Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books:

· Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2021);

Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians, contributing to the ISOH Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com

More articles from Myles A. Garcia

The Magazine

Fifty Years, an American Adventure