Snippets of Grandpa's Simple Life in America
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Grandpa with me was taken in 1992 at age 88 (Photo by ©James Sobredo. All Rights Reserved)
The morning following my return home from the trip, I got dressed and prepared to visit Grandpa at the convalescent home in Stockton, California, where he spent the last two years of his life. A phone call from the nurse on duty changed my plans. It was no longer to visit Grandpa to share stories. It was to arrange for his funeral, and to fulfill the promise to see him after my conference. He died minutes before that morning phone call on Saturday, November 4, 1995. He looked peaceful in his state of eternal sleep. Many images and snippets of his life were racing in my mind's eye. As I said my goodbye, trying very hard to hold back the tears, I thanked him for my life and time with him, with my Grandpa, my Lolo Olong. I was 42 years old.
Grandpa was my maternal grandfather. He was Lolo Olong to me and to his family and close friends. He was Perfecto Torcuator delos Santos on his baptismal certificate and California driver's license, and Pet to some of his friends and acquaintances in California. He was born in Cayangwan, Makato (a farming village) in the province of Aklan on the island of Panay in the Western Visayas of the Philippines. I vaguely recall my mother telling me that her father’s true date of birth was November 3, 1904, not March 3, 1905, as his papers might have stated when he arrived in Seattle, Washington in 1929. So in reality, he died at 91, not 90 as his death record showed.
Lolo Olong worked most of his life as a worker in the farms of San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys of California and in the Alaskan fish canneries in the off-season. For me, as a granddaughter of a Filipino farm worker in California and an Alaskero, eating steamed asparagus and boiled salmon heads is like paying homage to the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifices of my elder. Savoring asparagus at mealtimes invariably came with some commentary from a family member, usually me, about how asparagus helped finance my mother’s education.
Perfecto delos Santos in his 50s (Photo courtesy of ©James Sobredo. All Rights Reserved)
The repertoire of dishes my grandfather cooked was ordinary. Or so, I thought, until I invited a Jewish American friend to dinner. I purposely prepared a typical American meal, although I don't clearly remember now what it was. It did not take long for my friend to notice that Grandpa was eating a totally different dish. The aroma was inescapably different from the food she and I were eating. She asked what it was. When she found out it was calamari cooked in its dark ink simmered in vinegar and many cloves of garlic, she told him that was her favorite and asked to try it. She was impressed. Grandpa grinned from ear to ear with pride as his "adobong pusit" became the dish of choice. That evening earned Lolo Olong gold stars from my friend for his cooking.
But the comfort food I remember most from dishes that Lolo Olong prepared was what he called "campo" muffin, something he learned to make as a cook for many years in the farm workers’ camp where he lived during harvest season in California. I called it comfort food, not because it was comfortable to the taste--I used to wonder why the muffins were so huge and hard to swallow. It was comfort food because he thoroughly enjoyed baking them for my cousins and me well into his 70s and 80s. Those are the same cousins who relished the taste of this muffin and thought me too harsh in my critique. Lolo had this impish grin while he dunked the muffin in his cup of coffee. Wishing now that I had asked what memories were running through him whenever he re-enacted this ritual often. Indeed, I found comfort in knowing he made them with his hands full of love. I would share this snapshot about my Lolo's cooking to friends and they would ask, how compact was this muffin anyway? Let's just say, after a day or two, you could toss it against a wall, and it wouldn't fall apart. Maybe I am exaggerating, but the memory conjures up an image of a grandfather who made do with what little he had and he remained both humble in heart and stubborn in his opinion well into his old age.
Stubborn, I said? At age 74, he wanted to renew his driver's license. Driving was what Grandpa did whenever he could in his old blue green Ford Falcon, mostly to play cards at the Iloilo Circle or buy a pair of pants and a hat at Marianni's Department Store on El Dorado Street in Stockton. By the time he retired from farm work, I was in high school. He mostly drove to take me to school, help my mom with her grocery shopping, or play rummy with his friends. As long as he could drive, he was happy. On the other hand, family was not too keen on his continuing to drive as he was showing signs of forgetting the route to get home from the grocery store. He blamed it on the new neighborhood. But he wanted to renew his driver's license, and no one could persuade him otherwise. Oh, he seriously studied for the written test. I even drove him to the office of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). He passed with flying colors until he was required to take a driving test. How did he do? He didn't. He couldn't even get the car started. Maybe I shouldn't have done this...I drove him in a new car he had never driven before, and he wasn't familiar with the instrument panel. He was so embarrassed and mad about the experience; he didn't want to go back to take the test again. I vividly recall how he mumbled softly yet angrily in his Aklanon language, scratched and shook his mostly bald head to show his displeasure. I always thought that he eventually forgave me for tricking him into flunking his driving test.
Perfecto delos Santos at age 78 in 1982 (Photo by ©James Sobredo. All Rights Reserved)
Lolo had very few possessions. It must have been part of the migrant farm worker/Alaskero's life-on-the-go. I remember a time he was packing to take a trip. I think his last, to work in Alaska. He was in his mid-60's. The thick dark gray wool blanket, the dark green and black wool plaid jacket, the brown leather shaving kit, gray hat, and the small, tanned valise were a common sight on these departures. The shaving kit is still with me. And the gray hat, too. Regretfully, I kept nothing more than that.
I really didn't know how much discrimination he encountered over the years. Even with his tendency to be opinionated about many things, he did not speak of any. He did not complain. He would occasionally reminisce about the Japanese American family who helped him during the Great Depression, but the details were scanty. He was happiest while in the company of his kababayan or town mates from the Philippines. And when he outlived most of them, he would lament how they had all left him. This was the feeling of isolation, of growing old and what living in America felt like to him. I fully appreciated those words when he, too, left this earth.
The convalescent home operated by Filipinos, with mostly Filipino nurses and staff, did its best to make residents like Lolo engaged in activities. I visited often. Because I worked nearby at the time, I sometimes joined him for lunch and dinner. I could still picture the biggest smile from him when he saw his first and only great grandchild. He was 89, and my son was four months old. He was ecstatic to have lived long enough to meet his descendant. He could not take his eyes off my son. I choked back the tears, grateful that he was able to hold my son's fingers in his lifetime, yet deeply pained that his daughter, my mother died too young to participate in the moment. I imagined he, too, felt the same way.
The plants he harvested while working in the farms in his youth put food on the table and supported my grandmother who died at a much younger age. He also managed to send his only daughter to college; but he never managed to return home to the Philippines. Not being able to physically work the farms anymore meant he no longer had to wake up early in the dark and chilly mornings. But routines were hard to break, or perhaps rising before the break of dawn was part and parcel of growing older. He still woke up at 4:00 a.m., slightly later than his typical farm worker days. He made hot coffee, that meant hot water and Instant Folger's coffee, and guess what else? Those muffins from the "campo." Years before the convalescent home, he managed to turn my family backyard into a small farm. He marveled at his own garden filled with colors of summer and at harvest time, various shapes of vegetables essential to Filipino cooking. He would irrigate the plots of vegetables and inspect each with the utmost of care. He would stand at the patio for hours as if attending to a greater-than-life-farm of his own. I think he was most at peace in the garden. When the limitations of old age kept him from tending it, the plants slowly shriveled away while with eyes full of melancholy he could only watch them through his bedroom window. The juxtaposition of those two images was not lost on me. And I venture to guess, not on him either. I so appreciated and loved this frail and visibly diminutive old man saying his slow goodbye to the plant life outside his window, saying goodbye to his simple life in America. He was my grandpa, my Lolo Olong.
(Essay was originally published in an anthology: Beyond Lumpia, Pansit, and Seven Manangs Wild: Stories from the Heart of Filipino Americans)
Lourdes Sobredo (Lu to family and friends) is a grateful granddaughter of a Filipino farm worker who lived in America from 1929-1995. She retired as a California State Employment Development Administrator who holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology (UCLA) and a master’s in Public Administration (University of San Francisco). She serves in the Board of Cleveland School Remembers, a Brady Chapter United Against Gun Violence. She and her husband James divide their time between Stockton and Sausalito California, and Spain. (Photo by ©James Sobredo. All Rights Reserved)
