Among the less celebrated landmarks of Zamboanga is this piece of colonial architecture tucked on the corner of Ma. Clara St. and N.S. Valderossa St. in front of the City Hall. It’s a combination concrete and wood-frame building circa 1928, with a turret, ironwork lattice windows and an unusual cone-shaped roof. While beautiful in design, it looks like it has seen better days and badly in need of upkeep.

While hardly being promoted as a tourist attraction or catching the remotest interest of many local residents, it seems to have taken the fancy of domestic and foreign tourists to the city. I’ve seen its photos land in blogs and magazines featuring Zamboanga, and I surmise in many a traveler’s personal scrapbook and album too.

For years, it housed a popular local furniture store. That’s as far as I can remember. While today, an inconspicuous travel ticketing booth occupies its once massive doorway. Its history is unknown to me but I’d love to hear how and why it was built and who lived there in times gone by. In a couple of decades, this quaint old dame that silently stood watch over the city for ages will turn a century old.

Undeniably it is old and unique, but there is always a tinge of mystery clutching beneath the charming veneer of old buildings like this that so attracts the time traveler in a strange and interesting way. Travelers are looking for stories in the fabric of time as much as they are exploring for sites. It is sites like this that enhance the character of a destination.

This building is one of the few surviving old edifices in the town proper. I hope it will not suffer the same fate of so many over the years that have gone to rubble to give way to new or modern ones. Can’t we not just build new structures outside the old city proper?

Property owners and the populace should recognize the historical value of old buildings. Without them people will tend to forget the past. They are non-renewable cultural resources and with every unthinking demolition, a living part of history is destroyed.

Rather than resort to demolition, these buildings should be protected, restored, developed and maintained. Rather than be viewed as worthless derelicts, they should be seen as precious assets of special value to experience and understand, and from which great cultural and economic benefits can be derived. Let us reclaim history and reverse this trend of neglect. Let us save the last of our heritage buildings.

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This little encounter yesterday gave me a good deal to ponder about today. Today, being Fathers Day.

I was out yesterday to purchase a few things from a computer shop and was driving through the exit of a paid parking lot when my car conked out the minute I reached the guard post. I was helpless to put the car to first gear and far more helpless to assuage irate motorists from behind. Finally with the help of the guard who redirected exiting traffic to the entrance, my car was pushed off the driveway back to the parking lot.

Failing to reach my regular mechanic on the cell phone, I tried looking around the adjoining road for a car mechanic. This road is lined with motorcycle, bicycle and related supplies and spare parts stores. Right along the sidewalks you’d find makeshift repair shops for these two-wheeled conveyances. So obviously there wasn’t any shortage for their sort of mechanics but finding a car mechanic thereabouts was providential.

After asking around, one and only one name surfaced “Boy Ilong,” but I was cheerlessly warned I would be lucky if he’s not off to some repair engagement somewhere. As it turned out, luck was on my side as I came across him seated on a long wooden bench talking with some men in a run-down tricycle shop at the far end of the road. Case heard, he grabbed his tool bag and together we walked back to my car.

Sixty, shabby, sooty-faced with scruffy silvering hair, a burly physique, a firm stride and a bulbous nose which he said, earned him the alias “Boy Ilong.” It was people’s way of identifying him from two more mechanics he used to work with, sporting the “Boy” name.

I was captivated by how he got my car fixed in no time, knowing exactly where and what’s the cause of the problem and working on it with the dexterity of a master. You’d know it’s his thing because he does it excellently. “Comes with forty years of experience,” he said self-effacingly. “I’m nowhere near retirement yet but maybe I will think about it at sixty-five.” Even as he declared it, I could see that he will keep on doing his thing as if it will never end.

We got a bit chummy and our conversation was carried over a serving of pansit guisado, loaf bread and soft drinks in a nearby restaurant. I wondered whether he has gotten to pass on his expertise to anyone in his family. Well, he’s got a son he tagged along as a child who picked the tricks of the trade.

Then suddenly he told me something that made me think more highly of the person in front of me. He said he was hoping his son would take after him and his beloved profession but it was not for him to choose. He told me that from his honest-to-goodness job as a mechanic, he was able to send his son through college, graduating with a degree in Criminology. His son did not turn out to be a policeman either. According to him, his son is now a rising basketball coach of high school and college level students in one of the universities in town. He spoke with profuse fatherly love and pride for his son’s accomplishment.

Somehow I realized here was a man who knew that his being a mechanic was secondary to his being a father. He did not push upon his son the tools of his trade but instead had given him the tools to succeed and be happy in life. He did not deprive his son the right to decide for himself, knowing it was his son who was going to live with that decision. He gave his son the freedom to dream his dream. He allowed him to find his thing.

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My memory of early waking hours in my barrio is one of intermingling sounds and singsong voices filling the cool morning air. I hanker for such mornings when I awake and linger on in bed with eyes shut, ears opening to hear, and mind slowly becoming aware of the sheer variety of sounds occurring around me all at once or at random intervals.

First on my list are sounds caused by transports. We live in a barrio to the west coast of town and our house lies some fifty meters to the highway from where I can hear traffic sounds at the break of dawn. I imagine jeepneys with their load of vendors and cargoes of fresh farm produce on their way to the town’s public market. Further across the highway is the sea from where echoes the horn blasts of approaching ships as they make their way to the pier in the wee hours of the morning. And at daybreak comes the whirring sound of engines overhead as two or three airplanes arrive in succession, flying just high above the rooftops, ready for touchdown on the airport next to our barrio. Although this type of ambient sounds, never cause me enough disturbance, they come closest to my idea of noise.

Next are sounds that originate from our barrio’s religious milieu. Our barrio is home to peoples of different faiths and persuasions notably Muslims, Catholics and Protestants. It is not unusual to be awakened from your slumber by the early morning worship practices of these groups. These sounds are more welcomed to usher in the day.

Our house is just a stone’s throw away from a mosque so the Muslim’s dawn prayer, recited over a sound system, is familiar enough sound for me to recognize even when my mind is still fuzzy. Our house is also within sound of the Catholic Chapel bells. Sounds from their spiritual rituals are infrequently heard especially at dawn because there’s no resident vicar. On special occasions though, they are the most resonant. On the day of the barrio fiesta, I wake up with a jolt to hear the sound of trumpets blowing, cymbals clashing, snare drums rolling and bass booming as a phalanx of musicians march around the village at the crack of dawn. On certain occasions I am roused from my sleep by religious melodies from a procession or rosary prayed from speakers atop a jeep doing the rounds of the village. The Protestant Chapel is farther off from our house so only the muffled tone of their morning worship service with its characteristic organ playing and hymn singing is heard.

Last in my category are other sounds occurring during waking hours. There is a military camp on the hilly side of our barrio opposite the waterfront so it is not unusual to hear the regimental bugle call at sunrise. I think it is pretty neat. Sometimes I am stirred from my sleep by dog barks but that is not a dawn phenomenon, they occur when incited by what dogs hear or see. However, rooster crows are. In a country where cockfighting is a major sport, most households have gamecocks under their care. This is true in my barrio and I wake up every morning to the roosters crowing at dawn. The twitters of yellow-breasted hummingbirds in the garden lend a glorious accompaniment to the chorus. I like the sounds of bird chirps and rooster crows but dog barks are annoying. Up with the lark or up with the bark, I love listening to the sounds of dawn.

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