All I could think of was, well, I know the feeling. Many years ago, in a Pasig barrio called Malinao, I suffered an acute case of wardrobe failure, courtesy of a playmate who couldn’t find anything more interesting to do with his day – or with his hands.
It happened like this. I was about 11, and head over heels in love with a village beauty (we called her Black Beauty, because she was exactly that) named Luzviminda. She went to the local all-girls’ school and carried a slum book with entries for items like "How did you met?" (I swear, that’s what it said) and I – who went to a fancy all-boys’ school and spoke good English, unlike my ruffian friends – was practically the only one who could answer all the questions (and correct egregious grammatical errors along the way).
It was a match made in heaven – or should have been, if I’d been born a couple of years earlier, which was our difference in age. I think she saw me as a puppy, albeit a literate one, trailing after her in the afternoons in the rice fields that were Pasig’s great backyard in the 1960s. "Luzviminda." I was fascinated by the majesty of its comprehensiveness, something that you don’t get even from, say, the equally ambitious "Jejomar." What more could you ask for from a Filipino girl – except perhaps another tooth?
Let me explain that. It was hard to find a blemish on anyone so dusky, but Luzviminda did have one obvious imperfection: She was missing a tooth up front, and cruel as boys were, we did everything we could to make her smile. I’m pretty sure that was what Boknoy was trying to do that particular afternoon, although he achieved something else.
I was watching TV through the neighbor’s window – no big mystery there, they had TV and we didn’t (and neither did 90 percent of Barrio Malinao – remember, folks, this was 1965). It was warm day, so I wore something suitably loose and light – like a pair of shorts sewn by my mother out of a B-Meg feed bag, held at the waist by an elastic band. And nothing underneath, of course – like I told you, I was trying to keep cool, and besides, I still thought myself too young for briefs. It didn’t bother me one bit when Luzviminda came walking by – I mean, of course I was disturbed, but not by what I was wearing (or wasn’t). I didn’t know what to do or what to say, so I just kept watching TV to cultivate the impression of a boy intent on audiovisual learning, hoping that she’d come over and ask me something like "So, what are you watching?"
So you know what happened next. I must’ve seemed so engrossed by The Three Stooges that I didn’t see Boknoy sneak up on me and yank my shorts down. Ach, massive wardrobe failure! I’m not sure exactly what Luzviminda saw, but I imagined her gasping and giggling while I hoisted up my modesty.
Things didn’t stop there. An ancient nerve awakened in me and turned around and seized Boknoy by the throat, and we rolled around in the dust for a couple of minutes while the other boys milled around us, cheering us on. After a few ineffectual punches, we called it even. Luzviminda had vanished, and it was too bad that she didn’t see me asserting my incipient manhood, but then she’d probably seen enough.
I didn’t know that about Joe Bush, and barring any evidence to the contrary, I’m going to have to believe it. I’d have to wonder, though, if Joe Bush the Manileño didn’t have anything to do with Joe Bush the Major League pitcher who played for the Philadelphia A’s and a couple of other teams before being released by the New York Giants in 1927. The fictionist in me can easily imagine a World Series player, down on his luck, arriving in pre-war Manila and starting a whole new life in a new trade. But "Bullet Joe" Bush died in 1974 in Florida at age 81, with no mention of the Philippines or shoe dyes in his obituary. Or could it be that our Joe Bush was a distant uncle of – omigosh – George W. Bush?
I also tapped Google to enlighten me on "Ligo," which I also knew – from what formalist literary critics will acknowledge to be the closest of readings – to stand for "Liberty Gold." (What? You mean you never read the fine print of what you eat?)
As it turns out, there is a www.ligo.com.ph, which dutifully reports that "Since 1945, A. Tung Chingco Trading, Inc. has been the exclusive distributor of Ligo products in the Philippines…. Chingco Trading made these products known in the Philippines. A fruitful and promising association between A. Tung Chingco and Liberty Gold Fruit Co., Inc. of California, USA flourished and made Ligo a market leader in the canned fish industry."
And hold it, don’t throw away that old sardine can! An auction outfit called West Seattle is hawking "5 ANTIQUE SARDINES LABEL litho LIGO ... 5 Ligo sardines California fish labels. Mint condition. Sorry for the grainy photo, the label is much better looking than our photo. Selling 5 in this lot."
Our most interesting Web discovery has to do with another Pinoy staple, the tansan – which again I thought I knew to be a soft drink brand from magazine ads in the 1930s.
But thanks to the research of the Poblador, Azada, and Bucoy Law Office, we can now appreciate "The story of tansan," quoted below from www.poblaw.com:
A bottle crown is called tansan in Tagalog. A report in The Manila American, a newspaper published during colonial times, about a trademark dispute gives a clue on the origin of a familiar Filipino word. In its Jan. 16, 1903 issue culled from clippings in the National Library, the newspaper reported:
"Judge Ambler yesterday handed down his decision in the tansan case and the plaintiffs were allowed the temporary injunction.
"The plaintiff J. Clifford Wilkinson is the agent and owner of a certain kind of Tansan and claims that the other firm have been trying to imitate his trademark.
"The decision of Judge Ambler is as follows:
"‘It appears in 1896 the plaintiff duly registered in the patent office at Washington that which he denominated his trademark tansan, and afterward, in January 1902, the same was duly registered in the proper office in Manila. The defendants have upon the market a water which they also call tansan, this word prominently appearing upon each package, and they claim that they have a right to use this word, because it is merely descriptive and not a proper subject or trademark.
"The evidence before me shows that the word tansan is a Japanese word meaning ‘soda’ or carbonic acid, and I am inclined to think that either of these words alone are not descriptive of carbonated mineral water, even in our language. But even if this is not the case, the word tansan is descriptive of nothing, but is simply an arbitrary jargon of letters, and as such I think the subject of trademark when applied to mineral water, or in fact to anything else.
"It looks to me as if the defendants were seeking to take advantage of the reputation enjoyed by the plaintiff’s water by imitating as closely as they might the plaintiff’s trademark.
"I am constrained to say that I think the general appearance of defendants’ label, taken in connection with the word tansan appearing upon it, is calculated to deceive, and I believe that the average purchaser of this character of a commodity would not, and should not, be required to carefully observe a label as to prevent him from buying the one which he preferred than the other.
"I therefore feel obliged to overrule the motion to dissolve the temporary injunction, but appreciating the damage that would be suffered by the defendants in the event that it should ultimately be decided that the temporary injunction was improperly obtained. I do not think that the bond heretofore given by the plaintiff of $1,000 is sufficient and I will raise it to such amount may be thought best after consultation with counsel."
Through usage, tansan would later strictly refer to the bottle cap.
But tansan would live on in its original sense in Japan, where advertisements tout such delicacies as "Tansan senbei… Arima in Hyogo Prefecture is said to be Japan’s oldest hot spring town, and it is here that a clear spring with naturally carbonated water bubbles up from the ground. Tansan senbei, a thin cracker, is made using this naturally sparkling water, and its appeal comes from its simple flavor and its lightness and pleasant crunch. It is still made by hand today using time-tested methods."
Another ad has the whisky-maker Suntory marketing Tansan Shonen, a "gently sweet soda with fresh aftertaste of purified water that reminds us of favorite soda in our childhood."
Ah, yes, childhood was fun – most days, unless you strutted around in chicken-feed shorts.