(The Rufadora Bar in daylight. It didn’t look this bright when we usually saw it).

Author’s Note: A Philippines phrase for the ages? “How much would that window cost if it was broken?” Or one of the most famous barroom public address pages in Naval Aviation history….”Would the Command Duty Officer of the USS Oriskany please contact his ship….”

Year of the first visit to the Republic of the Philippines? It would have be the ‘old’ Cubi Club. It had lots of bamboo and palm branch interior – very tropical – and of course it burned down (I think). Remember going in as a LTJG on a Friday afternoon and there was a LT up about 2 levels in the bamboo structure of the entryway, selectively pouring beer on chicks, etc. For some reason, someone thought this was unacceptable behavior and called the station OOD . He sent the shore patrol. They arrived and ordered the LT to come down. When he wouldn’t, they said: “if you don’t come down, we’ll call in your CO, to which he looked upward, to the next level and said “Hey Skipper, these guys down here want to talk to you..!”

– Vic

We tried to capture something from long ago this morning. The agony of our power struggle here at home has been tiring, and is not done yet. This Sunday morning, it appears the US Senate will continue in Blue hands, with the House in the hands of Red. Given the consequences of that development, we thought it might be useful to recall a world now gone but still familiar. We don’t know about you, but Splash and Loma awoke to the smell of rich dark earth, not the slight chill of a sunny Piedmont morning. It was musty and they could smell the corruption, and decided to wait for the cocks to crow. Must have missed curfew and gone to ground in the dark of night to avoid the Philippine National Police and the Shore Patrol. Couldn’t remember.

Had they stayed out in the Barrio, beyond the bright lights of Olongapo city? Not safe these days, they thought, pawing at their tiny clicking alarms. They did not turn on the BBC and had no idea what is happening in the wide world. Only a sense of longing and of loss.

It was a form of morning paralysis. In the silence rose the banging of metal and the sound of voices and the clink of bottles. The larger group could hear the scratchy voice of Dispatch calling the cab. It was a Subic bay sound, unique to Naval Air Station Cubi Point. “Beniktikan Cab, please come in…”

Head out toward the gate back over the Shit River? They tried to move limbs and felt numb. Must be coming home. This is the only place in the world that you could take a twenty-dollar bill in your pocket and go to the moon and get most of the way back with a peso or two still in the pocket.

It always started on the Point in Cubi, at the carrier pier. The place took its name from Construction Unit, Battalion One, that built the airfield and the docks. It was a fine airfield, one of the best in the region, built completely to American standards. It was the staging ground for the naval presence off Vietnam, with hundreds of ships. All of them called here, coming or going. Later, when the war was lost, we glared at the Russians who smugly occupied our former base at Cam Ranh Bay.

Remember when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991? That was ten years after our time there. The wrath of the earth buried Clark Air Force Base in dozens of feet of ash. The plume got as far as Subic Bay, and blanketed Subic Mainside and the clubs along Magsaysay Boulevard. It was a convenient time to leave, with the Russians rocked back on their asses. And so it ended.

The two who had stayed outside the Gate looked up in the darkness. If only they could get to the Club Rufadora, everything would be fine. That place was an island of sanity off the main drag, and the women were relaxed, part owners or at least independent contractors. We had local friends at the Rufadora that we saw every few months when the ship came in. We should have done something to formalize the various relationships, but it was the way of things then. A bit of home far away.

This morning, forty years later? She would be old now, as old as we are had she had survived the eruption of the volcano and the closing of the base and the end of an empire. Why could we not remember the names?

The group wondered sometimes, in the dark, if anything had been left behind from that relationship. It was hardly exclusive, but still….

Eventually most of the group was able to pry themselves upright and turn on the radio. That was the way we got news from Outside, not like our internet age. But the feeling of disorientation continued for all of us. Splash struggled with the hat. It had once been white, a trim ball-cap with a stiff bill, curved to frame the face and shelter the eyes. The patch had been sewn on the front with his own hands. It was an important part of “been there, done that” back in the day.

The aviators on the ship back then had awarded themselves colorful patches for each set of a hundred landings on the ship. It advertised their proficiency as “Centurions.” There was an immediate and irreverent response ashore. Romie, the slim Filipino who operated the little bar at the BOQ sold patches that looked remarkably similar. As is common in the P.I., it was not completely correct but had a small integrity in being what was there.

The difference in this patch was that a hot-dog was embroidered in the middle. “Cubi Dog Centurion” said the words around them. It meant that a hundred of the Navy-procured hot dogs had moved from the steamer and into the bun and slide across the bar and down the gullet, washed down with cold San Miguel beer.

The hat is tattered now and the patch is faded. The bill is limp, the stiffness not surviving time and the washing machine.

There was some collective wincing at the metaphor. Thankfully, there had been forethought to ask Romie for two or three of them. There is one still remaining, pristine in a cruise box, somewhere. Maybe in the storage locker. So many moves. But the one that surfaced on this morning in this world is a little washed out but still declarative in its message. “A hundred Cubi Dogs.”

On the other side of the Gate, the American side, we leaned into showers and turned the valves turned up toward raw steam, hot as the sun on the jungle and as wet as the monsoon. We closed the lid on the toilet and sat down, breathing in the moisture from the stall, unconcerned with wasting hot water ashore. A luxury.

We had no interest in going to work. None of us did. It is now completely inaccessible, except in that curious place between sleep and waking.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com