-So, for tonight's speaker,
Peter Bacho was born in Seattle, Washington,
and grew up in the Central Area.
He teaches at The Evergreen State College
and is the author of seven books, Cebu, Dark Blue Suit,
Boxing in Black and White,
Nelson's Run, Entrys, Leaving Yesler, and his latest,
a memoir, Uncle Rico's Encore;
Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle.
Please give him a warm welcome.
-MOHAI, thank you for hosting me.
People who are in attendance,
thank you for coming out on a chilly March evening.
I appreciate it. I appreciate you being here.
I remember, MOHAI,
when it was 1968, I was here at the Naval Reserve Center.
It was the Naval Reserve Center.
And everyone of my age, 18 at the time,
this is background for the first story.
Everyone was, every male, at least,
who was 18 or about to turn 18, was worried about being drafted.
And so I thought, "Wow," you know,
"Naval Reserve is perfect."
So I came down here, took the exam, and I flunked it.
I couldn't do math. So that left option number two.
And September 20th, 1968,
is the story that I will read
because it's what started out the collection
of Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle,
September 20th, 1968.
And I wrote it 2018.
I'd been off the writing path for a number of years
because I was so disappointed about no one reading
my young adult novel, Leaving Yesler.
I think my sister might have read it or something like that.
And I said, that's it. I've had it.
And then I realized
that this is the 50th anniversary of something.
The 50th anniversary of my birthday
that I spent at the Military Induction Center
on the other side of Queen Anne Hill.
You guys know where that is?
I don't know if it's still there.
But I had a plan
because I knew Uncle Sam was going to intervene in my life.
And that plan was to enlist in the Army
and choose my military occupation specialty
so that I wouldn't be, like many of my Filipino friends,
drafted and sent into the infantry,
which is exactly what I didn't want to do.
If I was going to spend two years,
it wasn't going to be tromping around the marshes of Vietnam.
So this is Plan B.
And this is what basically started me
on Mostly True Stories because I liked what I'd written.
And people I had sent it to, they also liked it as well.
September 20th, 1968.
Could it really have been that long ago?
The first day of my eighteenth year and I am spending it
at the military induction center in Seattle.
Me and other accidental boy soldiers, filling out forms,
taking tests, bending over,
just bobbing along in a white Fruit of the Loom sea.
I glanced around the room.
Not many razors needed.
I was a product of Catholic schools,
deferred sexuality,
and stations-of-the-cross sublimation, a virgin.
But I knew I wasn't the only one.
I also knew that some of them weren't coming back.
And on their tombstones it should read "Poor, poor,
fill in the name.
The only [Audio drop] was his mom's."
Was I scared? Too strong. Apprehensive?
That fits.
My road to the induction center
started the year before in the spring of 1967,
when I got a phone call from a high school pal, Steve Aspiras.
We were juniors at the time,
and the Vietnam War was too far down the road to worry about.
Besides, as a soon-to-be senior at O'Dea High,
I had more important things to worry about,
like a high hopes basketball season.
Steve said he'd drive, and we'd be joined by Ted Divina,
Vince Visaya, and Gene Navarro,
the other three slightly older than Steve and me,
their high school years, a chapter in their past.
As we cruised the city's neighborhoods
and headed downtown, we listened to R & B,
just hanging out,
an activity at which Filipino Americans of my day excelled.
Among the jokes and banter, the camaraderie,
the comfort that comes with a common ethnic identity
and a shared history, Gene suddenly dropped a bomb.
He'd signed with the Marines, he said, his tone matter-of -fact.
He'd be reporting to boot camp in a few days.
Ted and Vince would be next, snatched up by the military.
For all three, there was only one destination: Vietnam.
That's when the war hit home.
My time was coming.
Gene, Vince, and Ted could have postponed military service
by going to college,
with its life-saving four-year draft deferment.
I was hoping to do that.
But among too many of my Filipino peers,
it wasn't an option.
Our immigrant parents came from poverty;
in America they worked in the nation's underbelly,
migrating to seasonal backbreaking jobs on farms
and in salmon canneries.
The luckier ones worked as busboys and dishwashers.
By the 1960s their economic situation had improved,
but not enough to send their sons to college.
My friends also had unconsidered options, like Canada.
But I know what they would have said.
Nope, that's what White guys did.
Or how about growing their hair, burning their draft cards,
and protesting the war.
Same thing.
Then there was the stereotype, prevalent among Seattle's
White public high school teachers and counselors,
that unlike studious and well-behaved Japanese
and Chinese boys,
young Filipino males were just not college material.
"Try the post office," they were told, or, "Learn a trade."
Oh, and cut your hair, stop jaywalking, and pay taxes.
They smoked, they drank, they talked smack to the ladies
and slicked their hair, Pomade, of course, just like their dads.
They brawled in the streets.
They danced too Black. College? In 1967?
Gimme a break, brother man.
That's what White guys did.
It's not like Vietnam was the only thing I thought about.
But when I did,
I had a hard time seeing myself in army green.
For starters,
I hated the woods, never mind swamps, steamy jungles,
rice paddies, killer snakes, and pooping outside.
Ditto for hiking and sleeping outdoors.
Guns and loud noises scared me.
Getting shot scared me more.
Campfires without s'mores?
Forget it.
I felt lucky being not yet seventeen,
which gave me more than a year of ongoing adolescence
and perhaps enough time to figure things out.
Besides, maybe the war would be over by then.
Plus there were the distractions of senior year;
the upcoming basketball season, college applications,
and with a little luck, maybe even a girlfriend.
Everything but the girlfriend went okay.
We beat Seattle Prep, our bitter crosstown rival,
and qualified for the playoffs,
where we got bounced in the first game.
I even got accepted,
despite an exceedingly modest academic record,
to the University of Washington.
But a girlfriend, I fell one win short of the triple crown.
Graduation came and went,
and I was three months away from turning 18.
It was time to get serious about this Vietnam thing,
a point driven home
by our Filipino Summer League basketball team.
As the season wore on, our guys kept disappearing,
leaving for basic, leaving for war.
Then one day in August,
I had decided to launch a preemptive strike.
I would join the Army, but only under my terms.
Sure, I had been accepted by the UW.
My acceptance gave me the precious deferment.
But how long I could hold on to it was another matter.
The truth was that going to the university intimidated me.
It was so impersonal, bloodless, soulless, and huge,
a city within a city.
And I was convinced that I would flunk out
and become meat for the body hunger draft and,
like so many draftees,
be sent to the bush to hike and shoot and poop outdoors.
I told the recruiter I wanted to be in military intelligence,
where my ability to type and answer telephones,
follow office etiquette,
and politely brown-nose superiors would
be highly valued.
I also wanted a six-month delayed entry program,
my plan B after flunking out of the UW.
He tried to talk me into the Airborne.
"No thanks," I replied.
I signed the paperwork, and on my birthday,
I reported to the induction center.
At the end of what was becoming a tedious day,
I had one more step in the process,
a meeting with a medical officer.
In a sense, I was relieved.
This day would finally end.
Plan B would be underway.
And it would have been, too.
But earlier I had filled out a form asking
if I had a history of illicit maladies or diseases.
Asthma, I wrote, which was true.
As a child, I'd even been hospitalized
after a nasty attack.
But I outgrew it and became the picture of teenage health,
playing football in the fall, basketball in the winter,
and baseball in the spring.
I entered the doc's office.
He was seated behind his desk,
and he motioned for me to sit down.
As he scanned my medical history,
I glanced at his features, blond hair with blue eyes,
a handsome man who looked younger than his calendar years.
He also looked kind, serene, like a priest
who'd just been sitting at the right hand of God.
He looked up and stared at me.
"I see you had asthma," he said solemnly.
"Yes, I had it as a child."
"That means if you go to a hot, dusty place,
there's a chance your asthma might act up."
Hmm. I hadn't thought of that.
My asthma acting up in a hot, dusty,
and violent environment was the least of my worries.
I was puzzled, unsure what the doc was getting at.
Before I could reply, he repeated himself,
slower and more firmly this time,
like he was talking to an idiot.
"That means if you go to a hot, dusty place."
Ding. I realized he was trying to flunk me out.
He was doing his best to give me my life.
"Yeah," I mumbled, "sure."
He sat back in his chair,
the slightest of smiles forming at the corners of his mouth.
"I'm afraid you can't join the Army, son.
Sorry, you'll get a 1-Y instead."
"A 1-Y?"
"It means you'll only serve if there's a national emergency."
I got up to leave. This was so unexpected.
I didn't know what to feel.
Half a century later, I can't remember if I thanked him then,
but I now know I should have.
Because of that doc, I was able to continue in college,
go to law school,
and screw up a legal career and two out of three marriages.
But why the kindness?
Maybe it was because he knew that the war couldn't be won.
Or maybe it was proof that God really does love fools.
Or perhaps it was because that great cosmic joker,
Senior Lucky Dog, chose my birthday to drop me a bone.
Or maybe it all went deeper,
that he knew the war shouldn't have been fought
in the first place.
Whatever the reason,
I know he concluded that I'd be one more teenage
discardable in this most dubious of battles.
Ah, but the doc didn't know of Plan B,
that I'd carefully planned to set out on my tour
in an office with air conditioning,
or at least fans.
But being 18 and very naive, I didn't realize
that my best-laid plans could gang aft agley,
easy enough in a war zone.
Every morning for the last several years,
I've smudged with tobacco and sage,
praying for the well-being of those who are close to me.
When his turn comes up, I see his face.
This is my prayer.
Thank you, Army Doc, who saved my life.
This starts it out, and I hope,
to give you a sense of what the old neighborhood looked like.
I have a series of maps, and this is Map 1.
In my dreams, sometimes there's a map of the city I love.
In almost seventy years not much has changed.
And that gives me comfort.
On this map I follow the lines north, south, east, west
and find the intersection, 32nd Avenue East and Thomas.
This is where my family used to live,
in a small one-floor yellow house that is still standing.
The location is the eastern edge of the Central Area,
the historic home of Seattle's African American community,
or so the tagline goes.
But the Central Area was also home to Filipinos,
working-class Whites, and other ethnic groups.
On our side, the eastern side of the block,
there was another Filipino family the Berganos,
a Japanese American family, and three Black families.
Across the street lived an older White couple,
Al and Olga Castle.
As a kid, I loved our house and our block.
I felt safe there, protected.
I had doting parents, good friends, and enough to eat.
In my twenty years of living on our stretch of 32nd,
I don't recall the cops ever having been called.
As an adult watching our nation go through powerful,
earth-shifting racial convulsions,
I love that house, that neighborhood,
that street even more.
I would leave that little house, fishing pole in hand,
to join neighborhood pals for bike rides or hikes
to the lake or the Arboretum lagoon,
or I would leave with my bat and mitt
for Little League practice in Washington Park.
And sometimes, especially during the summer,
I would leave with a darker purpose --
to ambush drivers heading northbound on 32nd Avenue East
with my friends, a motley,
multiracial gang of vandals in the making.
We would lie prone, hidden and still in the uncut grass,
our peashooters at the ready.
Then we'd inhale, hold our breath,
and ping cars as they drove north in the far lane.
It was all great fun until one afternoon,
we hit a driver who'd left his window open.
The peas flew and hit him upside his head.
The red '56 Chevy screeched to a halt.
A young white man opened the car door
and started running toward us.
"You little [Audio drop]!" he screamed.
We scattered, running through backyards,
jumping fences, and disappearing into the woods.
After several minutes of hiding in the trees
and behind blackberry bushes, we eventually reemerged.
I bumped into Allan Bergano, my friend, neighbor,
and pea-shooting dead eye.
Allan was worried.
"Do you think he'll go to our homes and tell our parents?"
I shrugged.
"Mine are out shopping."
I walked a few steps, then stopped.
"What's a [Audio drop]?" I asked.
Although it's been more than half a century
since I've been inside our old house,
I remember minute details of each room, closet,
and nook as if I had visited yesterday.
Most of my memories of where we lived are comforting and warm.
But not all.
Like late one night when I was eight,
I woke up to the shape of a woman standing
at the foot of my brother's bed.
I blinked, at first unbelieving and unsure,
hoping I wasn't seeing what I was seeing.
I took a deep breath,
then closed my eyes and opened them again.
I gulped. I was seeing what I was seeing.
She was translucent, and her hands were joined together,
fingers pointing up as if in prayer.
She didn't move or speak.
I didn't think she was evil, a small comfort,
but I was still terrified.
Worse, I had to pee,
and she didn't seem to be in any rush to leave.
But I didn't want to get up and draw attention to myself,
having her float after me through the room,
down the hall, and to the bathroom.
No thanks.
Nor did I turn on the lamp on my bedside table,
figuring that if the light went on and she was still there,
I could be in trouble.
"Dear Jesus," I whispered, "help me."
My fear was exhausting, and at some point,
I either fainted or fell asleep.
To this day, I'm not sure which.
When I came to or awoke the next morning, she was gone.
I quickly scanned the room, then jumped out of bed
and raced to the door.
I still had to pee.
As I look back,
I've come to conclude
that the ghost visit was really a blessing.
It was the first episode of a life full of moments
I cannot explain.
It has left me open to the inexplicable,
to an ongoing and deep sense of wonder and surprise.
From that point on,
I have avoided servitudes and written stone,
unbending dogmas,
never once claiming that I now have all the answers.
This is why things happen.
Trust me. I've figured it out.
And then there was a time when I was nine and
a Catholic priest molested me.
I came home one day after school,
and there at the table sat this odd-looking,
child-sized Filipino man.
He was sipping a Coke and chatting with my mom in Visayan,
laughing at everything she said.
I'd never heard a priest laughed,
at least not the White ones I knew.
Maybe they weren't supposed to.
And I'd never seen a Filipino priest.
But there he was in his miniature black uniform,
complete with white collar.
"Oy, Peter," Mom said, "this is Father Veronica.
He's from Cebu, and he's visiting the archdiocese.
He's our guest tonight." I just stood there,
unable to stop staring at this strange little man.
Mom nodded her head.
"Psst, don't be rude.
Come here and introduce yourself."
I walked two steps toward him,
stopped, and extended my right hand.
Veronica reached forward and grabbed me, pulling me in.
"Nice boy," he said, giggling as he hugged me tightly.
"Nice boy." I went limp.
I was in my pajamas, lying in my bed when Veronica walked in.
He was beaming, giggling,
and holding in his tiny hand a black rosary.
"Your mother says you pray," he said.
"Yes, Father, but I've already prayed."
Veronica looked at me sternly.
"My son, you can never pray enough,"
he said as he slipped in bed beside me.
"Our Father," he began, as he placed a hand on my groin.
"Who art in heaven," I dutifully replied,
as his short fingers started massaging me.
And so it went.
We finished the rosary, and he left the room.
I turned over on my side and fell asleep.
More than 60 years later,
my initial reaction to this incident puzzles me.
Unlike other victims of sexual predation,
I had no recurring nightmares, no suicidal thoughts,
no feelings of guilt or shame or violation.
For me,
it was just an odd moment with a strange little man.
It happened.
I moved on and never told Mom or Dad.
But over the years, I think I've found an answer.
Because of my mom, ours was a deeply religious home.
Sex, as far as I can remember,
was never mentioned or ever done within these walls.
In our impenetrable sex-free bubble,
people did not do what people do.
In my nine-year-old world,
sex and sexual monsters did not exist.
After all, Mary, a virgin, gave birth to Jesus.
Did it happen again when my sister Irma was born?
I had no clue as to how that came about.
At age nine, I was asexual and innocent.
And that invincible Catholic innocence,
I am now convinced,
is what saved me from the residue of Veronica's
heinous crime and sin.
Years later, I was in Seattle visiting Mom.
She was at the stove tending to an almost-done chicken adobo.
I was sitting at the kitchen table,
enjoying the fragrance, sipping coffee,
and reading the newspaper.
Then the headline caught my eye.
"Pedophile Lawsuit Rocks Archdiocese."
My heart started to race, and I put the paper down.
"Mom? Whatever happened to that priest," I casually asked.
"Which one," she said without turning around?
"That little guy from Cebu."
"Oh, Father Veronica."
"Yeah, Father Short Eyes himself," I mumbled.
"Short Eyes?" "Ah, nothing, Mom, nothing."
"Not sure. We lost contact.
But I got a Christmas card from him a few years ago,
when you were still in California."
She hovered over the pot, dipped a spoon, and sampled the sauce.
"Almost done," she said with her back still turned,
as she added a pinch of salt.
"Oh, what did he say?"
"Who?" "Veronica." "He says he's well
and is in charge of an orphanage in Cebu City."
"Oh." "He says he loves his job."
"I'll bet." I turned to the side.
"Burn in hell," I whispered, "You [Audio drop]."
Mom turned around. She was smiling.
"The adobo, son. It's ready." Another map.
Let's see. I've got to leave time.
I think we can do it all.
I'm going to read about two more stories, maybe three.
Map 2.
In my dream my focus shifts west,
and I am walking the downward slope of Union Street,
the corridor that connects the Central Area to downtown and,
beyond, Puget Sound.
In short order, I cross Empire Way, then 23rd Avenue,
where I pass a grocery store to my left
where my parents used to shop and across 23rd,
the second-floor office of my dentist, Dr. Browning.
As an adult, I have avoided dentists for decades,
preferring instead to let bad,
aging teeth fall out of my mouth.
As nature intended, I tell myself.
But as a child, I liked going to Dr. Browning.
As I recall, he was a tall, powerful,
physically imposing man, David "Deacon" Jones
without the helmet and dressed in white.
But with me he was very gentle and skilled,
and the only Black dentist I have ever known.
One time he removed a loose tooth
while chatting casually about baseball, my favorite sport.
I nervously sat in his 18 dentist's chair,
my fists clenched, my mouth wide open,
my eyes shut tight, praying.
"So, son, let me guess," he began.
"Your favorite player is."
He then bent over, peering into my mouth.
"Hmm," I heard him say,
before he inserted his forefinger and thumb.
"Willie Mays," he said casually.
I nodded. He handed me the tooth.
"Mine, too."
"I'm done?" I asked. He smiled.
"Yes," he said, patting me on the head.
"You're a good boy." I didn't feel a thing.
This is a walk I have done many times,
especially in the warm afternoon days of late spring,
summer, and early fall.
I am walking for more than an hour,
but I am young, sixteen,
and wearing my white Converse high-tops.
I never tire, never sweat, or even break stride.
But that was then, and such a long time ago.
Today, I can only walk this walk in my dreams.
I turn left, heading south on 18th Avenue,
and I see my destination;
the distinctive twin spires of Immaculate Conception,
the pulsing heart of old Pinoy Seattle.
In those days,
Immaculate was a church, a grade school,
and a high school for girls.
A lot of Filipinos were parishioners and students.
In front of the church, I see Annie, a young Pinay,
who lives across the street. We stop to chat.
"Where you going?" she asks. "Catch me a game or two."
In the background,
I can hear the telltale siren sounds;
a hard quick dribble and someone shouting, "Hey, man, I was open.
I was open. Damn."
"Got to go," I tell Annie as I jog toward the parking lot
and its outdoor hoop.
"Got me an itch I got to go scratch."
I am in the parking lot behind the church,
resting against the fence by the basket
and watching a three-on-three,
shirts versus skins half-court game.
I know all of the players; all Filipinos, all friends.
They aren't that tall and some aren't especially skilled,
not like the lean, long-limbed brothers at Madrona
who have sports page clippings,
college scholarship offers, and citywide reps.
No matter.
They're ballers who do their best and love playing the game.
I'm at Immaculate that afternoon because at sixteen,
I will roam the city each day on foot
or by bus looking for a game.
For my younger self, basketball is my only focus, my addiction;
playing it is the only thing that matters.
I'd thought about going to Madrona,
but the games there are so intense,
such intensely physical chest-to-back,
hand-to-hand battles,
and today I just don't have the energy to compete.
Maybe tomorrow will be different.
But for now at least, I'm on vacation,
enjoying a rare, relaxed Madrona-less basketball day.
But there's another reason I'm here;
today I just feel like being with other Pinoys.
The game is near the end. The score is tied, fourteen all.
A bucket by either side ends it, and the winners keep playing.
The ball moves quickly,
from the corner to Alan at the top of the key.
He head-fakes his defender, gets him off balance,
then shoots an open jumper.
The ball bounces twice,
then hangs on the rim before going in.
Game over.
The winners smile and nod their heads.
"Sweet," Tony, an older player, says, clenching his fists.
"That's what I'm talking about, fellas."
He walks to the fence,
pulls a pack of Salem's from his jacket pocket, lights up.
That's something you wouldn't see at Madrona.
I nod at Tony, then raise my hand.
"I got next."
My good friend Bob, who's on the losing side,
walks over and hands me the ball.
For a moment, I hold it, then dribble it low, hard, and fast.
The texture of the ball, the bounce, they all feel good.
"Hey, man," Bob says.
"Great to see you." We shake hands.
I give him a hug. Damn good to be here.
The floors belonged to Immaculate Conception Parish.
Same with the Lunas, the Israels, the Galerosas,
the Lourdes, the Delmas,
the Ogilvie's, the Farrells, the Villaflores,
the Beltran's, and a long list of others.
I stay in touch with many of them.
Over the years,
hundreds of Pinoys were baptized and confirmed in this dark,
cavernous church.
It's where many of us took our first communion
and confessed our sins.
Where we joined in marriage and mourned our dead.
Immaculate was also the spiritual home
of the late Fred Cordova.
He and his wife Dorothy are two Pinoy legends.
They are among the best human beings I have ever known.
In 1957, they founded Filipino Youth Activities,
which sponsored sports teams, classes on Filipino culture,
deep discussions on Filipino history and identity.
And in 1959, an award-winning drill team
that more than 60 years later still rocks the show
at Seattle's famed Torchlight Parade.
As a kid attending the Torchlight
and other summer parades,
I loved watching the FYI drill team.
I still do. Dot, dot, dot.
Two quick beats, followed by a pause, third.
These were the signature rhythmic sounds of the ends
of bamboo sticks hitting pavement.
Then came Fred's whistle, the clanging of a cowbell,
and the pulsing Latin
and moral drumbeats of the percussion ears.
The drill team was heard first, then seen.
This has not changed.
When they passed me, I was focused, excited.
I loved the precision, the elegance,
the head-tilting jaw-jutting arrogance of the girls
in the long red dresses, keeping time with their sticks
and the focus of the boys pounding beats
in their black slacks and green tunics.
I loved hearing the applause and whistles from onlookers.
I loved hearing the oohs.
I was proud of the drill team and all that it represented.
When Fred died in 2014,
the funeral at Immaculate was packed, standing room only,
a fitting testament to his life.
His death was a devastating loss to his family,
but it was a loss to us as well.
His body lay in an open casket I bent over
and kissed his forehead.
Fred was wearing the jersey of his favorite Seahawk,
Doug Baldwin, who was Filipino on his mother's side.
Of course.
I walked over to console Dorothy.
"Fred loved you," she whispered.
"I know. I loved him, too." Later I wrote to a friend.
He made it easy for me to be a young Filipino in Seattle.
I was not the only one.
One of the things I think that in memoir,
when I teach a class on memoir,
my students tend to -- they do expository writing,
okay, they write in essay form.
And the reason they write in essay form is
because this is what they've been trained to do ever
since they were in kindergarten.
A memoir, though, is storytelling.
It's telling a story.
And so as a storyteller,
you use all the tricks that a good fiction writer would use.
Dialogue, combination.
You have to know when to use dialogue.
You have to know when narrative is too much or too little.
I mean, you know,
that comes with the years and the experience
and so on and so forth.
And most important of all, in terms of memoir,
you have to be honest.
Brutally, brutally honest.
Otherwise, I remember one student says,
I can't write this. I said, write fiction then.
If you can't be honest,
if you can't be legitimate with the reader,
they're going to sense a fraud.
You have to be honest.
And so here, One October Day, I think, is the story.
Ah.
If I can find it, it's in here somewhere.
I know it's in here. I wrote it. Okay.
Found it, 147. One October Day.
On a long-ago October afternoon,
I picked up the phone and called my mother.
"Mom," I said calmly.
"I passed the bar." She gasped. I could hear her cry.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"Thank you." That's all she said.
This though is what she meant.
Thank you, the oldest of my children.
On the day you were born I counted ten fingers, ten toes.
You had brown wavy hair. What was not for me to love.
Thank you as well for not complaining.
For being the easiest baby to raise.
You didn't even scream when I changed your diapers and I,
being new to this, would accidentally prick you.
You would furrow your brow and look concerned,
but never did you cry or complain
or condemn me for carelessness or bad motherhood.
I knew right then you weren't the complaining type.
As a young child,
you ate fig bars and cold Spam sandwiches on Wonder Bread.
You drank powdered milk, and Tang, just like an astronaut.
I'm sure many of your friends ate better,
especially those with brick homes close to the lake.
But you didn't complain
because you knew even then that was all we could afford.
Then through the grace of Jesus
who died for our sins and Dad finding steady work,
we scraped up enough for piano lessons, and I thought,
"Ah, that's what you'll do."
And you played because you loved me.
I know that.
You hated it and didn't like your teacher; I knew that too.
Your passions were baseball and basketball.
But you stayed with it for seven years
because you knew how I wished I could have played,
impossible because we were always on the move,
always hiding from those bad, bad Japanese.
Then one day, you'd just turned thirteen,
I think, you told me no more piano.
You'd had enough.
By then you were old enough to start to know your mind.
"Okay," I said. Was I disappointed?
A little.
I thought to myself, "No concerts.
No sold-out halls. No junior Liberace.
No television shows." I sighed.
"But at least I've got a good son."
And now you're an attorney.
How about that?
And your office, son, your father and I,
Uncle Vic and Uncle Rico, we can't wait to visit.
Can we?
Will you have a window and a view of the bay
and the mountains?
What about photos. I will take them?
Would you mind? Of course not. Hoy, a haircut.
Now you need one. You really do. Also a new suit.
No more jeans and T-shirts for you, Mister.
Meet me tomorrow, Nordstrom's.
Oh, and thank you for the grandchildren you'll bring me.
At least three, right?
They will look like you and your Vivian
a beautiful girl from a good Filipino family.
Jesus, Maria, Josep, Peter.
My prayers have been answered.
You've made this the happiest day of my life.
But I know there'll be other joys to follow.
I know that, and I can hardly wait.
Mom, your joys would have to wait.
For you, especially,
I know that my immediate post-law school years
must have been hard. My marriage, the first one,
was falling apart because of my immaturity,
my rampant infidelity.
Then I stopped being an attorney and,
far worse, not a grandchild in sight.
One afternoon, you, in a rare fit of pique,
shook your head and said, "Son, you're such a disappointment."
And I was to her, to myself.
But hearing Mom say it hit me hard.
I stopped calling. I stopped visiting.
I was embarrassed. Two weeks later, she called me.
"Why have you stopped calling?"
"You said I was a disappointment."
"Oh, you're not anymore." True story.
And just like that, we're good again.
And that's how we were for almost 70 years.
Mother and I, a teaspoonful of words, our bond unbreakable.
Your joys would eventually come. Like in the early 1980s,
when I started writing and getting published.
First, on the editorial pages of the Seattle papers,
then regional and national publications.
My message was the same;
that Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos was bad,
not just for Filipinos but for America.
But Marcos was Washington's boy.
He crooned anticommunist lyrics and pledged that vital U.S.
bases could stay forever and a day in his archipelago,
for a price, of course, paid to him.
No questions asked, no answers expected.
My work was getting noticed.
Even Seattle older Filipinos were starting to talk.
One friend warned Mom
that the Philippine consulate was keeping an eye on me.
I was on a list,
which made sense
because Marcos was a highly paid American puppet.
Public criticism and erosion of U.S.
support threatened him, his family,
and the millions he'd managed to steal in U.S.
aid.
"Be careful," Mom whispered to me.
And although she looked worried, I knew she was proud.
Her oldest child, an enemy of the state, how about that?
Despite the warning conveyed in the fall,
I returned to the Philippines, November 1983,
just before Thanksgiving break at the University of Washington.
I was teaching a class on Philippine history in Manila.
As usual, it was floating in rumors.
Ferdinand Marcos had disappeared from public view
for several days, and the rumors ran the gamut.
Hoy, a friend of my cousin,
whose auntie works in the palace, says he's gravely ill.
My guess, compadre, he's already dead.
Who'll take his place? What about the generals?
Maybe they're already running things.
What about the communists, the Muslims?
Will there be a civil war?
Will the Americans get involved?
I felt like a fraud, a reclining chair journalist,
a huge story in the Marcos era, and I wasn't there.
It had been three years
since I once followed an old lover into the jungle.
It was time to return.
After class, I booked a flight for Manila.
Two days later, I was gone.
Now in making this decision, I hadn't entirely lost my mind.
In 1983, I could enter the Philippines on my U.S.
passport, no visa necessary,
no heads up to consular officials keeping an eye on me,
plus there was this intangible that I had considered.
Consular officials I'd met
didn't strike me as especially smart, competent,
or disciplined,
a trait that I believed
and hoped ran through the entire repressive Marcos machine.
And sure enough,
when I was clearing customs at Manila International,
a soldier in a booth nodded at me.
He lit up a smoke, then continued reading his newspaper.
The computer on his desk was turned off.
The next three days turned out to be a major waste
of time and money.
Marcos was sick, but not dead.
There would be no major story breaking out of Manila.
When I returned to Seattle,
I drove to my parents' house
to wish them belated Thanksgiving greetings.
"Hi, Mom," I said cheerily.
"Hi, Son. Where have you been?" She kissed me on the cheek.
"Oh, I just got back from Manila."
She gasped and rolled her eyes.
"You're a bad, bad boy," Mom said,
but she was smiling when she said it.
She then turned toward the kitchen.
"You should eat."
When Marcos died, he took my journalism career with him.
With the world watching,
he would strut in pain like the vilest WWE heel.
But now that show was over.
The international journalists had gathered
their pens and notes and gone home.
And that was fine with me.
By then, I'd turned my attention to fiction,
my goal to write my first novel. Over the years,
I had wondered
why so many journalists found fiction so alluring,
and I think I have the answer, or at least my answer.
As reporters and editorial writers,
we start with facts and go from there,
but I began to wonder,
what if I created my own facts, my own world,
and sprinkled it with characters born
and raised in my imagination?
I would see their faces and hear their words.
I would feel to my core their fears, sorrows, and joy.
I would talk to them, and they would talk back.
Then I would put them in conflict.
I would determine the outcome.
I would decide who would live and die, kind of like God,
and creating a fictional universe will be the closest
I will ever come to divinity.
Writing a novel has a years-long wrestling match full
of weaknesses, wrong moves, and nagging doubts.
Does the scene work?
How about this word? Keep it. Change it.
Does the narrative have a rhythm?
Will it rise to the level of art?
In 1989, I submitted my first novel, Cebu,
to the University of Washington Press,
which had published a well-regarded line
of Asian American fiction. The next year,
the UW Press notified me that my novel was accepted,
release date 1991.
The initial reviews were mixed, but in 1992,
Cebu won an American Book Award.
At the time, I was living in San Francisco
and scheduled to do a lecture in Virginia Beach.
So I asked Mom and Dad to attend the awards ceremony in my place.
I called my mom after I returned to San Francisco.
"How was it?"
"Your Father," she said,
"he was going around to the different tables
carrying your book pointing to your picture on the back.
I think he was bothering people. You know how he is.
But I finally got him to sit down and eat."
Mom said that Dad had been going to the UW Press office
to ask for books to sell.
Then he'd go down to Chinatown and sell them to his pals,
even those who couldn't read.
In 1993, before he died, Mom called to ask me to talk to Dad.
They had been to yet another funeral, another old Pinoy gone.
Our community was disappearing.
But Dad was unfazed by the deaths of old friends.
At the funeral mass, he brought several copies of Cebu with him.
"At the cemetery,
your father was selling your book to the mourners, the widow,
even to the priest," she paused.
"I was so embarrassed. Please talk to him."
I giggled. "It's not funny.
Yes, it is funny to you, maybe,
but I have to live here," she said, and then sighed.
"When you stopped being an attorney, it broke his heart.
He didn't say so.
I know he didn't talk to you, but I knew.
Your Father is not much for words,
at least not American words.
And now this, his son, the award-winning author,
better than being a lawyer."
I was quiet for a moment, maybe even a little longer.
In my mind, a collage of scenes,
of Dad nodding when I hit a jump shot,
of Dad smiling at my law school graduation,
of him crying at my wedding. "Hoy, Peter."
"Oh, sorry, Mom."
"It's just his way of showing how proud he is of you."
I took a deep breath, composed myself.
"How about that," I softly said.
How much time do we have left? I'm going to do one more.
This one is The Fishing Man,
and there's a lot of fiction in this.
And the other term for memoir writing is creative nonfiction.
It's storytelling, right? It's storytelling.
So there's a lot of fiction in this.
I kind of like this story.
This is a good story. Eighty-seven.
But the principles and the underlying truth of it,
I think, holds true.
I'll read that, and then we'll do a Q&A.
The Fishing Man. As a young boy I loved to read,
from books and newspapers to magazines.
Especially magazines.
And especially Field & Stream,
with its glossy pages
on which my eleven-year-old eyes could "ah" and "ooh"
at photos of red-striped, tail-walking trout
in their distant and pure mountain creek homes.
Next came the stories of the intrepid fly-fishing White men
who caught, and sometimes released them.
Nature as it should be.
Such noble and beautiful fish, I thought at the time.
Such noble and handsome men,
none of whom I was sure called Seattle's Central Area,
Chinatown, or South End home. I wanted to join their ranks.
But first, I had to research how to become one of them.
I grabbed the dog-eared Sears catalog on the coffee table
in our living room, skipping past, for the first time,
women's 88 summer beach wear
and going straight to the sports section,
the realm of the regal Ted Williams.
And there he was, Boston's Teddy Baseball himself,
fly-fishing pole in hand, looking straight at the camera,
looking straight at me.
Ted winked and smiled.
"Ah, um, Mr. Williams," I stammered.
"Forget it, kid," he said.
"I don't care how many paper routes you have
or how much your allowance is.
This pole, just by itself, look at the price, for Christ's sake.
You can't afford this. Nope, no way.
And then there's the travel.
It costs a lot of money to get to Montana, or Idaho,
or Wyoming where the pretty fish live.
No way." I nodded.
The great Williams stared at me,
fondly, like maybe he was worried
that speaking an obvious truth had hurt my feelings,
or like maybe this conversation mattered.
He smiled.
"Hey, kid, how old are you anyway?"
"Eleven, but I'll be twelve in a couple --"
Ted chuckled, cutting me off. "Hey, don't feel bad.
When I was young, I couldn't afford this either.
My mom, she's Mexican. Bet you didn't know that."
Ted frowned and shook his head. "You know, back in my day,
being Mexican in San Diego wasn't easy.
But I lucked out.
There was baseball, of course,
and I was better than anyone else.
But 'Williams,' hey, just like any Anglo name, right?
So I had it a little easier. Now what about you, kid.
You're what?" "Filipino." "Hmm, I thought so.
Plenty of those where I come from.
Hardworking, friendly, nose in the dirt,
sweating out in the fields every damn summer day,
just like Mexicans.
And just like Mexicans, they're born poor, they die poor.
Hell, none of them are rich. At least not the ones I knew."
Ted closed his eyes. Again, he shook his head.
"I was lucky, kid," he said softly.
"Baseball, my last name. Got to avoid much of that."
He took a breath --
he took a deep breath before refocusing on me.
"You love baseball?"
"Yes, sir." "You love fishing?" "Yes, sir."
"What do you use?"
"A hand line.
My dad and me on Sundays after mass,
we'd go to the docks west of downtown on Elliott Bay.
We jig for shiners.
Sometimes, we get lucky and catch us a perch.
It's fun.
Dad says he did this a lot during the Depression.
Then sometimes on Saturday,
if we ain't playing ball or something,
me and my pals, a bunch of us,
we just hop the two Madrona, get off downtown,
walk to the dock, and do the same thing."
Ted nodded, approving.
"Well, it's not stream fishing for browns in Montana,
that's for sure.
But it's a start.
A lot of poor boys get started that way.
But what you need now is a pole, just not a fly pole.
And you can get one cheap.
Or at least cheaper.
Then all you got to do is toss the bait from shore
where the bigger fish are and just sit back and wait."
"Thanks, Mr. Williams," I said before closing the catalog.
I turned and walked out of the room.
"Any time, kid," I heard him say.
I needed a pole, Mr. Williams told me.
How to get one, now that was another issue.
I knew that the basic fishing pole/spinning reel combos
at Chubby & Tubby out on Rainier ran about twenty dollars.
Not expensive, much less than fly fishing gear.
But at that moment, $20 was $20 more than I had.
It was sunny late April afternoon,
so I walked outside and sat on the run steps.
My mind was focused, bird and fawn.
As I raced past the list of money-generating choices,
weekly allowance?
Not enough. Borrow money from friends?
Broke like me. Lawn mowing for neighbors?
Allergic to grass. More allergic to manual labor.
What then?
The answer came the next afternoon, Saturday,
when my favorite uncle, Kee Koi, dropped by the house.
Kee Koi Daan, my Dad's cousin,
lived in a shabby Chinatown hotel,
a cramped one-room hot-plate walk-up, as kid's,
Dad and he had come to this new land together, full of hope.
But in the decades since,
they'd lived their lives in America's dark margins,
West Coast fields and Alaska's canneries,
working dead-end, back-breaking jobs.
But unlike Dad, Kee Koi had never married.
He didn't have much money. As a cannery worker,
that was a given. Even I knew that.
But what he did earn, he spent on nice clothes,
nice [Audio drop] and me.
Over the years, he treated me as his chosen son,
not just a nephew. When I was young,
Uncle Kee Koi was my benefactor and my babysitter.
He taught me how to curse.
When he babysat me,
he'd get dressed up complete
with crisp dress shirt and Borsalino hat,
and we would prowl his favorite Chinatown haunts full
of other old Pinoys.
Like Kee Koi, they were all nattily dressed,
serenely confident, speaking different languages,
their words sounding like notes.
They were glad to be together.
They were glad to be alive. And why not?
Many, like Kee Koi, were combat veterans.
All of them had survived hard lives and racial hatred,
yet here they were, decades later,
still joking and laughing,
living in a land that didn't want them.
On me, these old Filipinos left an impression.
That's what I want to be when I grow up.
From those Pinoys, I first heard [Audio drop]
They were among Kee Koi's favorites, his friends, too,
and were usually bellowed at the pool hall
or at a card table in the Victory Bath House on King.
Uncle Kee Koi was also my beloved giver
of gifts and surprises,
and lucky me, today was no exception.
Dad and Kee Koi were sitting at the kitchen table,
chatting and laughing,
eating apple pie and drinking coffee with lots
of cream and sugar.
As usual, I was camped nearby,
the living room in front of our tiny black-and-white
watching a show with a White boy and his horse,
or maybe a collie, I forget which.
"Hoy, boy," Dad commanded, "come here."
I rose and walked toward them.
"Your uncle, he did well at the track."
Kee Koi smiled and nodded, "really good," he said,
as he rubbed his hands together.
"Hit the trifecta first time, on my ears going, boy, oh, boy.
He want to give you something," Dad said.
Uncle Kee Koi reached under the table
and handed me a new two-piece fiberglass rod,
complete with spin-cast reel with a covered front
and its snazzy, new-fangled push-button release.
I recognized it, too,
a Zebco combination
that I'd first seen in the fishing gear aisle
at Chubby & Tubby.
It caught my eye, a black beauty, I thought,
but more than my folks could afford.
And just like that, now it was mine.
My jaw dropped.
"Oh, wow," I mumbled. Dad looked at me sternly.
"Boy, you got something to say."
"Thank you, Uncle Kee Koi, thank you."
Kee Koi giggled and extended his right hand,
palm up and shook it, his wordless way of saying.
It was nothing, kid, nothing.
But to me, it was not nothing. From that day on,
if I had free time,
I wasn't playing baseball or going to school.
I was on my bike, the priceless Zebco,
dismantled and tethered to the crossbar,
pedaling hard to some secret or not-so-secret
spot on the Seattle side of Lake Washington.
In those days,
the lake was polluted,
the destination of untreated human waste.
But being a kid, I just didn't care.
It didn't look polluted,
especially on clear early mornings
when the lake glistened with the snow-capped cascades
in the background.
Health concerns settled.
Off on my bike I'd go on more days than not.
From our little house in the Central Area,
it was about three miles to Lake Washington,
for me and my young legs, an easy stretch by any measure.
But it may as well have been three hundred,
across the street from the lake,
where the mansions and fancy houses of Seattle's best,
the ghost people,
the White movers and shakers around the city.
They were rarely seen,
at least not by folks in the Central Area.
But I wasn't curious about them at all,
their great houses and great wealth,
their large lives and grand dreams,
their glittering futures or heroic past.
All I knew was that rich folks didn't own the lake,
and they didn't own the view.
In my grade school years of fishing the lake,
before I was consumed by high school sports,
my favorite spot was the dock next to Madison Beach.
For me it wasn't the most productive,
but that's where I met the fishing man,
a stocky and older African-American.
Every time I went to that spot he was there,
sitting on a folding chair, bending forward if it was cold,
leaning back if it wasn't.
He wasn't a man of many words,
so intent was he on catching fish.
But over time we sometimes chatted.
One afternoon he told me he was born in Louisiana,
came up during the war, served in the Pacific,
and returned to Seattle, settling here.
Before he retired, he'd worked the shipyards,
then his wife died and his kids grew up and moved away.
"Why Seattle?" I asked. He looked at me.
"Louisiana," he answered, "hard place to be if you're colored."
One day, late afternoon, I arrived at the dock.
The fishing man had already caught a mess of perch,
many more than usual.
I watched him reel in his line
and rebait the hook, worm and salmon egg staples.
Then he added a small marshmallow.
"Perch eat marshmallows?"
"These ones do," he replied.
He stood and cast as far as he could,
then settled into his chair.
"Eat this [Audio drop]," I heard him mumble.
Almost 60 years later I am sitting on a dock
on American Lake near my home outside Tacoma.
I carefully bait the hook, worm, salmon egg, and marshmallow,
a food combination not normally found in nature.
But it works, and for me that's the bottom line.
I cast out and hear the plonk and watch the ripple.
I tighten the line.
This morning in early May is warm.
So I sit back and relax, and then a fleeting memory,
a glimpse, field and stream, and the White fly-fishing men.
Nope, I never became one of them.
Then I take out a Camel, I light it,
welcome the first drag and smile.
My eyes focused on the tip of the pole.
"Eat this [Audio drop]," I say.
So any questions? Thank you.
Storytelling, that's what it's all about.
-If you have a question, feel free to raise your hand.
-Yeah, any questions the attendees may have.
-Bring the mic around for you.
-Did you meet Fred?
-What's that?
-Fred. Did you meet Fred?
Fred Cordova.
-Did you meet Fred Cordova?
-Oh. yeah. Oh, yeah.
-Hi, okay, can I ask a question?
Or is someone in the -- Oh, sorry.
-Can we get the mic there, Saurabh?
-When I was young -- Did you meet him?
When did you meet him? When you were young?
-What's that? I'm sorry, I didn't hear.
-Well, I was just wondering -- Fred Cordova,
when he was young, did you meet him?
-Oh. yeah. Yeah, yeah.
His wife and daughter are here right now.
-What about Bob Santos?
Bob Santos, did you meet him as well?
-Who's that?
-Bob Santos.
-Oh, Bob, yeah. Bob was a good friend.
I mean, Fred was a very good friend.
I've known them for decades.
They both passed, unfortunately,
and it's a loss to this community.
-Nice. Nice.
-They were real movers and shakers.
-I think I have a question for you.
So, when you were talking about storytelling
and writing for memoirs and being very honest,
and because people can kind of sniff out when you can't,
but then you also discussed writing for fiction
and being able to build in that own world.
At what point do you find the vulnerability
versus the fiction at that coding?
Does that make sense? Thank you.
-I mean, the thing about what makes memoirs stand out,
is -- other than the storytelling techniques
that you use, is that it has to be honest.
You have to reveal who you are.
Otherwise, the readers are going to turn it off, okay?
This isn't fiction,
although I do combine a little bit of fiction in here.
Obviously, the one about fishing, Ted Williams.
I mean, I didn't meet Ted Williams,
but the principle is still the same,
that I didn't become a fly-fishing man.
There's a hand there.
-You started to talk about the rules, and you didn't elaborate.
-What's that?
-You started to talk about the rules.
-The rules? -Right, when you write.
-Yeah. You know, you have fiction,
you have creative non-fiction,
and they're both like first cousins.
There are different forms of storytelling.
And I use all kinds of fictional techniques
in terms of use of dialogue,
and combining it with what I hope was effective narrative.
I mean, that's what a good fiction writer does.
And you build the story to a climax.
Okay?
And that's what a good fiction writer does.
But you do the same thing
when you're writing an effective memoir, in my opinion, at least.
-You didn't tell the rules.
What were the rules?
-The rules?
-Yeah. -Don't over-rely on narrative.
Do not -- that's key.
And a lot of beginning memoir writers
will over-rely on narrative.
They'll treat a memoir as if it were an essay.
You can't do that. It is storytelling.
That's the number one rule for me.
And the reason that beginning writers, in memoirs,
at least, they over-rely on narrative is
because that's what resembles composition.
It's the type of writing that we are all very familiar with.
And you need to break away from it.
And you need to give your characters free reign.
Okay? They have to have agency.
They have to be able to say what they want to say.
They have to be able to think what they want to think,
et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, so in that sense, in that sense,
it's very much like fiction.
It's storytelling. Does that answer your question?
-Close enough. -Okay.
-Thank you for including Auntie Remy's voice,
your mother's voice in that story.
All of us who are immigrant kids,
you know, our parents want the best for us.
The lawyer, the priest, all of those doctors,
and how you try to achieve their dream,
but then they realize their dream is not your dream.
And then in the end,
your mom and your dad were very proud of you.
-Yeah, I mean, One October Day is almost a story of redemption.
For me, at least. You know,
they didn't get exactly what they thought
they would get out of it,
but they still got something worthwhile.
And that story of my dad selling my novel at funerals and stuff,
that's a true story.
That's a true story.
-I was asking Mary if Uncle Rico was your real uncle?
-He's a cousin of my dad.
-He was? -Yeah.
-And I was wondering
if he was actually a fusion of several other uncles
that you had together? -Yeah. Yeah.
But Uncle Rico stands out because he was like --
I was like his chosen son. -Oh, okay.
-So we were very close. I'll tell you a story.
I was living in San Francisco at the time,
and my mom calls and she says,
"Well, you know, Kee Koi," Uncle Rico,
"Kee Koi it doesn't look like he's going to make it."
I says, "Where is he?" She says, "He's at the VA.
Can you come up now" I says, "I'm kind of broke.
Can you tell him to wait until the end of the month?"
And he did. And we drove off that night,
you know, we drove all night, turned around,
I kissed him on the forehead and told him I loved him.
And we walked out. He held on.
He held on because we were that close.
He understood I was broke.
He understood being broke. I said,
"Tell him I've got to wait for my next paycheck
and then I'll be there, I promise, I swear, I swear."
So I was able to say my goodbye.
Actually, he appears as a ghost in one of these stories.
And that's a true story,
at least told by my wife at the time
that she had seen him as a young man.
He always liked her.
And I said, oh, okay, you're going to visit her
and you're not going to visit me?
What's up with that?
[ Laughs ]
-Thank you so much for sharing.
As I was reading the memoir,
there's a lot of themes of change
both in the world as well as
amongst the Filipino community here in Seattle.
And one thing I was wondering about your process
was the act of documenting for yourself
real-time throughout your life and your journey
versus how much of it was sort of recollecting
and thinking through and reminiscing either solo
or talking to other people.
-Can you restate that a little bit?
-So thinking about the themes of change in
and around Seattle particularly among the Filipino community
and your lived experiences,
I was wondering about what was your process
both documenting and thinking through for yourself
as you were living it?
Like in your memoirs or journals versus recollecting?
-It was just remembering.
The community that I'm referring to for
the most part is gone now.
The old timers have passed and the stories
that they had with them, their experiences here,
that first generation for the most part,
that's gone.
And I thought, you know,
I mean there are other members of the community now.
I figure it's their stories to tell.
It's not my story to tell. But it's their stories to tell.
But for that generation, those two generations,
the old timers and their American-born children.
Hell, their kids are now in their, what,
70s and 80s and stuff.
[ Chuckling ] We're up there.
So someone had to tell those stories.
So that's what I chose to do.
I can't tell the stories of younger Filipinos.
They have their own stories.
They have their own issues that they have to deal with.
The challenges that they have to deal with.
I am not privy to that. I'm not privy to that.
I picked out a segment of this community
that I knew very, very, very well.
-I think we've got time for one more.
-Question here.
-There's a question here.
-Who's interpreting? Yes, hello.
Who's interpreting for me?
I'm curious. The book that you wrote.
How long did it take you to write that book, all together?
-A year and a half, two years or so.
It was a relatively quick process for me
because it was broken up into individualized stories.
Anyone who is going to do a memoir,
that's one way to approach it.
That's one way to organize the material around,
in this case at least,
our community or history of our community.
I chose to tell the story of the community or segments
of that community in individualized stories.
The process at the UW --
I worked with a wonderful editor -- is that I would write --
-And just to interject really quickly, sorry.
Factual stories or fictional stories?
-It's a mix.
I mean, obviously,
The Fishing Man is much more fiction than it is memoir.
All of the memories of the actual fisherman, he's there.
Those are real. Those are real.
But me bumping into Ted Williams, of course not.
Ted Williams, for those of you who aren't baseball fans,
was probably one of the greatest hitters that ever lived.
And he was an outsized personality
in the history of baseball.
And after he retired from the Boston Red Sox,
he became a staple in the Sears Roebuck catalog.
I don't even know if folks get Sears Roebuck catalogs anymore.
But he was the head of the sports department.
And he loved fishing.
And I said, "Oh, there's Ted Williams."
He's not in my living room.
Of course he's not in my living room.
That's why we have the title in the book,
Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle.
The rest of the stuff is true.
There's a hand up there somewhere.
-We've got one last one from the live stream.
-Ah, there's a hand here.
-Some of them online.
-Well, I'll start with the question
we have coming from the live stream.
Alan, tuning in from Virginia Beach,
wants to know what the differences are between today's
70 plus Filipino Americans versus your dad and uncles.
-I think probably social class, to a certain degree.
I mean, you know,
when I was a kid growing up, I thought all Filipinos were poor.
I ended up spending time -- you know,
the center of the universe was Stockton, California,
and CD or the south end of Seattle.
That's where Filipino America --
my segment of Filipino America was.
Most of us didn't go to college and, you know,
economic circumstances dictated that.
But also, the stereotypes
that pervaded the Seattle public schools in terms
of what particularly, in terms of my generation,
Filipino males were capable or not capable of.
And so there was no real push to get these guys into college.
And as a result, most of them were drafted and sent to Vietnam
which is not necessarily a good thing to happen to people.
So there was that sense of you're a part of this.
You know, the history of your parents or your fathers
at least, if you're Mestizo.
You know the struggles that they had to go through.
My dad was very clear to me that life here was tough
and that's something I carried with me.
That's Bergano, Allan Bergano, he's tuning Virginia Beach.
-I just had a question about the ghost
that you were describing at the foot of your mother's bed.
-Yeah, that was real. That was real.
I didn't invent that.
-Did anything happen to your brother?
-That's a long story.
If she was to be a protective one,
she wasn't very protective of him.
He hasn't had a good turn of things, let's put it that way.
But yeah, I can still remember it.
It was kind of a life-changing event
in terms of my attitude towards things.
-All right. Thank you.
Everybody, give a really big round of applause, please.
[ Applause ]