Seventh grade: Me on the left in the jacket.

Clark memories Life at Clark as a dependent, 1979-82 Tim Vasquez Like the legendary city of Pompeii, Clark Air Base, Philippines is one of those rare places that was swept off the map by political and geological forces. Some of its buildings and layout still exist, but its people, places, and character are gone forever. The threads of continuity were severed in the 1990s with the base closure and the renovation of the land and its buildings. Clark was an impressionable place when I was younger, and its sudden disappearance makes it a curiosity for me. I believe it's fitting to immortalize Clark as it was when I was there as a young teenager.

At the age of eleven, I arrived at Clark Air Force Base in August 1979 during one of the rainiest periods I can remember. We flew into Clark from Travis AFB on a Trans International DC-8, by way of Honolulu and Guam. My dad was a microwave communications technician with the 1961 CG and had arrived a month before us. He picked us up and took us to our temporary home, one of the trailers near the Silver Wing (which had a leak in the roof and a bucket to catch the rainwater). Because of all the rain I spent a lot of time in the trailer. None too soon, we were finally able to move into our house at 413 40th Place in the hill housing area by the end of the month.

Our new home. We quickly settled into our new home, which being in the hill housing area was one of the 3-bedroom flat-roofed cinder block homes. My parents located an excellent maid, Lilia Mondares, age 19, who worked Monday through Friday for the entire three years, earning about $40 per week. She was from San Carlos, about 50 miles north of Clark, and in 1980 earned the title "Miss Province". A few years after we left, she had married a GI and had moved to the U.S. We also were lucky to have an outstanding, friendly yardboy, Mel Quito, who lived in Mabalacat.

Sixth grade at Lily Hill Middle School. I started sixth grade at Lily Hill Middle School, its buildings made up of modular sections. To get there I caught bus #4, which ran through the eastern hill housing area. It was a good school, and after awhile I became somewhat infamous for impersonating and drawing caricatures of some of our teachers. Some of the most memorable teachers were industrious shop and math teacher Mr. Fred Barber and his Filipino assistant King; librarian Ms. Sullivan who let me come in the library during lunch without a pass; our laid-back English teacher Mr. Hunt always in shorts and planning for a tennis match after school; science teacher Ms. Disgrazzi always with a Tab cola nearby; eccentric social studies teacher Mr. G.D. Williams, a devout Yankees fan; math teacher Mr. Lilly who brought his dog Otto to school every day; and who can forget bearded principal Dr. Allen, brandishing his megaphone as he walked among the parked buses like Dirty Harry at the end of each day to keep everyone in line. There was assistant principal Mr. Weir who I thought was cool until he ran me out of the office when I came in and asked for some of the interesting recycled maps that were being used for scratch paper. Anyone remember that Sari-Sari store near the shop class? They never had anything in stock! Most kids ended up going to the library to buy corn nuts.

Friends aplenty. I mostly hung out with my rebel friends who lived nearby, including Keith Wages, Mike Salas, and Gene Medina who always carried smokes and talked about the latest stuff from Journey and Aerosmith. There were other kids our age on my circle and the ones nearby, including Holley Cuddeback, Chuck Page, Jennifer Page, the Whitmire girls, Bobby, Rhonda (forgot last names) and others, so it set up a pretty rich social scene. Even on boring days I have quite a few memories of wandering around the housing area with Keith and Gene with a boom box blasting the Van Halen I album. Then there was the classmate whose shadow I worshipped for two years: Renee Kasper. In sixth grade I was too nervous to talk to her; in seventh grade she switched to Wagner Middle School (much to my disappointment); and in eighth grade when I switched, too, I was lucky to have her in my science class. I actually chose to get in trouble so that Mr. Bryant would assign me to sit across from her (it worked!), and then I ignored the girl next to me, Teresa, who had a crush on me. That summer I finally called and asked Renee out. She didn't know what to make of my proposal and thought someone was playing a trick. It would have been amusing to see how she would have reacted if she had known I was flying back to the U.S. in three days. Oh well, at least I tried!

Seventh grade at Lily Hill Middle School. I started seventh grade, with all the usual interesting characters at Lily Hill Middle. I had some of the same teachers again, including Mr. Williams and Mr. Barber, but had a few new ones, including the science teacher Mr. Turner, who made me use the nearby phone one day to call my dad and tell him I was drawing in class. I actually dialed the time & temperature, feigned a phone confession, and was never caught.

Rough start. I had a pretty rough start to the school year. The first incident occurred when I was in the art class during lunch making some clippings from newspapers, and I cut my finger on the paper cutter! No one saw and I hid it most of the day, keeping it well-wrapped, until that afternoon my mom saw blood on the floor. Thankfully the emergency room visit wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! In another incident, after school the busdriver found that the lower door window had been kicked in and cracked. He drove straight to the motorpool, and a sergeant there decided to match the shoeprint. It matched mine! The motorpool called my mom, but thankfully my mom realized that it wasn't the sort of thing I would have done. On the ride home, a couple of kids realized that a guy named Doug, who lived just up the street, was responsible; Holley Cuddeback saw that I was upset and came by to help explain things to my mom, who was obviously puzzled by the fiasco.

A social scene that dried up. Unfortunately by early 1981 most of the teens in my neighborhood had moved away. Replacing them were numerous couples without any kids or with kids under age 4, making for a pretty sorry social situation. Fortunately I had one friend left, Eric Bodien who was still around, and we often hung out together. My friends from Lily Hill lived in other housing areas, making things kind of inconvenient.

Eighth grade at Wagner Middle School. In 1981 I started eighth grade at Wagner Middle School. This school was a great one -- it had character and I quickly found lots of new acquaintances. The teachers were just as interesting as those at Lily Hill. There was our young science teacher Mr. Bryant, always decked out in his white lab coat, long hair, and a beard and known for his "chickenscratch" signature; accomplished social studies teacher Ms. Johnson who had been working on her Ph.D.; enthusiastic math teacher Mr. Reed; oddball Mr. Olszewski (Mr. "O"), who I never had for a teacher but was famous for his bizarre ability to make his abdomen do odd movements; and level-headed English teacher Ms. Lavin, who could always diagram any sentence we could come up with no matter how mangled it was. Finally I have to mention the fights -- every few months there would be word of a huge fight, usually behind Wagner High School, and many of us kids would show up to see what was going on; there was always the rumor that it would involve martial arts and would be quite a spectacle. Almost every time, though, the fight would be broken up by the school staff before it could start.

Social renaissance. I made quite a few friends here, including Mike Blair, an eccentric, tall guy whose dad worked at the Embassy; goofy, fun Chris Partridge; and David Martinson, a clean-cut guy whose dad ran the comm squadron.

Hanging out at the flightline. Around this time, I became interested in career possibilities, starting with the base around me. I began making trips to the flightline occasionally to look at the planes (even the cargo planes), and I occasionally dropped in at the control tower, base ops, the weather station, AFRTS, the flight simulator building, and anyplace that had maps (including CE). Sometimes I was a welcome visitor and other times I was turned away, depending on who was working at the time.

Heading home. On a cloudy morning on July 6, 1982, we boarded a Flying Tigers 747 for the flight home. I happened to catch a glimpse of Christina Hough, a tall, confident, and pretty classmate from Wagner Middle. I was surprised to see her in tears. In a sense I felt the same way. It was the closing of a chapter in my life too, but it took a little longer for it to sink in.

Notable places and stories

• Freezing cold! In January 1982 it dropped to 59 degrees. Everyone bundled up going to school. It's amazing how living in the tropics changes your perception of weather.
• EOD demonstrations. These were some of the coolest events that occurred during our schoolyears. To impress on kids not to touch unexploded ordinance, the EOD team would explode several different types of bombs for us. I'll never forget the eerie powdery explosion of the phosphorus bombs; we learned you can get both shrapnel and chemical burns from them.
• Highest point on Clark. As far as I know, this was the water tank in the west officer's housing area. My friends and I would often barter a soda with the Philippine Air Force guard on top, then enjoy the view on top and chat with the guard.
• F.M. Wash. This was the huge savanna at the base of MARS Hill that bisected the western part of the base. I always enjoyed hiking and didn't let the rumors of thieves, intruders, and snakes stop me from charting the area, machete in hand. It's a wonder I never came away with any ticks, leeches, or bug bites.
• Golf course drainage pond. There was a dam and a large pond on the west side of the golf course. It was the closest thing we had to a real lake. One time my friends and I tried to set sail on the pond on my sister's inflatable swimming pool. We immediately sank in six feet of nasty tropical water.
• Putt-putt golf course. When you finished, you had to putt your ball into the maze box for a free prize. We never had any luck with this, so when nobody was looking we would aim toward a clear area (such as west of the Silver Wing) and drive the ball as far as it would go -- it would go sailing far out of sight.
• Lily Hill. I always wanted to climb this hill, but the road going up to the water tanks on top was marked with "Keep Out" signs. The hill was said to be littered with unexploded ordinance and deadly snakes. One time when I was filming a school production, one of the actors closed his scene by walking into the brush surrounding Lily Hill, exactly as scripted. As the camera was rolling, he paused, saw a snake, and began running away. This made for a hilarious blooper tape that was played over and over in the school library.
• Commissary. In the fall months, the commissary would have a "free samples" day. Mike and I would skip our afternoon classes and head to the smorgasbord.
• Library. While the Stars & Stripes bookstore would run us out of the store if we even touched a biker magazine, the base library attendents would let kids sign out Playboys. The magazine had some notable people that posed and made news, and my friends and I would sometimes head to the library to see what all the fuss was about.
• Ghost stories. Everyone at Clark has probably heard the creepy story about a ghost that sometimes appears in the back of base taxis late at night. But have you heard the rumor that Mango Park (in the central hill housing area) was haunted? I started that rumor firsthand, making up a story that during the 1900s a guy named Francisco Mango was killed on his chariot in a Spanish-Filipino battle right there at the park, and that his ghost lived on. My friends would sometimes venture to the park at night to find the ghost, and I'd be right behind them with a couple of greenball fruits in my hand, throwing them into the trees at the right moment for a quick scare. In a more bizarre prank on a 16-year old we knew, me and a couple of friends faked a computer printout, making it up to be an official report from CE that his house was haunted.
• Officers Club. They usually had the latest video games in their arcade. My friends and I would occasionally head there to give them a try.
• CEX cards. Remember these? You couldn't even buy a stick of gum at the shoppette without your CEX card. Apparently pilfering of cheap US goods was common. There are solid rumors that in 1982 as the new commissary was being built east of the NCO Club that a massive tunnel was constructed between the new commissary and a building off base near the Negrito village. This would have been quite a feat as the distance is nearly a mile. Anyone have any info on this to share?
• Silver Wing. This is the place where we used to sneak upstairs and play the pianos, drums, and guitars. We were usually booted out after five or ten minutes. It never stopped me, though, as I eventually learned to play keyboards.
• Mosquito trucks. They were a common sound in the late summer and fall at Clark -- you heard them slowly driving along, spraying a huge cloud of insecticide (malathion?). No one in their right mind hung around to watch the truck go by.
• Greenball trees. Anyone remember those trees with thick, shiny, ovate leaves that produced 2" green balls, dropping them on the ground regularly? They were all over Clark, and they're not a species that occurs anywhere in North America. If anyone knows the exact name of the tree, I'd sure like to find out.
• Drainage ditches. A network of drainage ditches 5 to 20 feet deep crisscrossed the hill housing area, and much to the alarm of residents it was a spectacle when monsoon rains would turn them into raging maelstroms and attract the neighborhood kids.
• Filipino TV. Manila aired American PBS kids shows on some of its regular TV networks, with commercials, and it wasn't uncommon for "Sesame Street" to be interspersed with San Miguel beer commercials. Mag beer muna tayo, Big Bird!
• Filipino TV game shows. Anyone remember the daytime game shows such as "Eat Bulaga", where the prizes were boxes of rice, cookware, and portable radios? Then the camera would turn toward the audience, many of whom were fanning theirselves. That was 1980 -- and did you know Eat Bulaga is STILL in production until at least 2004? Wow.

Tim's Clark items