‘Parang' spaghetting pababa ng pababa at pataas ng pataas', so goes a line of a naughty tagalog song. So apt to apply to the present fuel situation in the country when one week ago there was a price roll back and and an oil price hike the next week. And seemingly government cannot do anything, not even intervening and not lifting a finger,so to speak. Over the years fuel hit the roof compared to when I bought my first car in mid-sixties, a second hand Chevrolet wagon formerly owned by an American GI stationed in then Clark Air Force Base. ( It's now called Clark Freeport by virtue of R.A 7227 passed in 1993).
In those years buy and sell business was a very lucrative enterprise for car brokers who deal with second hand American cars owned by soldiers assigned in Clark. The GIs tour of duty was only two years, so before they will be shipped to their new assignments they sold their cars with an approval first by their merchandise control office (MCO) and has to pay the Philippines' Bureau of Customs which has a district office outside the gate of the air base. ( A certain Sgt Fields of MCO was the one processing the papers of his fellow GIs before the consummation of the sale. No wonder car brokers when asked where was his destinations, the answer was 'kang Fields'. That's how the street near the customs house became Fields Avenue.
Buy and sell business and in Angeles City and nearby Dau in Mabalacat was brisk. Many American soldiers including their dependents were involved in blackmarketing of Post Exchanges (PX) items ranging from soaps, chocolate candies, perfumes, alcohol drinks and big items like air conditioners, vehicles and many other household appliances. It was Nepo Mart in Barangay Cutcut which has the most number of stores selling PX items that those engaged into it became millionaires and were able to build houses with four car garage on gated subdivisions in the city. But all these are gone now when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in June 1991 and immediately the Americans made their departure and for two years nothing was left in the military installation except some buildings and abandoned second hand cars. ( Kitchen items and plates were found in a restaurant in Cebu City reportedly owned by a former Philippine Air Force general).
Clark Air Force Base was the biggest military installation outside of the United States. It’s the facility wherein the American government conducted operations in the whole of the pacific was based. It was the home of the 13th US Air Force. It played an important role during the Vietnam war in the late sixties. The prolonged stay of the Americans in our country caused some irritants between American servicemen and to people living in what we known then as the off-Base communities like Porac, Angeles, Mabalacat,Bamban and Capas. Aside from those shot and killed by sentry guards suspected of pilfering, I clearly remember the case of a lawyer, a special counsel at the Angeles City Fiscal’s office who was arrested and handcuffed in full view of people just for fetching water from a faucet near the main gate.
> It was true then that economies of the off-base communities were partly dependent on the American expenditures. The American base was the biggest employer. And on the downside it became also the source of black market items, thus competing with the locally manufactured goods. The PX stores mushroomed in Dau, Mabalacat and in Angeles City and even as far as in Barangay Balite in San Fernando.
> Compared today, with the Americans gone and their military installation becoming a freeport, we never had it so good. The government under the presidency of Fidel Ramos drew up a plan, and converted it into an economic zone. The rest is history.
