Relics

 From a box of unscanned photos, the faces and candid shots jumped out and brought back a flood of memories.

I recall my first jaunt to Corregidor while it was still being developed by the Philippine Tourism Authority. There lay on the white pebbles of the Bataan side shore, a crummy enamel tub of unusual proportion. It was filled with sea water and the men told me they salvaged it from the wreckage of the Dona Aurora, the presidential yatch that sunk in the channel during the war. I was a young man back then, and they told me if I sat on it, the influence might rub off me and I might be a president someday.  Big deal, but what the heck! I clambered into MLQs bathtub and savored the sun drenched moment amidst the chatter of workmen around me. I do not know where they took it afterwards, but I guess it cut a niche in my memory.  And as i write about these relics, it figures prominently in my mind.

In the capitol of Pangasinan in Lingayen, there are on display an American Sherman tank and a Japanese Zero. This plane was the exact type which was used by the kamikaze at the tail end of the war, which they loaded with explosives and crashed on enemy targets. I could easily savor the moment as a young pilot sat on this plane contemplating his fate before the final moment. I could see his life flash before him, his parents, his sweetheart, his loved ones. I tend to wonder what his last thoughts were, and how those who knew him remember him now?

In the capitol of the State of Maryland in Annapolis, there is an enclosure where the original table and chair used by George Washington in signing the declaration of independence is on display. People who walk through that hall gaze and marvel at the significance of these inanimate objects that remind them of a time in history that shaped the future of their nation. It was an early day in fall when i paid a visit and surreptitiously slipped through the rope enclosure and had a friend snap a picture of me sitting on that chair. Some cheek! I almost thought I saw George smirk from his lofty perch on the wall as this Asian tourist dared lay his butt on his historic chair.

Sometime later, in the same time line, I was sitting on the chair of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona in Phoenix, savoring the view from the pinnacle of judicial power and wielding the gavel that sealed  the finality of a decision. Then on the leather chair of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the US Congress at the Capitol in Washington DC. This was not captured for posterity as guards do not allow cameras within the hall even if Congress is not is session. But the same blue carpet adorns the hall and has not changed since.

At the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, there I sat on the shell of the Apollo 11 capsule that brought Neil Armstrong back from the moon, wondering  at how this cramped shell of steel could have sustained the crew through its fiery reentry to the earth’s  atmosphere. Had the Wright brothers’ plane not been suspended on the ceiling, i might have climbed into that, too, just to get a feel of what it was like in an open cockpit of the first flying machine the world has known. what a jaunt.

But a faded brown and white picture caught my eye. It was that of my grandparents standing by an ancient wooden truck with wooden spokes on its tires. They stared out from the past, looking like derelicts in the fashion of those times. I could still make out the diminutive face of my dad when he was still a baby, cradled by his mother with his father’s arms around her shoulders. They are no longer around, but this photo is a reminder of their passage. I sure wish there was a way of bringing back that old wooden contraption.

As the photos  went through the scanner and saved into a disc, I wondered what to do with the old pictures. They have now been rendered in digital detail and preserved indeterminately through present day technology. Somehow, after saving these memories, they will wind up in storage someplace, as they already are, until someone in the distant future digs them up as another relic of a generation gone by. And i wonder what they would make out of it, as i think of the past now.