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name:
Bill Hackett
email:
( Email address withheld for privacy )
Subject: Second
Message in 20 minutes
Date:
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Time:
09:17:16 PM
message:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Davis,
I just finished looking through your picture album and it brought
back so many memories. I was stationed in Olongapo in 1976 and made
friends with a family near the old Pag Asa open air market. Everyone
slept in the same room ( I mean everyone) and I slept fitfully with
a dozen or so people around me. In the early morning a rooster
decided I had slept too much, and started crowing. No one else
seemed to hear; but I decided to get up.
A brief rain had fallen and washed the dirt away, leaving the
clean smell in the way only tropical showers can. There was some
leftover adobo and rice in a pan on the open air stove so I had a
bite before making my morning toilette. As I sat with my back
against the concrete wall that was shower, bathroom, drain, and
general resting place, dipping fresh rainwater into a coffee can and
pouring it over my head for a shower, I became aware of every smell,
and sound, and sight around me.
The colors were almost painful they were so bright, and the
smells of dirt, and people, and food overpowering. Then there were
the sounds of the city stirring, coming slowly to life as it always
did in the early dawn. Subtle noises, except for that old rooster,
who by now had decided he needed some rice and adobo too.
In all my life, I've have never felt that alive and aware.
If you had to ask me why I want a Filipina wife and home; I cannot
think of any other way to put it.
The Filipina is the most beautiful women God ever made; my father
would have said handsome, because there she has a quality and deep
beauty that surpasses what the eye sees. She embodies all of my
morning experience in a person.
Wow, did I ever go on. Sorry, but then I'm sure you know what I'm
saying.
Mabuhay,
Bill Hackett
