BISAYA MAGAZINE, THE PLAIN TRUTH AND PAPERBACKS
I was still seated at the veranda with my back against the wall and my feet stretched on the fixed wooden bench when I noticed my mother’s familiar gait as she walked the short distance from the highway to the house. My petite mother went about on foot and hiking brought hardiness and vigor to her thin limbs.
Her face was wet with perspiration. I took the buli frond bag from her at the stairs of the veranda and made the traditional mano po.
“The ‘Bisaya’ is inside,” my mother said, stamping his sandals at the foot of the ladder to rid of dirt.
I retrieved the magazine at the kitchen and returned to the porch where there was still enough light. I started flipping the latest issue of the Bisaya. After two months of convalescence my optic nerves had normalized. I started my limited readings when my eyes had regained focus.
I became an avid reader not because of the surfeit of reading materials but because of the dearth of it. The dearth of reading materials made me read whatever I could lay my hands on. I was in my high school when my parents regularly bought the weekly issue of the Bisaya. The Cebuano magazine, published by the Manila-based Liwayway Publishing, contained short stories, serialized novels (in prose or illustrated forms) and articles. Every Thursday after classes, I would hastily deposit my things in the house and proceed to Balagatasa to get our issue of the magazine at the variety store where my parents bought soaps, condiments and sundry household items on credit.
Unable to restrain myself, I would start browsing Mars Ravelo’s graphic novels and other komiks while still on the road. The store was about a kilometer away from our house. Reading the magazine honed my mastery of the native tongue and encouraged me to write. I wrote short stories in high school and after college. My inexperience in the real world showed in my sophomoric short stories but two of them eventually saw print in the Bisaya Magasin.
My father got free subscription of The PLAIN TRUTH, a US-based magazine founded by Herbert W. Armstrong. I voraciously read the prophetic writings of the pastor general of the Worldwide Church of God, notwithstanding that many of his ideas and claims did not conform to the doctrines of our Roman Catholic religion. The magazine had contributed much to my English proficiency and further increased my desire to read. That desire was satisfied when I was studying in the Mindanao State University. As a college student, I spent more time reading paperbacks than the textbooks. I read two to three paperbacks a week. I borrowed these paperbacks from the university library and from the experimental library established by a group of U. S. Peace Corp volunteers who worked in the university as guest professors. I had read many of the books in that “library without a librarian” before most the paperbacks were gone. The Peace Corps volunteers had gained some insights on student behaviors and lost their books. I myself was a culprit when I “forgot” to sign out and to return a paperback each of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain.
