Chasing the American dream: I found my grandpa’s slice of the Old West in the Philippines – Courier Journal

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Gnarled tree roots and thick underbrush block the dirt path to where Im told my grandfathers long-abandoned ranch house still sits decaying in a remote part of the Philippines.

This overgrownvegetation halts us in our tracks, 90 minutes from the closest town. For one helpless moment, it appears well have to turn back, an 8,600-mile trip from where my mom lives in New York all for naught.

Then the ranch hands accompanying my mother and me on our journey unsheathe their wide bolo knives. They hack at the growth and direct every turn of our drivers steering wheels as we crawl through inch by inch.

Ten minutes later, were in the sunlight again. The path winds its way up a hill and terminates at a cluster of cinder block buildings. Theyre the first man-made structures Ive seen in miles. Weve arrived.

Sprawled across the grassy hills of Masbate Island the rodeo capital of the Philippines my grandfathers cattle ranch was so remote that getting there from where he raised his family in Manila during the '60s and '70s usually involved a small plane and at least one outrigger boat.

Ranching was an unusual venture for my grandfather, Francisco Lee-Llacer, who died before I was born. He was a Chinese-Filipino accountant based in the bustling Philippine capital. And yet, Im told he would trek to this sweeping ranch he had cobbled together after World War II as often as he could, braving the swirling undercurrents that make navigation near some parts of Masbate Island treacherous, and bouncing down the provinces then-unpaved roads aboard makeshift buses sometimes hitching an open-air ride on the roof.

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Many times, hed bring his wife and kids, my mother among them. All her best stories are tied, in some way, to the ranch.

It was not far from the ranch that my mom learned to shoot bats with an old Winchester rifle, and it was also en route there that my grandfather encountered the sea turtle that, for a brief period, would become a beloved family pet, before my grandparents sent it back into the wild.

The far-flung ranch sat miles away from town, an outpost on the Philippine equivalent of the Old West. There, my grandfather could take his family back to a simpler time as all around them life was growing increasingly uncertain, first because of a threat of a communist uprising, then the subsequent imposition of martial law in 1972 by then-President Ferdinand Marcos.

I cant help but wonder whether the ranch was my grandfathers slice of the American dream in a land that 73 years ago was a commonwealth of the United States.

Family photo albums that I discovered on a trip toManila last year contain images of my grandfather, always sharply dressed in a suit and tie, posing beside American ranchers in their cowboy hats and jeans. Its unclear whether he actually knew these men but Im told the photos were souvenirs from his trips to cattle shows in America, where he'd watch small vials of bull semen sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

His love of American culture was likely born out of his experience in World War II. Like many veterans, my grandfather didnt talk much about his time in the war. A Chinese national living in the Philippines, my grandfather wasnt even supposed to be conscripted into the Philippine Army. But in the chaos that preceded the outbreak of war, relatives say he was drafted anyway, to fight alongside the Americans.

On Dec. 7, 1941 Dec. 8 in the Philippines the Japanese launched their infamous surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S.- and British-held locations in the Pacific, including the Philippines. Outgunned Philippine and American troops stationed in Manila endured a monthslong siege before surrendering. They were then forced to walk at bayonet point some 65 miles to a woefully inadequate prisoner of war camp. My grandfather was among them.

Thousands of Filipino soldiers and hundreds of Americans died on the way, either succumbing to starvation and illness or at the cruel hands of their captors in what later became known as the Bataan Death March.

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With their floppy ears and distinctive hump, Brahman cattle are well adapted to the Philippine heat.(Photo: Alfred Miller)

My grandfather survived and was eventually released along with thousands of other Philippine captives who were wracked by disease. When he recovered, he joined the Philippine resistance movement until the end of the war.

Im told he wasnt bitter about getting drawn into World War II. On the contrary, in later years, his idea of a good time was listening to a well-worn album of American military tunes. Maybe his outpost in Masbate was a tribute to those days. He planned to retire there.

But it was not to be.

In November 1984, shortly after he had arranged for his children to seek out their own American dreams new lives in the United States my grandfather died of a sudden heart attack while working on the ranch.

It took my mom, who had moved to New York, met my dad and started a family, years to bring herself to come back to the Philippines, let alone the ranch. Maybe she was in denial that my larger-than-life grandfather had been anything but invincible. But prompted by the death of her brother last year also of an unexpected heart attack she decided to return. And she wanted me, her only child, to come along.

That is how I found myself, a native Staten Islander who now lives in Louisville and who, like my Russian-Jewish father, hadnever slashed my way through tropical vegetation,fresh off a predawn flight from Manila early one September morning. I was in Masbate City, a town of 95,000 people 230 miles southeast of Manila, and about to become the highly unlikely passenger of an unfamiliar white Kia pickup truck.

My guide and driver that day was the chatty son of a prominent Masbate rancher who had helped establish the provinces rodeo scene in the early 90s. His father trundled ahead in a red Toyota pickup containing my mom and her sisters.

Some 40 years ago, my accountant grandfather would start his treks to the ranch with a visit to a local baker, a friend whose books he kept. But that bakery is long gone, replaced by a building with a store advertising knockoff Lee jeans (Stylistic Mr. Lee). So we begin our journey instead by pulling up to the drive-through window of Masbates only McDonalds, which opened two years ago.

The smell of America or, at least, of McMuffin sandwiches and hot coffee fills the cab as we start down a two-lane highway that will get us to where my grandfathers ranch house was abandoned more than three decades ago, the perfect spot for a bill hilly, jokes my guide, who knows I now live in Kentucky.

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Family photo albums that I recently discovered contain images of my grandfather, always sharply dressed in a suit and tie, posing beside American ranchers in their cowboy hats and jeans.(Photo: Alfred Miller)

Squint and you might actually mistake the cattle ranches of Masbate for those of Kentucky. Locals, like my guide, encourage such comparisons to America.

Freedom is no seat belts, my guide says, in English, with a smile. So youre freer here than in the U.S.

I cautiously unbuckle my seat belt for a taste of that freedom. The trucks dashboard doesnt yell at me. How liberating. But I clutch the door handle a little more firmly now.

Along the highway, palm trees, stray dogs and water buffalo punctuate the dusty landscape. Crossing a river, we spot goldpanners below. My guides cell phone rings. Its the theme to the old Western film The Magnificent Seven.

Perhaps my guide has watched too many such films. He talks casually of hired guns and standoffs as we speed heavily down the road, stray dogs fleeing in our wake.

At a Philippine Army checkpoint, we slow down and my guide turns unusually quiet. There must have been a killing, he says, noting the presence of a soldier armed with a large rifle.

For decades, the New Peoples Army, a communist rebel group that the U.S. and European Union have designated as a terrorist organization, have essentially owned the hills of some of the Philippiness most remote regions (other isolated areas are dominated by ISISs Southeast Asian affiliate Abu Sayyaf and the unfortunately nicknamed Moro Islamic Liberation Front, MILF). But the NPAs grip here is said to have loosened in recent years, thanks in part to roads like the one were on.

Why join a terrorist organization when you can now ride to work in the city?

An hour and a half into our drive, we turn off the highway and onto a dirt road. Six ranch hands, who work for our guides, are there to meet us.

The ranch hands of my moms stories rode horses, but these sit astride motorcycles. Ranch hands prefer motorcycles to horses these days, my guide explains. Motorcycles are less temperamental.

In the lead is Ulde, the rodeo king. Well into his 60s, hes still able to wrestle steers to the ground with his bare hands, my guide assures me. Studying his gait after he hops lithely from his motorcycle, I see no reason to doubt this.

Up and down the grassy hills we roll. Its been nearly two hours since we left Masbate City.

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My mother takes me on a tour of the tiny building that loomed so large in my imagination.(Photo: Alfred Miller)

The land is still part of an active cattle ranch and we pass some Philippine cattle now. Growing up, Id sometimes hear, but never really appreciate, my mom waxing poetic about the virtues of different types of cattle when wed drive past farms. Then again, the cows Ive seen in upstate New York never looked quite like these.

With their floppy ears and distinctive hump, Brahman cattle are well adapted to the Philippine heat, I learn from my guide. Ranchers here like to cross-breed them with the Angus cattle that we are more familiar with in America. Suddenly, my moms obsession with cattle breeds starts to make a little more sense.

We drive on and I see a flock of black and white ducks land furtively behind some tall grass. My guide says Im lucky. If they're the kind of duck he thinks I saw, theyre endangered and his family has been working to protect them. I wonder whether my grandfather, who Im told loved animals, was familiar with these ducks.

Finally, we approach a hill and the terrain becomes heavily wooded. It's herewhere we fear the path is impassable until the ranch hands draw their knives.

Afterward, in the sunlight atop the hill, I see the first of three buildings, and in it, I can almost see my grandfather, though I never met the man. The buildings largely unblemished cinder block walls are strong and practical, while its corrugated metal roof gives it a vaguely Chinese feel.

My mom and aunts get out of the truck in front of me and dont bother to wait. Stepping gingerly over the weeds that threaten to obscure the path to the house, I join my mom and aunts a couple of minutes later.

The front door is gone, but somehow the wood shutters of my grandfathers beloved ranch house have survived decades of neglect. I cross the doorways tall threshold (a nod, I wonder, to the feng shui my mom is always so concerned about?) and into the house.

The room smells of the dead leaves that have piled up in its corners and at the base of a white-tiled sink at the far end. Below the leaves, the floor is level and firm, as are a short set of red brick steps leading to another room.

Im not sure my mother, a no-nonsense Tiger Mom,is capable of crying, but as she walks down these steps I notice her eyes are bright, the way they get when shes recounting memories of my grandfather. She takes me on a tour of the tiny building that loomed so large in my imagination. Here is where she used to strum the guitar; and here is where the food was prepared; and here on the porch is where the family gathered after dinner.

Thats where we gather now to hear one of the ranch hands tell a harrowing tale involving the NPA, and I feel transported to the Philippines of my moms youth. The hulking tree that today dominates the front porch is a skinny sapling again, and I have a clear view of the open fields beyond.

I realize its a scene not unlike the landscape of rural Kentucky. Perhaps something about my grandfathers unfulfilled dream has called me through the generations to make my home there instead of my native New York.

Suddenly, less than 20 minutes after we arrived, its time to go. The NPAs presence makes lingering here unsafe.

Satisfied that my grandfathers American dream still lives, were back on the road, down the hill, past the Brahman cattle that still feed on the land and back to town.

Reach reporter Alfred Miller at amiller@gannett.com or 502-582-7142. Follow him on Twitter @AlfredFMiller. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/subscribe.

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Chasing the American dream: I found my grandpa's slice of the Old West in the Philippines - Courier Journal