Only once a year do we ever get to see what Camp John Hay looks like from INSIDE. Only during Scouting Month do we get to pitch our heavy canvas surplus army pup tents in Camp Conchu. That’s in Scout Barrio, on the edge of Camp John Hay’s southern perimeter.
We pitched camp and crawled into our sleeping bags at night just outside the base. But during the daytime, we ran all our scouting activities inside the base.
We frolicked among the tall pine trees lining the different hiking trails, or just simply lay around the verdant grass, watching out for “low-flying golf balls” as numerous signs warned us.
It was truly a privilege because it wasn’t until late 1976 that John Hay opened to the general public.
Prior to that, you had to know someone, who knew someone, who knows the American base commander to get a special gate pass in order to enter. Otherwise, it was a recreation facility exclusive only for US servicemen on “R-and-R.”
That’s why we joked—but BELIEVED the joke—that getting inside Camp John Hay was the closest thing to actually being in the Unites States.
You felt the big difference as soon as you get past the main gate. Literally, there were only FOUR (4) plant species you found growing in Camp John Hay: pine trees, gumamela, native grass (on the fairways) and Bermuda grass (on the putting greens).
Of course, the plantboxes around the Bell Ampitheater was a myriad of colors from several flowering species. But that’s the exception.
In its general topography, Camp John Hay was a surreal landscape that totally screamed Americana, feeding off of our already deeply-ingrained colonial mentality.
We were mesmerized at seeing so many tall white people in crisp US service personnel uniforms scurrying about, speaking English very fast with a twangy slang.
Our crappy pesos were useless. The vending machines, the kind you could never see anywhere else in Baguio back in the day, only accepted dollars: quarters, nickels, dimes and cents.
We saved up for October Jamboree the whole rest of the year, so that we could exchange our hard-earned pesos at the blackmarket for a few precious dollars.
For what? So we could drop some quarters into those bloody vending machines, to coax it to dispense us a few of those original, authentic “Sunkist” orange juices that came in this pyramid-shaped packaging.
The tallest, most majestic pine trees anywhere in Baguio were to be found in Camp John Hay—because nobody cut them down for lumber.
All structures—from administrative buildings to the individual cottages—were rendered in uniform white sidings and green roofings. Their live hedges were neatly-trimmed gumamela bushes that were meticulously maintained in their round orb configurations.
After the US bases were returned to Philippine control beginning in 1991, a succession (or amalgam) of government agencies and corporations—Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA), John Hay-Poro Point Development Corporation (JHAPDC), John Hay Management Corporation (JHMC) and the private lessee FILINVEST—announced the core concept of their “redesign and rehabilitation” of Camp John Hay.
It was an assault to my fond childhood memories of the old “American John Hay” revolving around the stupidest idea ever: “adding more color” to the John Hay landscape, by “diversifying and flora and fauna” or some other pretentious technocratic gobbledygook like that.
That meant introducing reedy bamboo grooves along the roadsides, interspersing fast-growing alnos trees, golden bush and other tree species in between pine tree stands, laying out new rows of marigold, gladiolas, lantana, and other lowland hedge varities—a nauseating sea of clashing flower blooms with a pallete of colors so wild it can put a box of Crayolas to shame.
Look at Camp John Hay today and it looks like any other barangay with an uncoordinated neighborhood gardening policy. It has lost its mythical look of Americana—and I don’t care how patriotic or nationalistic you are.
The sad fact is, no matter where we send our “development concept” experts to train abroad, when they come home, they still plan a tourist resort by overcladding it with features copied from the Philippine jeepney with all its garish embellishments.
Taste, class, artistic maturity and design sophistication are just not our forte, sad to admit. Up to now, I still want to puke everytime I look at that ubiquitous Lion Head on Kennon Road.
I hope to God someday somebody gets elected mayor or congressman of Baguio who didn't flunk Humanities in freshman college. I hope he or she orders all that Davies paint sandblasted off of that iconic monument, to bring it back to NATURAL STONE color and texture. All outdoor monuments all over Europe, North America, London, Athens, Rome--you name it--people in these cultural and art capitals of the world DON'T PAINT their public sculptures. You don't paint sculptures, period.
Yet in so many ways, Camp John Hay, arguably at one time the crown jewel among Baguio's tourist spots, has fallen to the same pattern of decline. By overdecorating it, and then losing steam in the arduous task of maintaining its overcooked cosmetic makeup, Camp John Hay is now barely even a shell of its old self.
Nowadays, the place is pathetic--it just seems to thrive on neglect. It's a foreboding of what every other park in Baguio will eventually end up looking when the "project money" dries up.
Because the REAL charm elements, that’s what they overlooked: the pine trees and the grass.*
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