Named after the aging Mactan leader of Cebu who ordered his men to attack the visiting Spaniards in 1521, Lapu-lapu Street, in the sixties, was as rustic as any thriving suburban settlement one can envisage. Its length, then and now, spans the stretch between Santa Ana Church on the south, and J.P. Cabaguio Avenue on the north.
At the time, Rafael Castillo Street was not yet a figment of imagination.
Though situated two kilometers from the town proper, its was a gravelly path. On weekdays, students living in peripheral areas, mostly informal settlers of Bangoy, Soliman, and Agdao and enrolled at Holy Cross of Davao, then an all-boys school, pounded the road regularly. Without the auto calesa and the trikes negotiating the street, it was strictly a dirt road. Occasionally, motorbikes and bicycles, usually carrying items on the carriage, were using it.
Lapu-lapu Street, in contrast to today’s landscape which hosts an amalgam of establishments, was a lonely track. Going south from where the road links with Castillo Street, specifically on the left side, was Gotamco, the city’s busiest sawmill. Next to it is Agdao public market which, at the time, did not include the section that now houses government-owned structures. To the right of the road, the queue of shanties was indisputable to passersby.
From the intersection connecting Francisco Bangoy and Nicasio Torres streets to the Catholic church at the south end of the road, the setting, in today’s context, was a picturesque landscape out of an Amorsolo painting. There were residences and there were no two-story structures.
To the right section going south was Castillo Sawmill, next to the Ybañez fishpond that occupied both sides of the road up to Porras Street. The project, which hosted the voracious tilapia, was home by a lonely lagkaw, a small hut strategically built at the center of an embankment that divides the pond where the caretaker would take shelter while sniping for naughty children who were angling fish. There was no such feature, though, on the other side.
Young as they were, elementary students had their way of escaping the attention of the caretaker. In the morning, on the way to school, they placed bantaks, fish traps made from bamboo, that were half-buried at the ledge of the pond’s dike, just enough for them to trace when they go home from school. Always, without fail, the snares had their intended catch.
In some instances, when classes were cut short by faculty meetings and special events, the children, after dismissal from class, would take time to discover clams buried in the rivulet just beside the road. Using sticks and twigs, they disturb the mud or poke small holes to find the crustaceans. Occasionally, there were small crabs also to harvest.
Beyond the pond, in an area now blocked by Porras and Sobrecarey streets, at the time when trash was not yet collected and hauled, was a dump site. The pit, its contents left rotten to the elements, emitted only a slight odor but the pupils, after class, especially after heavy rain the night before, made it a fun activity to scour the mountain of garbage where the banana trunks were disposed of and to look for mushrooms or scavenge for reusable items.
What made Lapu-lapu Street even more bucolic then is the sight of white herons or egrets scrubbing the pond for food when its water level, just after harvest, has been drained low. The maya, a Eurasian tree sparrow once the country’s national bird, also abounded in the area, perching on the leaves of pliant thickets and enjoying the whistle of the wind.
Of course, six decades later, the traces of the sawmill, the pond, and the dumpsite are gone. Well-paved and fully developed, the thoroughfare now hosts a long stretch of commercial buildings, and a coterie of businesses such as convenience store, wholesale supplier, appliance center, budget hotel, medical clinic, printing press, and motorcycle dealer, among others.
