Wear and Tear: Make My Day - 21 - Enhanced Edition

About the book ＂Wear And Tear＂ In the Foreword of this 21st book in his Make My Day Series, Larry Henares’ daughter Rosanna, writes of him as an essayist who invests the people he writes about ＂with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy,＂ a style he amply demonstrates with his depiction of the ＂Larry’s Angels＂ who take care of him in the Makati Medical Center, as Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, Ravishing Rose, Madonna, Sandra Bulok and Meg Ryan. He writes of his friend Ninoy Aquino, who spent all-night marathon hours with him on a one-to-one basis just chewing the fat. This is the Ninoy no one really knows, not the public Ninoy nursing a political image before the electorate, but a very private Ninoy who harbored secret plans for his future presidency, which he shared with Larry, someone totally different from others he dealt with -- a voracious reader whose brains he picked, a debater who argued back and served as a sounding board for his ideas, a non-politician who is not a potential rival, a non-newsman (at the time) without a penchant for seeking headlines, and a friend who genuinely wanted him to be president. Larry renders a requiem for poetess Nina Estrada Puyat, one of the best friends of his wife. He reviews Alejandro Lichauco’s monumental book Nationalist Economics, which spells out the real problem and the only solution to our economic ills. He writes about the talented basketball coach Dante Silverio who would rather lose the game and leave his job, than to allow gamblers and cheats to corrupt his players. And he recounts the short, brilliant and tragic life of Eugene Tan; who fought un-winnable battles against the Supreme Court, against the un-endurable pain of losing an eye, against the vagaries of fate that resulted in the loss of the family fortune, that almost prevented him from being valedictorian of his class, that barred him from being bar topnotcher and a political career that might have led him to the Presidency. Instead he met his final end, strangled by persons unknown and buried in a shallow grave. Larry writes a nine-series front page review of Richard Bonner’s Waltzing with a Dictator, analyzing the relationship between Marcos and the Americans.. These and many more, including incisive articles on his favorite cousin, Tony Oppen, his daughter-in-law Vicki Belo, her husband and daughter, Quezon and Osmeña, and Commander Dante Buscayno. And the usual dissertations on the arts and human condition. -------------------------------------- Foreword: The Wonder of my Father by Rosanna L. Henares Angeles, May 1, 2003 I read a passage in the novel ＂The Hours＂ by Michael Cunningham that describes perfectly what my father Hilarion M. Henares Jr., a columnist and writer, means to a lot of people. In his more lyrical, satirical and whimsical moments when he writes of people around him, his family and friends, even his enemies, assume an almost mythical existence. In his fictional world, Jose Concepcion becomes the Immaculate Concepcion, self-appointed representative of God, who sets up a flour mill to give us our daily bread, and who demurs that that he and twin brother Raul have only 2/3 of the power of the Holy Trinity, saying, ＂It would have been different if we were born triplets instead of twins.＂ In this world, Frank Chavez becomes Sir Galahad defending his Queen Cory. Opus Dei becomes Opus Diaboli and the Holy Mafia. Cesar Buenaventura becomes Our Man Squint and The Villanous Convexity of a Face. And Elena Lim becomes a combination of Shirley Temple and Mae West (＂When I am good, I am very good; when I’m bad, I’m even better＂). And Father Kinik Bernas is the august head of the ＂Council of Trent.＂ His column becomes a morality play where nationalists and libertarians are the heroes, and fascists and pro-American assholes are the villains. I now talk of the wonder of my father. The passage in the novel ＂The Hours＂ speaks of Clarissa’s judgment of her lover Ric, (more in