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By EDD K. USMAN
Part 2 of 2
MANILA (SDN) — The next day, Arthur had his first steak and egg breakfast at a local diner complemented with a freshly squeezed orange juice. “Who will forget that,” he exclaims.
Two mornings later, he continued his narration, reality was starting to settle. Of which he said was a piece of cake having come from Buluan, Cotabato (then the undivided Cotabato Empire). Faced with a battery of challenges, he remained confident. “I have thick skin and no mountain in front of me can intimidate me.”
First off, he went to a Social Security office in Secaucus, New Jersey, to secure his ticket for employment, an SS number. Armed with an international driver’s license, Arthur drove off to the SS office a few miles away with the Ford Pinto of his generous host.
“It was time for me to get things right and first thing first,” he says. No GPS, no Waze, he relied on an AAA maps to navigate the Interstate Garden Parkway, the Highway 95.
“At the end of the day, I succeeded, got what I wanted, the key to working class America. My ‘license plate,’ the number will forever be embedded in my heart. Only a hard boot would delete it from my memory.
“My first job was as car wash boy along Tonnelle Avenue in West New York. I was 25 then, making $18 a day, for an eight-hour springtime outdoor work for a man from Buluan. Average temperature then should be in the 30 degrees Fanrenheit. What was it, 40 degrees in Buluan.
“Yeah, first time. That was less than 10 days after setting foot in this land of America. I was the lighter of the six or seven fellow African American workers huddled around a 50-gallon fire pit to keep us warm. The water for the car wash was not warm, so imagine the freezing hand. $18 a day, first hard earned money in America. The first $150 of it was for my mother, $12 for bank transfer fee.”
No warm clothes, practically just clothes on his back
Arthur said he traveled light when he flew to the U.S., via Honolulu, Hawaii. He said he left nothing in Manila because he had nothing to speak of.
“I didn’t have warm clothes. I just had the shoe I was wearing (when I left). I bought my first jacket for $1.50, first shoe (in the States) for 50 cents at a used clothes bazaar in Jersey City,” he says, adding he might still have today the jacket, but the shoes was consumed by the pave roads as he walked more than a mile everyday going home, especially when the last bus trip had gone.
His second job was at a hotel, “flipping bed sheets” where he worked part-time after his car wash job, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. He earned flipping bed sheets at $2.5 an hour. “I was overwhelmed with joy.”
As the norm in the States among state institutions and as promised to him, Arthur received his first mail from the New Jersey SS office, which he said essentially signalled it was time to move forward.
Related: Arthur Dy Chin and His ‘American Dream:’ Doing it Right The Hard Way
“Finally, I got my first tax-paying job as a sales clerk for a home improvement store in Ridgefield, at Channel Home Center.” He left his jobs at the car wash and motel to work an average of 10 hours a day, six days a week for $3.75 an hour plus overtime.
“I am getting settled and the $150 (for mother) have increased. I am more than satisfied and the passion to make it even better is continuously burning.”
Soon enough, before the winter of 1981 to be exact, Arthur was able to save $700 and bought a car he can call his own; a blue 1974 Mercury owned by a New Jersey police officer. He drove the Mercury for year’s time but sold it for the same price he bought it.
His new car was like a boon from heaven. While working at the car wash and motel he used to walk at night going home, over a mile distance passing through Hoboken Cemetery as the last trip of the New Jersey Transit bus was at 11 p.m.
He says: “Except for humidity, summertime was OK. But came winter, walking alone after midnight was getting miserable. Three layers of under garment, two socks, mittens and bonnets (from a Salvation Army used clothing shop) were no match to the harsh winter. Time to move on.”
He bade goodbye to New Jersey, and said hello to Los Angeles. It was 1982, just before the next winter made its freezing temperatures felt.
Arthur said his English communications got better though his Philippine accent was still strong. However, it just gave him strength to express himself, being a better bi-lingual than others.
He said he loved his job at the Channel Home Center and his jobs flipping bed sheets and washing cars (which had him up to the neck in bubbles, virtually). Obviously, Arthur had enough of the sight and smell of rubber.
“It gave me wings. It made me stronger. I learned to love and appreciate every work, every job I did and do. I get paid to get to the next level. There’s no more stopping.'”
He had nothing to lose, he said, just pure gains whatever the results.
Arthur’s strength and resilience father’s DNA
“I cannot be more proud than that, regardless of the nature of my job. I will always make sure that I will love it. I am now alone in a foreign land, no one to rely and depend on, but me. Behind all this, the family I left behind is all I have.
“Common sense, I was armed with it, never let it go. My siblings I left behind are on to college already. One got into medical school, but mother didn’t have to worry about how to put food on the table.”
When he started off, Arthur’s first bed was a discarded mattress he picked up from a sidewalk at night to hide himself from embarrassment. He loaded the smelly bed on the roof of his second hand car, bought a few lumber, nails, a hammer, and saw and did some carpentry to build his bed’s frame.
“I got my self a customized bed,” he recalls.
Though his father was long gone, Arthur said he inherited his father’s strength and resilience. “I have learned that you must and always depend on yourself. No one is gonna cry for you. No one is gonna comfort you, no shoulders to cry on but yours.”
Despite his strength and resilience in facing life in a strange land, however, he is still like all of us. The odds he was up against made some nights seemed longer than other nights. It’s during the evening when he was by himself that the weight on his shoulders became heavier. Some nights he went to bed with tears flowing like the waters of Niagara Falls. His tears drenched his pillows.
Still, Arthur got strength from those nights, the tears like rejuvenating liquid that pumped up his adrenaline for the coming days ahead.
“Some winter mornings you find your car stuck in between piles of hardened snow. I had to dressed up and get warm, got a shovel to free my car. What a life,” he adds, saying this was in New Jersey.
He never let his mother and siblings know about his daily grind, his struggles, his crying. “They did not have to know the challenges, after all it was and always a good way to advance to the next level. The $150 motivation is winning by leaps and bounds. I am so grateful. Momentum is gaining.”
Weekends were working days for years
In Los Angeles he had an easier time looking for jobs, the company he worked for prior had recommended him to what he described a “cool company.” “Hard work, dedication, and passion for your job will take you to the next level.”
But Arthur did not like his new job, so he made himself “unemployed” for many months. To tide things over, he worked as parking attendant, as shipping clerk at a company manufacturing tuxedo, and as weighing clerk at Crocker Bank. He did more odd jobs to keep himself busy, including another stint flipping bed sheets at a motel. He thought idleness would give him more time to think of his situation and it could weaken his resolve to plod on. He had to get busy.
“Life it is, change we have to embrace. We just have to learn to accept it positively. Weekends were working days for years to come. Holiday is just another working day as well. I did not have TV or refrigerator for three years.
“All those days, double jobs at all times. Making sure to get to work by 8 a.m. and making sure to be out by 5 p.m. to get to the next work by 6 p.m. till 2 a.m. sometimes.”
When Arthur arrived in the U.S. he promised to not engage in business anymore, thinking that as employee with two jobs would be enough. “I was wrong, it is in the blood and I can’t get away from it.”
So when an opportunity to do commerce again he grabbed it by the tail. With a $5,000 savings and credit cards Arthur opened his first video rental shop. “It was great, life’s changing dramatically. The $150 is no longer $150. More and more going to the students back home for their increasing needs.”
Then came a big challenge. His video rental store was burglarized, only the non-essentials were left out by the thieves. He said he was “devastated.”
Picking up the pieces proved not too difficult
“Because of honesty and my good reputation with my suppliers, they did not think twice when I needed support. In no time I was able to get back up, much stronger and wiser. Not long after I was able to open my second store. Business was getting better but I still reported to my regular day job.”
In February of 1985 Arthur decided to work full time in the stores. “I now have to work harder, longer hours and bigger responsibility. Getting there was easy but staying there was the most difficult and making sure the stores are open so the employees will have money to put on their tables.”
During these boon times for Arthur, he strengthened his faith in God, sustained his spirituality, even stripped his stores — now with six branches — of all adult materials.
He also found time to re-educate himself, taking night classes at UCLA, which paid off. During the Thanksgiving of 1999 he was hired as systems analyst/programmer though not on the current computer language but his COBOL experience. “It was the time of the Y2K issue, the biggest automation concern at the time. I was there at the right place at the right time.”
Aside from education, the boy from the dusty town of Buluan said also very important are honesty, hard work, loyalty, persistence, and perseverance. In 2001 Arthur bought and operated an auto repair shop facility that accommodated 32 cars at the same time.
“During those times I had my full time job which I was employed for 13 years and the auto body shop at the same time for 15 years. God is Great!”