Roaring trucks that were hauling tons of logs from forest sites of Laak in Davao, Melale in Davao Oriental and Santa Josefa of Agusan and other nearby places had regularly passed by Tagum in the 60's up to the early 80's. Back in those days, cutting logs for export was a booming business in the region. For almost three decades logging business had thrived here, until its decline in the late 80’s. I grew up in the highway section of Magugpo where logging trucks made its usual stop-over before unloading cargoes at the saw mill in Maco, a town approximately 30 minutes drive from Tagum.
Many town folks during the late 70’s and the early 80’s had a unique source of livelihood: peeling -off the barks of those century old logs carried by those scary-looking, mud-covered trucks. Dried barks were good for fueling in many households back then and sold as uniformly-cut and chopped firewood. Barks were also used as walling for town folks' makeshift houses. In the 80's, a pioneer restaurant in Tagum called Kamalig had used barks for its walling and had an elegant look after painted with natural varnish.
Tons of logs passed the town back then but only after it was stripped-off of its dried barks. Logs were carried and unhauled for wood treatment at the pond located in Maco. I had witnessed the daredevil moves of those “mamanitay” (local folks whose main livelihood was peeling barks of logs). When trucks carrying logs were slowing down for its usual stop-over at the sideway of Gamao up to Chinese school and beyond Assessor’s Village, those mamanitays carrying their custom-made peeler blades, made from junked leaf spring of trucks, the latter could take the risk of running after those moving trucks while bringing with them their sharp peeler blades. Like competing warriors they would throw their blades like javelin to the logs mounted at the back of moving trucks. At the full stoppage of truck, the log where the peeler blade hit shall be claimed and exclusively peeled by the owner of the blade. Today, there are no logging trucks passing Tagum, in fact the depleted forest in the region is a proof to that and our mamanitays are nowhere to be found.
The noise of logging trucks plying over Tagum had been silenced. What remain are these disrobed mountains and bald forests found all over Mindanao.