Tiu Laurel's roadmaps of folly

AFTER World War II ended, GI man Charles Shelledy opted out of military service, resettled in Sto. Tomas, Lubao, Pampanga, and married a local woman. At an area along the main highway and connected via gravel roads with at least four major rice-farming villages, the ex-GI built a modern rice mill with a giant warehouse capable of storing massive amounts of palay, or unmilled rice, that met the desired moisture content.

There was an existing giant rice mill less than a kilometer from where Shelledy built his, but he knew his data. The rice from those four villages near his mill was enough to feed the whole population of Lubao, with its more than 40 villages, and even two major rice mills less than a kilometer away from each other were not even enough to store and mill the palay in the immediate area. Shelledy was also aware of basic economics: proceeds from the sale of the darak (rice bran) and mata (mixture of rejected rice and rice bran) that rice farmers considered waste were enough to pay off the mill's yearly labor and operational costs. A modern rice mill was a cash cow, so to speak.

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