Elsietampong's Blog

This is a report of the conversations I had with Lety on May 22, 2010. I brought her to Baguio, because she had not been there for some time now. Lety was 6 years older than me. She was adopted by Impung Lori, the mother of Papa, Luis. They got her at birth from the Asilio de San Pablo, by the Pasig River. I don’t know why the adopted her. But I remember that when she went to High School, she went to St. Mary’s College in Quezon City. We shared the same room, but we had separate beds. Our room was on the ground floor. Lety was like a sister to me. Since she was older, I listened to her as she told me about life. Again, this time, I listened to her as we talked about the Good Old days.

IMPUNG LORI

Impung Lori loved Letty very much. Whatever Vi bought for her eldest daughter, Mel, Impo bought for Lety. Impo would feed Lety her food. Whenever she found that Lety was given a spanking by Luis, Impo would get sick. One time, for whatever strange reason, Lety needed to get a spanking by Luis. It was a big production. She was brought to the house of Apung Tinang. She was made to bend over a wooden bench. Then she was spanked with a stick. I watched Lety as she was spanked. She was kept in the house of Apung Tinang until there were no more traces of her tears and her sobbing.

Before Impung Lori died, she told Lety, “Remember, I told them to take care of you.” She also had a lot of her clothes remade for Lety, her nice clothes and even her chemises. She also had a black dress made for Lety. “I want to make sure that they allow you to wear black. They might not let your mourn properly with a proper black dress,” Impung Lori told Lety. Elsie didn’t get to wear a black dress. But they gave her a manto, a long black veil that was as long as a shawl, so she could hide her crying underneath the manto.

BAPANG ELY

When Bapang Ely came into the life of Ninang Vi, Ninang Vi was already past her prime. She had spurned a lot of suitors, one of them was a distinguished medical doctor. Was it because she felt it would be a betrayal if she got married to leave her mother? Anyway, when Ely came, men had stopped courting Vi.

“I want you to get married,” Impung Lori told Vi. “You will be lonely if you don’t have children.”

There was nothing outstanding about Ely. He had no job like that doctor who courted Vi. He didn’t hide the fact that he had a child out of wedlock. But he was a landowner, coming from a distinguished family in Arayat. When I once asked him what was his occupation, he answered, “A proprietor.” When I asked further what that word meant, he said, “Someone who owns property”.

Lety remembers that Ely used her to show Vi he would be a good father. He would cradle Lety in his arms, and show affection toward Lety.

Luis, Vi’s brother, asked his sister when she told him of her decision to marry Ely. “It doesn’t bother you that he has had a child by another woman?” She said no.

So the marriage took place in San Luis Church. It bore four children—Emelina, Edelwina, Raul and Cristan.

When Vi married Ely, the wife of Luis, Nena, took Letty when Vi and Ely went on their honeymoon.

Lety has many fond memories of Ely. She remembers that when the harvest was good, the farmers would celebrate with a big party as thanksgiving for the bountiful harvest. Vi and Letty would go to the rice fields and eat there with the farmers. Ely’s harvest was plentiful: his harvest was stacked in haystacks called mandalas lining both sides of the streets, from the Church all the way to the house of Noel, a distance of one kilometer.
Ely had a farm in Baleng Bayu in Sta. Maria. Lety remembers that he would get duck eggs and sacks of rice from this farm. Dang Baring, one of the merchants in San Luis, would exchange 5 salop of palay for 5 balots, or duck eggs. She would also trade half a cavan of palay for 1 plate of lechon. When Lety was with Ely, his farmers would give them 1 to 2 cavans of palay. And they would sell this for five pesos, (P5), a princely sum in those days. One cavan now costs P1,500 ($33) Cristan and Lety enjoyed harvest time. And always, they would give Dang Flor something. Anything that Vi had—food, harvest—she would always share with Dang Flor.

One of the memories I will never forget was Ely’s bringing home two dalags that were so long, they filled the whole basin. These came from Ely’s fishpond in Baleng Bayu. Yes, Ely had a fishpond there.

Ely was a very sociable person. He welcomed any visitor, even if all he could serve was a can of sardines. Ely was also a very good cook. He made everything taste very delicious, even the humblest of dishes.

But Ely was bored with the quiet life in San Luis. When the fiesta came, he and other young men (also married to the stiff upper class women in town who were inevitably related to each other) would line up to dance with the “taxi dancers”, as they called them. You bought a coupon and handed it to the girl with whom you wanted to dance with. The “cabarets” as they called them, were set up at the edge of town, behind the bamboo trees. The naughty young boys would watch through the thicket and report which husband was dancing in the makeshift “cabaret”.

Of course, Vi and Ely had their spats. He liked to occupy himself with mahjongg and card games with the boys. When Ely came home much too late, Vi would be angry already with him. Ely would go to Arayat, his home until Vi cooled down. Letty would pick up Ely when all was clear at the home front. This would take around three days.

COMMERCE IN SAN LUIS

A popular source of income of the women in San Luis was weaving mats. They would harvest leaves of the nipa plant. They would dry them overnight. In the morning, they would let the leaf go through a blade and cut it. Then they would weave the cut nipa into dase, or mats. The action of weaving was called “lala”.

At the back of Perry’s house( who lived next door to our house), several women would gather to weave mats. Apung Kare, the aunt of Ambo Diaz, Apung Pilang, a spinster, and Apung Eclang, would weave the whole week. Then on Tuesday, they would gather all their mats and bring it to Calumpit, the capital of Bulacan, the next-door province. The week of people was punctuated by “Market Days”—Sunday was market day in Arayat, Monday in San Luis, and Tuesday in Calumpit.

Lety would sell pichon, or doves at the Calumpit market. Until Land Reform took away the farmland of the Francos and Alejandrinos, there would always be pupul or harvest, of mango and corn, in addition to rice.

In the house of Clementina, one day a woman came with her daughter, seeking shelter. They lived in the ground floor of the house of Clementina. They were Dang Simang and Ati Maring. During the day, they would have all the women in their company weave mats. I don’t know the circumstances why Ati Maring was able to live in Mama Lola’s house. In those days, no one lived in the ground floor of the houses. People just lived on the top floors. They let their animals stay corralled under their house. The bamboo slats from the second floor went all the way down to the ground below. The animals stayed there, within the perimeters of the bamboo slats.

The house of Mama Lola was initially a “nipa house”, with nipa walls. My mother, Nena, when she saw it the first time said, “How can a Doctor Provincial live in just this nipa hut?” With this, she resolved her house would be better than her Father’s. This was the house that Dr. Fernando built for his retirement. There was a small balcony that jutted out in front. The wood of the balcony was made of wood, not of bamboo. Perry, the boy who lived next door, had bamboo slats. Between the bamboo slats, you could see the animals roaming below.

I don’t remember what the flooring of the ground floor of Mama Lola’s house was. What I remember it was that the ground floor a bit dark because the walls were made of stone or cement and didn’t let the sun come in, unless you had the main door open. And it couldn’t have had a flooring made of soil, because the women always sat on the ground while they were cutting their nipa and weaving their mats.

LIFE DURING THE TIMES OF THE HUKS

The Huks were people who were seeking social reforms. After the Spanish took away the lands, they gave it to local landlords who continued the Spanish system of large ownership of lands and getting the harvest from the ones who tilled in 70-30% shares. The Huks wanted to correct this. The leader of the Hukbalahap movement came from San Luis. He was Luis Taruc.

During the Huk movement, the people from across the river, those from Santa Monica, would evacuate to San Luis. One of those who lived in the Franco “Big House” was the sister of Luis Taruc. Elsie remembers her mother telling her,
“Don’t play with those children, they are children of the Huks.”
So Elsie went to them, saying, “My mother says I can’t play with you. You are children of the Huks”. Then proudly she returned to her mother, saying, ”It’s alright, Mom. I told them I couldn’t play with them because they were children of the Huks.”
Her Mom was aghast. She said, “You told them?”
And Elsie retorted, “Yes, I did.” I think that was the last time her mother ever told Elsie a secret that she wanted to keep as a secret.

Apung Tinang (Mama Lola)’s house was next to the Municipio, the Municipal Building of San Luis. When the police killed a Huk, they would wrap a mat around the dead body and display it in the Municipio. Sometimes, they would throw the Huk into the Pampanga River. When the police fish it, it is bloated and decomposing. They also bring this body to the Municipio.

So Elsie and Dodo always tried to see the bodies of the dead Huks from the balcony of their house.

Some of the people were related or were acquaintance of the Huks. The people with big houses had entre-suelos, which meant flooring under the floors. The bahay na bato (houses whose walls of their ground floor were made of adobe stone) had an elevated second floor, maybe fifteen meters above the ground floor. The ground floor would be where carriages could be parked inside the house. At one side, there was a sort of a mezzanine, the entre-suelos, that were about one meter from the ground. Normally, the entre-suelos had floors made of bamboo slats. Lety said that where there was a raid conducted by the police, the Huks would hide under the kawayan floor of the entre suelo. It was always so dark on the ground floor, you wouldn’t see anyone hiding under the bamboo slats of the entre-suelos.

MURDER AT MIDNIGHT

They say killings of people you don’t know are just statistics. But if it is someone close to you, then it is met with a lot of anguish and shock.

Bapang Piping and Luis were first cousins. Their parents, Lori and Kikang were sisters. Kikang was older than Lori. As such, she inherited the ancestral house of their family. Piping was the most high profile and most successful among his cousins. He worked for the government, the equivalence of the CIA, as – of course, as an informant. He had a service jeep at his command. This was a government issue jeepney, which could be used for his personal and official work.

One night, when Piping, his wife, his eldest daughter, and one neighbor who hitched a ride with them, were coming from the famed “Holiday On Ice”, an annual show held at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Manila, a good two-hour ride from San Luis,. When their jeepney hit the tallest part of the road, the dike that protected the neighboring towns from the water flooding the San Luis town, a slew of gunshots met this party. Piping was driving the open jeepney, and lost control of the vehicle. The jeepney fell into the lake below. The killers checked the bloodied bodies before disappearing into the night.

Piping’s daughter, Zeny, survived the ambush. She played dead when they looked at her. She waited for the killers to leave. When it appeared that it was all clear for her to go, she ran all the way from the lake to town. She first reached the house of the dentist Jesus. There, she became hysterical.

The brother of Piping, Bernie, was a medical doctor at a government hospital in Laguna, southern Luzon. He was very upset about this murder. The family had not yet finished mourning for the death of their father Apung Ato, and now another death.

Letty and Vi were in Vi’s lands in San Roque, a town across the river closer to Baliuag, when this incident happened. The whole town was in shock. Everyone felt pity for the daughter who survived the ambush. There were other children of Piping who didn’t go to the show. They were orphaned overnight.

The house where Piping lived was the ancestral home of their family. Their most distinguished family member was Felipe Carlos, who became the Mayor of San Luis. Felipe was single and died single. His older brother, Mariano, was considered a “tulisan”, a rebel. How could a tulisan be a brother to the Mayor? The cause of rebellion of Mariano was against the Spanish rule. The other rebels wanted to burn down the church of San Luis, and Mariano is credited to stopping them from doing so. In any case, Mariano lived two houses away from Kikang’s house. Lori had left the house to get married to Cenon. It was normal in Philippine society for the eldest child to inherit the ancestral home. So Kikang inherited the house, and handed it to Piping.

After the burial, the family of Piping left San Luis. His sister Salud took the children to her house in Cubao. Then they all moved to the United States. Eventually, the family of Elena Manankil bought the house from Zeny.

The rumor was that Peping was actually organizing the counterpart of the Huk Movement among the people of San Luis, the Monkeys. The Monkeys were organized to fight the Huks. After Peping died, the Monkeys came into existence. They killed the Huks in broad daylight, in the streets. Fear was sown in San Luis. Who was a Monkey? Who was your unknown enemy?

DANG MERENG AND BAPANG ANDO

Bapang Ando was a cousin of Luis. His wife, Mereng, was a dressmaker. When Mereng’s customers would try on the dresses that Mereng was sewing for them, Ando would peep at them. He was the town’s Peeping Tom. Their son, Milo, was born during the eclipse. This is why they say he was a bit sira ulo. Mereng and Ando lived for a very long time at the ancestral home of Ando’s father. After a while, they moved to a lot adjacent to the “Big House”. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of money to build their own house. But their daughter, Frida, became an Auditor of the Philippine government’s COA. Then she found a job at the United Nations and moved to New York. So she supported her parents until their death.

MEMORIES OF SAN LUIS

San Luis did not have electricity while Letty was growing up. There were just gasoline lamps that lit the house. Each person carried his or her own gas lamp as he went around the house.

The rich families had a gramophone with which to listen to music. There were plakas or black circular disks, on which the music was etched. The gramophone had a needle which read the disks and transmitted the reading to the sound box. Very few people would have the joy of listening to Mario Lanza with his tenor voice wafting through the air. But the air was so still in town, than you could easily share the sounds with the neighbors without having it full blast.

There were already movies when Lety was a little girl. They were showing in San Fernando, the capital of Pampanga. She needed to take a jeepney to go to San Fernando, a ride that took around 30 minutes, not including waiting time for the jeep to fill up. Letty’s best friend was Daisy, the daughter of Liling and Dr. Ibanez. When they went to San Fernando, they would stay there the whole day. They would also have a meal at the only restaurant in town, Everybody’s Café.

Every child is trained to go home before sunset. The Church bells ring at 6:00 p.m. for the Angelus. Every child scampers to his home as soon as the church bells start to peal. Woe to the child who is not home after the bells stop pealing. Usually that meant spanking at the buttocks. There were many sounds of church bells. There is a bell for a baby being born. There is a bell to announce death. There is a bell to announce Mass. Anyway, the bell is the center of life in town. It announces the time, the events, and the end of the day.

DODO

Dodo was a thin boy. He had a chest like a pigeon. He was prone to tuberculosis, and for a while, he did contract it. Letty said that, on days with full moon, when the moon lightens up the whole world, she and Dodo and all the other children, would play patintero. Patintero is a game where there are two groups that play against each other. The object is to go through the lines without being tagged. Those who go through the lines get a point. The ones with the most points are the winners.

written on June 2010