The Life of a Little Boy growing up in the ’50s
In my entire boyhood, I never had the opportunity to travel to other parts of the Philippines. As can be expected, each region has unique practices and traditions. It is common in our town to identify people with an “alias,” especially if the first names are the same.
I had friends that to this day, I remember only their aliases but not their surnames. Monikers like “manok,” “ipis,” “ipot” or “puto.” Sometimes, entire families are identified only by their alias ( e.g. “pamilya ng mga daga” ) tags that were “inherited” or as an endearing identifier of sorts.
Superstition and folklore played a significant role in how we behaved in the 50s. It was common for people to label certain community characters as either a “mangkukulam” or “manggagaway.”
Being eccentric was an invitation to be labeled as somebody creepy. An illness that was thought to result from “kulam” could summon an “arbularyo” in a hurry. He would light a candle and let the drips into the water. He interprets the drips’ shape, then prescribes a concoction of leaves for chewing or boiled into a tea.
Parents kept the children home after dark through stories of “kapre,” “manananggal,” and “aswang” lurking among the tall grasses or trees in the dark margins of the town. Alone, walking in the dark, near the tall grasses, always got me breaking into a whistle for company or to shoo a malignant spirit away.
Films like “Gabi Ng Lagim” perpetuated these larger-than-life “Lusus Naturae.” The radio drama of “Lola Basyang” sustain many of these mythologies. Being the only medium outside of family and immediate neighborhood, the radio worked our imagination in overtime, often perpetuating myth and superstition.
The children were perpetually fearful as parents used the church’s constant rant of “fire and brimstone” as disciplinary tools. The elders (“matatanda“) o
f those years were more compelling as life was slower; their word carried a lot of weight. It’s astonishing how even as an adult, a silly tale can sometimes stop you in your tracks with something that had been drilled in your brain as a child.
Raiding the neighborhood (fruit) trees was a favourite diversion of those years. There were ample supplies of “Mansanitas,” “Ratiles,” “Sampaloc,” “kaimito,” and “Makopa” in the neighborhood. Joe, (my generic lookout) makes sure the homeowner is not home and the dog is tied up.
Another boyhood thrill was when a promotional sales truck comes to town advertising a free movie.
At dusk, a stream of people carrying benches towards the court leaves a lasting flashback of those years. The anticipation of a (free ) movie was more exciting than the film itself.
RADIO & TV
In that entire neighborhood of maybe a couple of hundred households, I could recall only two families with TV ( maybe more but not shared ). They would open their living room windows so that kids and adults alike could watch through the grills.
I remember even bringing a stool watching such classic as “Victory at Sea.” All through the early years of “Student Canteen,” I would be competing for a small section of somebody’s living room window as dozens would be jockeying to see Leila Benitez and Eddie Ilarde hosts the crowd favourite of those years.
There were fewer and fewer street games for me as I got older. As a creature of the water, fishing was a preferred ( then nothing more than a short bamboo with a string and hook ) activity with Joe for “Talimusak” (Goby Fish ) along the fish ponds near salt-making beds.
On low tides, we would be out near where I grew up on Manila Bay’s shores, digging for clams, crabbing, and kite flying on the side.
A noisy contraption whose front and rear wheels came from recycled wheel bearings evolved into homemade scooters. Bike riding became an obsession even though none of us owned any. We would usually put our money together and rent a dilapidated bike ( often all welded together and chains with that peculiar “lack of oil” sound ) from another barrio.
We would take turns until a weld breaks down ( usually one of the pedals, frequently already reduced to a stub ) or a tire coming out of the rim. I was the first to get my own bike ( a used “Hercules” bought from Clark Field through a family friend ), and on a typical Saturday morning, the boys would be gathering in front of the house to get a ride.
The girls seem more cloistered in the house, preferring afternoon radio drama, the likes of “Kahapon Lamang” or Dear “Tia Dely.” A cherished family show once a week was “Tawag ng Tanghalan” and “Edong Mapagarap.”
The boys’ favoured one comes after “Tawag.” To this day, I still remember the opening credit: ” Ako si Kapitang Kidlat,!” ( I Am Captain Lightning ) followed by a thunderous sound, then a prompter says…” ang nakaraan.“
FIESTA HYSTERIA
Town and Barrio fiestas were the kind of celebration that got us all excited. Banderitas adorn the streets, and there was a palpable air of holiday feeling as a marching band with a “Tambol Mayor” parade out on the streets.
It was common to be invited in for a meal of “menudo” and “halayang ube.” Our barrio was famous for staging a “Moro-Moro” ( or “Komedya.”) and “Sunduan,” a most enduring tradition older than Cebu’s “Sinulog”( 1989 ) or Baguio’s “Panabenga” ( 1995).
Our neighborhood would stage games for the boys like a greased pole with twenty pesos up for grabs and a “pabitin” with goodies and such for anyone who wouldn’t mind being trampled during the scramble. The Filipino version of “Piñata” uses a “palayok” (earthen cookware ) filled with candies and coins and a line of blindfolded participants taking turns hitting it.
Everybody’s popular choices were the rides and sideshows in the church plaza: Ferris Wheel, the Merry-go-Round, and the revolving swing were the standards of the day. Two games of chance were a staple during those years.
One was a shooting gallery that uses “Daisy” pellet guns and heavy bird cast for the target. The rifles were so weak and typically off-sighted that few ever get to topple any bulls-eye.
A crowd-pleaser was a betting game where you get to guess which enclosure a guinea pig would go into when lowered into a spinning round table with a dozen numbered “huts.”
While tickets were being sold, an “entertainer” lip-syncs the hits of the day. It was a mesmerizing display of “talent” because they were good mimics that enthralled the audience. ( easily a forerunner of “karaoke”). After all the tickets were sold, the table was spun, and the guinea pig would be lowered to the center in its tiny platform.
Then everybody erupts into a shouting frenzy, trying to coax the rodent into their favoured cage. A worthless piece of crap goes to the winner, and another round begins over again.
It was common in the 50s to have “freak shows” from the world’s fattest to a double-headed pig to a Siamese twin, the strange and the bizarre. The one that I remember well was borne out of my naïveté as an eleven ( or 12) year old.
Here was a sideshow with a massive canvas poster of a boa constrictor and a woman snake charmer. A huge crowd of men crowding out the ticket window had gotten my attention. Up the rickety steps into an elevated viewing area surrounding a pit three meters down. Below was a less than frisky python.
As the woman plays with the snake, she “accidentally” loses her top. Shrieking and hollering for more, and after a couple more “accidents,” it felt like the balcony was on the verge of collapse.
A new crowd comes in, and between the hooting and the howling all night, it was only a matter of time before the parish got wind of the shenanigans and closed it down. Easily the most popular sideshow of the fiesta… and nobody was talking about the snake!
The following year, the risque shows were banished out of the parish plaza into the town’s edge. I heard that our parochial school’s men teachers were out in force, taking the boys’ names who were out to see the shows.
Not atypical of those prudish years, especially in a sectarian school whose mere sighting of a woman’s thigh can get you a trip to a confessional box or, worse, a public humiliation ( or a badge of honour for some ), kneeling outside of the padre’s office.
Towards the end of the 50s, we were beginning to spend more time around jukeboxes (“Stagger Lee,” “Lonely Boy,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” ) or playing pick-up basketball ( no hoops or real basketballs; we used a ring that holds a flower pot and a smaller ball). It was also a thrill watching organized inter “purok” ball games on the town square’s dirt court.
Along with my three or four closest neighborhood friends, we never engaged in sly drinking or smoking. Instead, on scattered Saturday evenings, money saved during the week would go for some hot “pandesal” and “Karne Norte.”
And would you know it, 75 years later, “Pandesal“( the bigger old-fashioned variety) and Corned Beef not only remains a favourite but became an enduring reminder of the simplicity, fun-filled and creative years of my boyhood. Certainly not, as our young people today might say, “dull as a dishwater.”
Would I trade those years with today’s middling, banality of a layabout? No, siree, Bob!
What was yours like?*****
