Diyyes then was Already Heaven

WHEN I WAS going to school at the Gabaldon (that’s how Dupax Elementary School was called then, which I later learned to mean the type of building that an American architect designed for schools in the Philippines), it was seldom if ever that Mama gave me money.

Well, it was probably because it was not fashionable for parents to pamper their kids with allowances (unlike now). It might have also been because we simply had no money for such luxury as Papa’s salary as a public school teacher then was only enough to buy a week’s supply of grocery that Mama and I went to buy from Ko Peng’s stall in Malasin every Sunday after mass (usually consisting of a kilo of sugar, a can of condensed milk, two or more cans of sardines, a 6-pack bundle of Siga-siga cigarettes, a pack of 6-box matches, a kilo of bihon, two boxes of Purico, two long bars of Perla laudry soap, two bars of Lifebuoy bath soap, a small jar of Fighter or Atomic pomade, Johnson’s baby powder, etc.)

I therefore had to earn a few centavos selling bote and landuk to the Chinese man with assiw from Malasin. No diyaryo then and, if ever, what little paper we had was meant for kindling the pugon or was ripped into pieces and hung on the wall of the toilet for wiping one’s behind.

What did I need money for? Well, to buy candy with rubber bands or delicious mamon bread from Incion “Pawa” Galam’s store at the gate of the Dupax Elementary School. Or during recess when Rosby “Oppi” Ferrer’s sorbetes cart was around and his bell’s incessant kleng-kleng-kleng went irresistible, my mouth went watering to have a lick at the most delicious icecream there was in the whole of Dupax at the time.

My best ally before Nelson grew big enough to join was Elnora. We went scavenging rusty nails on the trail/road between the Ili and Magaway lots and connecting Domang with Dupaj and across Abannatan. We passed there after Sunday mass and put whatever pickings we had on sabsabut/ungut that also abound in the filth. (As a footnote, Elnora has taken up nursing at St. Louis University in Baguio and has been working since the early 1980s as a nurse in a hospital in Maryland, USA. Her brother Nelson has taken up Forestry like me and is now the DENR's Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer or PENRO of Zambales.)

Good finds then because they commanded better price were dilapidated kaserola, broken paryok, punctured kaldero, and spent up plow share. The plow share (sarapa) plus the subsub I would get from Surung but this was if Apong agreed, otherwise I would go home to Domang with resentment as the plow materials were meant to be dalikan for the binugbog (chopped papaya, gabi, or tigi cooked along with rice bran and used as swine feed).

One time I fought with Elias Felix in Surung over a landok that I found and took pains to pry from its place in the banawang. Another time, the bote-landuk man wanted to buy the shotput steel ball that Papa brought home from Gabaldon and which Tata Ikko^ et al. would use for throwing contests. Other times I would find grenade-sized iron blobs and the bote-landuk man rejected them (I didn’t know then they were the heads of World War II bombs). These dangerous (?) items used to abound then under the mango trees or sapang vines in Pitang where I used to go scavenge for our favorite polbora (tiny square chips and centimeter-long wire cuttings).

Ordinarily, our collections were Rose Vinegar bottles and Cliquot softdrink. The Siok Tong or vinegar bote were gin bottles that Inang used for her herbal medicines or coconut oil.There were aluminum casseroles then which commanded better price. But Mama did not discard the ones that got holes (perhaps due to too much scrubbing) as she found them light and good (they didn’t rust unlike kerosene cans) for her kutsay herbs that she used to cure my sisters’ bumps each time they stumble or hit their heads onto something.

No one bought milk and sardine cans. Nonetheless, we treasured these. The flat sardine cans became gargarusa (toy cars) and later for tambourine. The milk cans similarly served as wheels for the sardine cars or made into maracas that we equipped with guava twigs for handle and a dozen or so tiny stones for the sound. The tambourines and the maracas we used as carolling paraphernalia when Christmas came and my sister Arlyne and cousins Elnora, Neneng, and Jessie went to sing “Dashing thru the snow,” “Soap as the boys of an angel” and “Sa-ay lent nayt” in the houses whose owners we knew were not so stingy as to part with 5 centavo or 10 centavo coins each. We would later divide the fruits of our singing efforts and if there was not enough to make all members have at least a diyes (10 centavos) each, Uncle Kusep (oldest brother of Papa and Uncle Ermin) would fill up the deficit — and then we would all go home happy and then later dream of doing another carolling the next Christmas around.