by Nunilo M. de Leon
Our house in Daet was located along the Sipocot-Daet provincial highway, between the Daet Central Elementary School and the town plaza and a short walk away from either one. The town plaza or park was by the Daet River. The municipal building was on one side of the plaza and the town church on the opposite side, both overlooking the river. The town’s business center and town market were just across the river, which was spanned by a two-lane vehicle bridge, with walkways for pedestrians on either side. The walkways were made of widely-spaced wooden slats and I always felt I was going to fall through the slats every time I crossed the bridge.
The highway between Daet and Sipocot was then considered quite “busy”. This meant that a horse-drawn calesa or carretela would clip-clop along the asphalt highway every couple of minutes and an Alatco bus or another motor vehicle would roar by every quarter hour or so. This highway ran past the town plaza, crossed the river at the bridge and wound up at a crossroad a short distance from the bridge. Beyond the crossroad was a barrio dirt road leading to and ending at the Pacific Ocean in Bagasbas, a barrio of Daet. The left fork led to the northern towns of the province, such as Indan, Labo, Talisay, Paracale and Capalonga, where the road ran out. The right fork led to another dead-end at the seaport barrio of Mercedes.
Our house, like most houses then, was a single elevated level chalet, with a low silong, surrounded by a small fenced-in yard, with an area of perhaps two hundred square meters. A silong was essential because when in rained, the surrounding area would always be under a few inches of water. It had two bedrooms, a sala, a dining room, a kitchen, toilet/bathroom, a batalan, where the backstairs were, and a small entry porch. We had 24-hour electricity and piped-in running water, clay stoves using firewood, no refrigerator but with a paminggalan for keeping cooked food, very much like what we had in Tampoy. Inang had to go every day to the market to buy fresh food which had to be cooked the same day. For furniture, we had wooden double-deckers for the kids, a large rattan bed for Tatang and Inang, wooden aparadors for clothes, and furniture sets for the sala and comedor. There was very little entertainment to speak of, but much reading with so many materials available, and some story-telling. We had one radio, a small shortwave radio, which only Tatang could operate, and which was used only for listening to the news. Commercial radio stations in Manila were too weak-powered to reach Daet. The house was newly constructed and we were the first tenant. The furnishings were also brand new, recently purchased by Inang and Tatang, who obviously intended to live there for some time.
Our house in Daet was located along the Sipocot-Daet provincial highway, between the Daet Central Elementary School and the town plaza and a short walk away from either one. The town plaza or park was by the Daet River. The municipal building was on one side of the plaza and the town church on the opposite side, both overlooking the river. The town’s business center and town market were just across the river, which was spanned by a two-lane vehicle bridge, with walkways for pedestrians on either side. The walkways were made of widely-spaced wooden slats and I always felt I was going to fall through the slats every time I crossed the bridge.
The highway between Daet and Sipocot was then considered quite “busy”. This meant that a horse-drawn calesa or carretela would clip-clop along the asphalt highway every couple of minutes and an Alatco bus or another motor vehicle would roar by every quarter hour or so. This highway ran past the town plaza, crossed the river at the bridge and wound up at a crossroad a short distance from the bridge. Beyond the crossroad was a barrio dirt road leading to and ending at the Pacific Ocean in Bagasbas, a barrio of Daet. The left fork led to the northern towns of the province, such as Indan, Labo, Talisay, Paracale and Capalonga, where the road ran out. The right fork led to another dead-end at the seaport barrio of Mercedes.
Our house, like most houses then, was a single elevated level chalet, with a low silong, surrounded by a small fenced-in yard, with an area of perhaps two hundred square meters. A silong was essential because when in rained, the surrounding area would always be under a few inches of water. It had two bedrooms, a sala, a dining room, a kitchen, toilet/bathroom, a batalan, where the backstairs were, and a small entry porch. We had 24-hour electricity and piped-in running water, clay stoves using firewood, no refrigerator but with a paminggalan for keeping cooked food, very much like what we had in Tampoy. Inang had to go every day to the market to buy fresh food which had to be cooked the same day. For furniture, we had wooden double-deckers for the kids, a large rattan bed for Tatang and Inang, wooden aparadors for clothes, and furniture sets for the sala and comedor. There was very little entertainment to speak of, but much reading with so many materials available, and some story-telling. We had one radio, a small shortwave radio, which only Tatang could operate, and which was used only for listening to the news. Commercial radio stations in Manila were too weak-powered to reach Daet. The house was newly constructed and we were the first tenant. The furnishings were also brand new, recently purchased by Inang and Tatang, who obviously intended to live there for some time.
The Monday after we arrived in Daet, found us already attending classes at the Daet Central Elementary School; the last few months of Grade 4 for me and Grade 2 for Tancio. He recalls being given the “Health King" award in school for that year. Inang was most pleased by the honor won by her “Baby”. School in Daet is a blur to me but I remember my days as a Boy Scout and the athletic meets. I remember the names of only two of my classmates who were in the Boy Scout patrol with me. They were Pablo Dimen and Cayetano Lukban. Also a boy scout but in a lower grade was Wenceslao Vinzons, Jr., whose father became a wartime hero. There were the usual scouts training and rituals; the scout pledge, marching and drills, tying knots and, best of all, the frequent hikes and camping trips to the nearby woods and beaches. There were also municipal and provincial interscholastic athletic meets, where we cheered for our Daet team.
On some weekends when he was in Daet, Tatang would take us on a hike and picnic to Bagasbas Beach, with its huge surf, rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. He was a good swimmer and swam like Tarzan. He learned how to swim properly in his compulsory physical education classes at the University of the Philippines. Before that, he swam Tampoy-creek-style, “langoy-aso”. I learned to- swim in Bagasbas, “langoy-dagat”, head held high above the waves.
On some weekends when he was in Daet, Tatang would take us on a hike and picnic to Bagasbas Beach, with its huge surf, rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. He was a good swimmer and swam like Tarzan. He learned how to swim properly in his compulsory physical education classes at the University of the Philippines. Before that, he swam Tampoy-creek-style, “langoy-aso”. I learned to- swim in Bagasbas, “langoy-dagat”, head held high above the waves.
On other weekends, we would go to the Bicol National Forest, between Daet and Sipocot. We enjoyed picnics there, swimming in the forest pools and wandering among the tall trees in what was then a virgin forest.
For entertainment, Tatang would, every weekend or so, take Inang to one of the two local movie houses to catch a Hollywood-made movie. Once they even took us to a Shirley Temple movie. I did not like it. I preferred the cowboy and Tarzan movies I saw in Malolos.
Sometimes, Tatang would visit Lolo Ramon’s homestead in Labo. He never took any of us with him on those visits. He said the place was dangerous, whatever that meant.
It was in Daet where I believe I first attended Sunday Mass. It was all quite strange but awesome to be in the cavernous church, the Latin prayers which I could not understand, the priest standing on the overhead pulpit and delivering a sermon which went over everyone’s head, in both the colloquial and literal sense. I do not recall ever having been inside a church while I was in Malolos. After all, the generation of Lolo Ramon, Dada Merced and Dada Ninay – and that of Inkong Tacio and Impong Biyang before them - provided the spark and fueled the revolution against Spain. They were fiercely anti-friar and, at best, indifferent to the Church. Those of their generation were religious; they had santos in their houses, recited ritual prayers regularly but never set foot inside the church. The generation that followed, that of my father, aunts and uncles, were not as distant to the Church. I would say half of them became regular Sunday churchgoers while half were still indifferent. Inang’s family was the opposite. They were so religious they even produced a priest.
While we were in Daet, we learned that newly-married Tio Toniong and Tia Lily had relocated to Iloilo. Tio Toniong had been assigned to the Iloilo Provincial Hospital as chief pathologist. Much later we heard that Tia Lily had given birth in Iloilo to her first, a girl named Lourdes.
From Inang, I learned a few more things about Inkong Tasio, supplemented by later reading materials. He was the Alcalde Constitucional of Malolos in 1886. Malolos was then divided into three constituencies, Barasoain, Sta. Isabel and Malolos. Inkong was alcalde of the third constituency. During his term, he became part of a protest against a practice of the “frailes” involving the padding of census figures. These census figures were the basis for some revenue-generating schemes and thus inflated the income of the frailes. This protest action inspired the “21 Women of Malolos” in their defiance of the “cura parroco” or parish priest, who refused a request from their group. They had asked him to allow them to put up a small night school where they could learn how to read, write and speak Spanish, at no cost to the parish. When the priest turned down their request, they by-passed him and went up to the Governor General in Manila, who was sympathetic to their request. The Manila newspapers lauded the Maloleñas for their action, and “Plaridel” or Marcelo H. del Pilar strongly supported them. All these naturally enraged the “cura parroco”. He tried his best to isolate the “Women”, even threatening to ex-communicate them. He went after those whom he suspected of being behind the “21”. The “caballeros de Malolos”, a group of prominent Maloleños who were beginning to resist the frailes, were his prime suspects. He had many of them, including Inkong Tasio, arrested by the Guardia Civil and exiled to the south. This act of the “ 21 Women” was immortalized by the letter Jose Rizal wrote to them, extolling their unprecedented and heroic deed.
With Inkong’s exile, which was to last for several years, Impong Biyang was left alone to take care of the family, whose eldest, Lolo Ramon was then only 16 years old. Impong Biyang, being a very enterprising lady, coped more than adequately and was able to accumulate some capital which, after Inkong’s return from his exile, was used for the purchase of farmlands in Hagunoy, where they had to live as a condition for Inkong’s release.
We spent the long school vacations, in Manguisok where Tatang was working, a sitio in Mercedes, then only a barrio of Daet. Mercedes was a fish-and-sea-port on the delta formed by the Daet and Basud rivers and my first visit there was quite an experience for me; the fresh gale blowing in from the blue Pacific Ocean, the tall waves rolling up the beach, the ocean-going ships which docked there to load lumber for Manila, the smell of the fishing boats coming to harbor after days of fishing in fish-rich San Miguel Bay. We would hop aboard a “Johnson” boat (the outboard motor’s brand) and ride on it across the river to the opposite bank, where Manguisok was. The two rivers met a short distance upstream from Mercedes and formed a quarter-mile-wide and very deep river mouth.
Manguisok was a newly-built settlement, inhabited only by workers and staff of the Marsman Development Corp., which had a logging franchise covering all of the virgin forests between the town of Basud and the Pacific Ocean. In Manguisok were the company sawmill and other facilities. The logs were cut down in the forests upstream and floated down the Basud River to Manguisok, where they were cut to easier-to-handle slabs. The slabs would then be rafted across the river to the port of Mercedes, where the ships docked. These ships took the lumber to Manila. The sawmill was always very busy and sometimes operated round-the-clock, especially when ships were waiting in Mercedes to be loaded.
Manguisok was on a triangular peninsula, which protruded into the Pacific Ocean to the east and overlooked both the Basud River, to the north, and the mouth of San Miguel Bay, to the south. To the west, forming the base of the triangle, was the town of Basud, many mountains, forests, swamps and hills away, not accessible by road from Manguisok.
The fenced and guarded company compound was adjacent to the river. There were the offices, the saw mill, the motor pool, the wharf, the log pond and the electrical plant. In a fenced-off enclave abutting the main company compound and opening on a private beach were houses for the European staff and their guests. Between the company compound and the forests were the company-built housing for the Filipino employees. The supervisory personnel had single detached houses on the top of a low plateau near the forests. The rank-and-file were in smaller duplexes between the plateau and the company compound. There were a small chapel, primary school, company store, park and playground. The daily wage of ordinary employees then was one peso a day, adequate during that period when one peso was equal to a dollar in value. Tatang, being a manager, was receiving one hundred pesos a month as salary.
We stayed in a new stilt house, made of unpainted rough lumber and coconut leaf roofing, built on wooden posts, about a meter above the ground. We had a spacious fenced yard with a second-growth forest behind and to one side. The house had 2 largish bedrooms and 3 smallish ones, sala, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and an outhouse for the “antipolo” or cesspool toilet. (The typical “antipolo” is a rectangular hole 1 meter wide, 1-1/2 m. long and 2 meters deep. The soil there was very easy to dig into and a hole like this could be dug in a day or two, by only two men, using only spades and pickaxes, “pala at piko”. A wood-and-coconut-leaf-hut, with roof, sidings, floor and door is built over the hole. The floor – bigger than the hole in the ground – would have a half meter by one meter rectangular hole in the middle. Over this hole in the floor, a wooden toilet seat with cover is fabricated. The hole should be sealed properly to keep insects out and the noxious fumes inside the hole.)
Electricity was available from sunset to sunrise, provided free by the company. Potable water was through artesian well hand pumps, found in every house. Cooking was with wood-fueled stoves.
Food was plentiful. Early every morning, Inang had to choose between many types of salt water fish – “lapu-lapu, pompano, kitang, maya-maya, talakitok, tanguigui”; occasionally “pusit” squid, dugong, “pating” shark, “pawikan” turtle and “pagui” sting ray meat - all delivered fresh to our house by fish vendors. Fresh milk was unavailable but Alpine evaporated milk, Señorita condensed milk and the more expensive Klim powdered milk were available at the company store, run by a Chinese, who was called “Wong” by everyone. Rice, hardware and grocery supplies were also sold there, all deductible from salary. Our backyard provided the vegetables, eggs and chicken meat. We rarely had fresh pork or beef.
Sunday mornings, Tatang would take Tancio and me on long walks to the forest back of our house to explore. We would visit some company laborers who had small farm clearings “kaingins” in the forest. From them, I learned forest lore, more than I would learn from my boy scouting. We would pluck and eat tiny wild berries called "pasionetas". We learned which kind of fern leaves and tree fungi were not only edible but very tasty. We were taught to cut a kind of malodorous wild reed to use as our hiking staff. The smell of the reed was supposed to repel snakes and keep them from straying into our path. It probably was not the scent but the sight and sound of our whacking away with the reeds while we walked along the forest path, that kept them away. We were shown that rain water, which accumulated in the hollows of leaves and trees, was quite potable.
On other mornings, I would go alone to the eastern side of the company compound and climb over a low hill to a tiny inlet, which was seldom visited by others. There I would stay much of the morning, swimming, watching the boats on the ocean outside the inlet, looking at the wild monkeys, wild pigs and birds all around, listening to the sounds of nature, exploring.
The afternoons, I spent reading the materials Tatang brought home with him every Friday, which was mail delivery day. He had subscriptions to the Readers Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Time, the Philippine Free Press, Livestock and Farmer, enough to keep me occupied. The farming magazine awakened my interest in agriculture. The Philippine Free Press gave me the local slant on the war and on the probability of it reaching our shores and dwelt lengthily on the local Manila Baseball League (MBBL) and US major league baseball. The stateside magazines featured mainly baseball, it being summer, and the war in Europe and China. Basketball was not yet so popular. Baseball was the sport then.
Late in the afternoon, I would watch the company employees on the playground next to our house. They played volleyball and softball but not basketball. Most, if not all, the company’s employees were male, even the nurses at the company clinic, and the ladies remained at home. Of course, this was not the case outside the company compound. Women did most of the work in the barrio school, the chapel, and the stores.
Staying with us in Manguisok, aside from the 5 of us in the family, was my Lolo Luis Macapugay, my mother’s father. Lolo Luis was already a widower then. My Lola Celang (Marcela Mendoza) had already passed away. Also there for one or two years was my uncle Tio Joaquin Mendoza Macapugay, who was employed as a carpenter in the sawmill, his wife, Tia Maria or Tia Mary, and their 3 children, Cely, Chita and the baby, nicknamed Boy. Lolo Luis had a green thumb. He converted the house’s bare backyard into a truck garden, providing us and some neighbors with a year-round supply of vegetables, eggs and chicken meat. I learned the ins-and-outs of backyard farming from him. Lolo was also very handy around the house. He cooked, cleaned, pumped in water. His main pastime was reading the Tagalog magazines Tatang regularly brought home for him.
Lolo Luis was a native of the town of Hagunoy while my Lola Celang was from the town of Bulacan. Their family had a small landholding in the latter town from which they earned a modest income, enough to see their four children through high school, but not beyond that. Their eldest, Pio Macapugay was a brilliant student. After high school, he studied at the Ateneo de Manila with the support of a rich town mate, whose identity I do not know. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he entered the seminary and was ordained a diocesan priest at the San Carlos Seminary. It was Padre Pio, whom I called “Yeye” (another nickname that stuck) who saw Inang through high school at the Bulacan Provincial High School and through university. Inang was already at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, when my lolo decided to sell their farm. He could no longer attend to it because of poor health. Yeye, who was then parish priest of San Nicolas, Pangasinan, brought the family with him and found jobs for his younger brothers, Jose and Joaquin. Both of them eventually married and raised their families in that town, except for Tio Joaquin’s two-year stint in Manguisok. Lola Celang died while they were there in San Nicolas. Afterwards, Lolo went with Yeye in all his assignments.
While he was parish priest in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, Yeye fell ill and had to take a leave of absence from his parochial duties. While on leave, he lived in the house of a prominent family in that town, the Flores family. His illness worsened and was diagnosed to be pulmonary tuberculosis. He was sent to the Hospicio de San Jose off Ayala Bridge in Manila, where ailing members of the clergy were hospitalized. He had not yet fully recovered when war came and forced him to return to the Flores household in Cuyapo. Inang took over from Yeye and asked Lolo and Tio Joaquin to join her in Manguisok where a job was waiting for the latter.
Also with us was a cousin on my Inang’s side, Narciso Karasig or Ka Siso, teaching at the newly-built Manguisok Primary School. I never did meet him there because he was in Malolos during school vacations, when I would be in Manguisok. He did not return to Manguisok for the 1941-1942 school year. I learned later that he had been called to active service as a third lieutenant by the Philippine Army. He was an ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) graduate. Inang later told me that there were other reasons for his disappearance. He was a handsome young man with an impressive military bearing and somewhat of a ladies’ man. He had love-related entanglements which forced his departure. Long afterwards, Inang would take me and the other kids to visit Ka Siso’s mother at their home in Murphy district, Quezon City, but I never saw Ka Siso there. He was in the army and was always “out in the field” somewhere.
The first and only time we met was in Inang’s funeral in Sept. 1992. He introduced himself to me and I immediately recognized his name. He said that he was a native Maloleño, and was Tia Monang’s and Tia Epang’s student in Malolos Elementary School and Bulacan Provincial High School. He indeed joined the Phil. Army in 1941, fought in Bataan and was in the Death March. He joined the guerilla movement with Alejo Santos’ BMA (Bulacan Military Area) and rejoined the Phil. Army after World War II. While a BMA guerilla, he stayed away from Malolos. He was known as an army man and knew that there were “makapilis”, or Filipino informers, in Malolos who were only too willing to inform the Japanese about him. The intelligence men the guerillas had in Malolos were inconspicuous civilians.
Back in the service after the war, he was in the thick of the anti-Huk campaign as a BCT (Battalion Combat Team) line officer when Ramon Magsaysay was president. During Ferdinand Marcos’ term, he was a field officer in the 1st Infantry “Tabak” Division, which carried the brunt of the fighting in Mindanao. He had retired in 1978 as a full Colonel and was then living in Murphy District, Quezon City. Later, I would learn that he had been admitted to the United States as a permanent resident, being a USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) veteran. That was the last I heard of him.
For entertainment, Tatang would, every weekend or so, take Inang to one of the two local movie houses to catch a Hollywood-made movie. Once they even took us to a Shirley Temple movie. I did not like it. I preferred the cowboy and Tarzan movies I saw in Malolos.
Sometimes, Tatang would visit Lolo Ramon’s homestead in Labo. He never took any of us with him on those visits. He said the place was dangerous, whatever that meant.
It was in Daet where I believe I first attended Sunday Mass. It was all quite strange but awesome to be in the cavernous church, the Latin prayers which I could not understand, the priest standing on the overhead pulpit and delivering a sermon which went over everyone’s head, in both the colloquial and literal sense. I do not recall ever having been inside a church while I was in Malolos. After all, the generation of Lolo Ramon, Dada Merced and Dada Ninay – and that of Inkong Tacio and Impong Biyang before them - provided the spark and fueled the revolution against Spain. They were fiercely anti-friar and, at best, indifferent to the Church. Those of their generation were religious; they had santos in their houses, recited ritual prayers regularly but never set foot inside the church. The generation that followed, that of my father, aunts and uncles, were not as distant to the Church. I would say half of them became regular Sunday churchgoers while half were still indifferent. Inang’s family was the opposite. They were so religious they even produced a priest.
While we were in Daet, we learned that newly-married Tio Toniong and Tia Lily had relocated to Iloilo. Tio Toniong had been assigned to the Iloilo Provincial Hospital as chief pathologist. Much later we heard that Tia Lily had given birth in Iloilo to her first, a girl named Lourdes.
From Inang, I learned a few more things about Inkong Tasio, supplemented by later reading materials. He was the Alcalde Constitucional of Malolos in 1886. Malolos was then divided into three constituencies, Barasoain, Sta. Isabel and Malolos. Inkong was alcalde of the third constituency. During his term, he became part of a protest against a practice of the “frailes” involving the padding of census figures. These census figures were the basis for some revenue-generating schemes and thus inflated the income of the frailes. This protest action inspired the “21 Women of Malolos” in their defiance of the “cura parroco” or parish priest, who refused a request from their group. They had asked him to allow them to put up a small night school where they could learn how to read, write and speak Spanish, at no cost to the parish. When the priest turned down their request, they by-passed him and went up to the Governor General in Manila, who was sympathetic to their request. The Manila newspapers lauded the Maloleñas for their action, and “Plaridel” or Marcelo H. del Pilar strongly supported them. All these naturally enraged the “cura parroco”. He tried his best to isolate the “Women”, even threatening to ex-communicate them. He went after those whom he suspected of being behind the “21”. The “caballeros de Malolos”, a group of prominent Maloleños who were beginning to resist the frailes, were his prime suspects. He had many of them, including Inkong Tasio, arrested by the Guardia Civil and exiled to the south. This act of the “ 21 Women” was immortalized by the letter Jose Rizal wrote to them, extolling their unprecedented and heroic deed.
With Inkong’s exile, which was to last for several years, Impong Biyang was left alone to take care of the family, whose eldest, Lolo Ramon was then only 16 years old. Impong Biyang, being a very enterprising lady, coped more than adequately and was able to accumulate some capital which, after Inkong’s return from his exile, was used for the purchase of farmlands in Hagunoy, where they had to live as a condition for Inkong’s release.
We spent the long school vacations, in Manguisok where Tatang was working, a sitio in Mercedes, then only a barrio of Daet. Mercedes was a fish-and-sea-port on the delta formed by the Daet and Basud rivers and my first visit there was quite an experience for me; the fresh gale blowing in from the blue Pacific Ocean, the tall waves rolling up the beach, the ocean-going ships which docked there to load lumber for Manila, the smell of the fishing boats coming to harbor after days of fishing in fish-rich San Miguel Bay. We would hop aboard a “Johnson” boat (the outboard motor’s brand) and ride on it across the river to the opposite bank, where Manguisok was. The two rivers met a short distance upstream from Mercedes and formed a quarter-mile-wide and very deep river mouth.
Manguisok was a newly-built settlement, inhabited only by workers and staff of the Marsman Development Corp., which had a logging franchise covering all of the virgin forests between the town of Basud and the Pacific Ocean. In Manguisok were the company sawmill and other facilities. The logs were cut down in the forests upstream and floated down the Basud River to Manguisok, where they were cut to easier-to-handle slabs. The slabs would then be rafted across the river to the port of Mercedes, where the ships docked. These ships took the lumber to Manila. The sawmill was always very busy and sometimes operated round-the-clock, especially when ships were waiting in Mercedes to be loaded.
Manguisok was on a triangular peninsula, which protruded into the Pacific Ocean to the east and overlooked both the Basud River, to the north, and the mouth of San Miguel Bay, to the south. To the west, forming the base of the triangle, was the town of Basud, many mountains, forests, swamps and hills away, not accessible by road from Manguisok.
The fenced and guarded company compound was adjacent to the river. There were the offices, the saw mill, the motor pool, the wharf, the log pond and the electrical plant. In a fenced-off enclave abutting the main company compound and opening on a private beach were houses for the European staff and their guests. Between the company compound and the forests were the company-built housing for the Filipino employees. The supervisory personnel had single detached houses on the top of a low plateau near the forests. The rank-and-file were in smaller duplexes between the plateau and the company compound. There were a small chapel, primary school, company store, park and playground. The daily wage of ordinary employees then was one peso a day, adequate during that period when one peso was equal to a dollar in value. Tatang, being a manager, was receiving one hundred pesos a month as salary.
We stayed in a new stilt house, made of unpainted rough lumber and coconut leaf roofing, built on wooden posts, about a meter above the ground. We had a spacious fenced yard with a second-growth forest behind and to one side. The house had 2 largish bedrooms and 3 smallish ones, sala, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and an outhouse for the “antipolo” or cesspool toilet. (The typical “antipolo” is a rectangular hole 1 meter wide, 1-1/2 m. long and 2 meters deep. The soil there was very easy to dig into and a hole like this could be dug in a day or two, by only two men, using only spades and pickaxes, “pala at piko”. A wood-and-coconut-leaf-hut, with roof, sidings, floor and door is built over the hole. The floor – bigger than the hole in the ground – would have a half meter by one meter rectangular hole in the middle. Over this hole in the floor, a wooden toilet seat with cover is fabricated. The hole should be sealed properly to keep insects out and the noxious fumes inside the hole.)
Electricity was available from sunset to sunrise, provided free by the company. Potable water was through artesian well hand pumps, found in every house. Cooking was with wood-fueled stoves.
Food was plentiful. Early every morning, Inang had to choose between many types of salt water fish – “lapu-lapu, pompano, kitang, maya-maya, talakitok, tanguigui”; occasionally “pusit” squid, dugong, “pating” shark, “pawikan” turtle and “pagui” sting ray meat - all delivered fresh to our house by fish vendors. Fresh milk was unavailable but Alpine evaporated milk, Señorita condensed milk and the more expensive Klim powdered milk were available at the company store, run by a Chinese, who was called “Wong” by everyone. Rice, hardware and grocery supplies were also sold there, all deductible from salary. Our backyard provided the vegetables, eggs and chicken meat. We rarely had fresh pork or beef.
Sunday mornings, Tatang would take Tancio and me on long walks to the forest back of our house to explore. We would visit some company laborers who had small farm clearings “kaingins” in the forest. From them, I learned forest lore, more than I would learn from my boy scouting. We would pluck and eat tiny wild berries called "pasionetas". We learned which kind of fern leaves and tree fungi were not only edible but very tasty. We were taught to cut a kind of malodorous wild reed to use as our hiking staff. The smell of the reed was supposed to repel snakes and keep them from straying into our path. It probably was not the scent but the sight and sound of our whacking away with the reeds while we walked along the forest path, that kept them away. We were shown that rain water, which accumulated in the hollows of leaves and trees, was quite potable.
On other mornings, I would go alone to the eastern side of the company compound and climb over a low hill to a tiny inlet, which was seldom visited by others. There I would stay much of the morning, swimming, watching the boats on the ocean outside the inlet, looking at the wild monkeys, wild pigs and birds all around, listening to the sounds of nature, exploring.
The afternoons, I spent reading the materials Tatang brought home with him every Friday, which was mail delivery day. He had subscriptions to the Readers Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Time, the Philippine Free Press, Livestock and Farmer, enough to keep me occupied. The farming magazine awakened my interest in agriculture. The Philippine Free Press gave me the local slant on the war and on the probability of it reaching our shores and dwelt lengthily on the local Manila Baseball League (MBBL) and US major league baseball. The stateside magazines featured mainly baseball, it being summer, and the war in Europe and China. Basketball was not yet so popular. Baseball was the sport then.
Late in the afternoon, I would watch the company employees on the playground next to our house. They played volleyball and softball but not basketball. Most, if not all, the company’s employees were male, even the nurses at the company clinic, and the ladies remained at home. Of course, this was not the case outside the company compound. Women did most of the work in the barrio school, the chapel, and the stores.
Staying with us in Manguisok, aside from the 5 of us in the family, was my Lolo Luis Macapugay, my mother’s father. Lolo Luis was already a widower then. My Lola Celang (Marcela Mendoza) had already passed away. Also there for one or two years was my uncle Tio Joaquin Mendoza Macapugay, who was employed as a carpenter in the sawmill, his wife, Tia Maria or Tia Mary, and their 3 children, Cely, Chita and the baby, nicknamed Boy. Lolo Luis had a green thumb. He converted the house’s bare backyard into a truck garden, providing us and some neighbors with a year-round supply of vegetables, eggs and chicken meat. I learned the ins-and-outs of backyard farming from him. Lolo was also very handy around the house. He cooked, cleaned, pumped in water. His main pastime was reading the Tagalog magazines Tatang regularly brought home for him.
Lolo Luis was a native of the town of Hagunoy while my Lola Celang was from the town of Bulacan. Their family had a small landholding in the latter town from which they earned a modest income, enough to see their four children through high school, but not beyond that. Their eldest, Pio Macapugay was a brilliant student. After high school, he studied at the Ateneo de Manila with the support of a rich town mate, whose identity I do not know. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he entered the seminary and was ordained a diocesan priest at the San Carlos Seminary. It was Padre Pio, whom I called “Yeye” (another nickname that stuck) who saw Inang through high school at the Bulacan Provincial High School and through university. Inang was already at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, when my lolo decided to sell their farm. He could no longer attend to it because of poor health. Yeye, who was then parish priest of San Nicolas, Pangasinan, brought the family with him and found jobs for his younger brothers, Jose and Joaquin. Both of them eventually married and raised their families in that town, except for Tio Joaquin’s two-year stint in Manguisok. Lola Celang died while they were there in San Nicolas. Afterwards, Lolo went with Yeye in all his assignments.
While he was parish priest in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, Yeye fell ill and had to take a leave of absence from his parochial duties. While on leave, he lived in the house of a prominent family in that town, the Flores family. His illness worsened and was diagnosed to be pulmonary tuberculosis. He was sent to the Hospicio de San Jose off Ayala Bridge in Manila, where ailing members of the clergy were hospitalized. He had not yet fully recovered when war came and forced him to return to the Flores household in Cuyapo. Inang took over from Yeye and asked Lolo and Tio Joaquin to join her in Manguisok where a job was waiting for the latter.
Also with us was a cousin on my Inang’s side, Narciso Karasig or Ka Siso, teaching at the newly-built Manguisok Primary School. I never did meet him there because he was in Malolos during school vacations, when I would be in Manguisok. He did not return to Manguisok for the 1941-1942 school year. I learned later that he had been called to active service as a third lieutenant by the Philippine Army. He was an ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) graduate. Inang later told me that there were other reasons for his disappearance. He was a handsome young man with an impressive military bearing and somewhat of a ladies’ man. He had love-related entanglements which forced his departure. Long afterwards, Inang would take me and the other kids to visit Ka Siso’s mother at their home in Murphy district, Quezon City, but I never saw Ka Siso there. He was in the army and was always “out in the field” somewhere.
The first and only time we met was in Inang’s funeral in Sept. 1992. He introduced himself to me and I immediately recognized his name. He said that he was a native Maloleño, and was Tia Monang’s and Tia Epang’s student in Malolos Elementary School and Bulacan Provincial High School. He indeed joined the Phil. Army in 1941, fought in Bataan and was in the Death March. He joined the guerilla movement with Alejo Santos’ BMA (Bulacan Military Area) and rejoined the Phil. Army after World War II. While a BMA guerilla, he stayed away from Malolos. He was known as an army man and knew that there were “makapilis”, or Filipino informers, in Malolos who were only too willing to inform the Japanese about him. The intelligence men the guerillas had in Malolos were inconspicuous civilians.
Back in the service after the war, he was in the thick of the anti-Huk campaign as a BCT (Battalion Combat Team) line officer when Ramon Magsaysay was president. During Ferdinand Marcos’ term, he was a field officer in the 1st Infantry “Tabak” Division, which carried the brunt of the fighting in Mindanao. He had retired in 1978 as a full Colonel and was then living in Murphy District, Quezon City. Later, I would learn that he had been admitted to the United States as a permanent resident, being a USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) veteran. That was the last I heard of him.
