Living with a large family allows an accumulation of memories that tarry on and refuse to go way.
This is one such hardy memory that had kept me anxious during my last afternoon nap.
Living and growing up with my large family in that old house along Del Mar and Victoria Sts, I had chores like any other siblings, though in hindsight I wonder why I felt undue brunt on many of them, being only the 5th child in a brood of nine.
On the ground floor of that very cramped house, tucked between my parents' bedroom and the bathroom facility was a small enclosure called the kuwartito. It was intended as the help's quarters, right next door to their tiny and dark bathroom facility. The room was also limited in space by the fact that it was partly under the stairwell leading to the 2nd floor. That throwaway space was used to store odd stuff - like tires, clothing and rags, cardboard, etc. As if that these were not enough, there was built another compartment made of wood and amakan and situated flushed to the outside wall. It was at least 5 feet high and maybe 2 square meters, with a small opening on the top.. It was used as storage of palay.
The story of the source of the palay merits another separate account. For now, let us proceed to the chore. In effect, the palay was our household inventory and supply for the rice that we needed each day for our meals. Every time our supply of rice would run low, the family dipped into that supply.
My chore was to load palay to two big jute sacks, using the kerosene "taro" to scoop palay from the enclosure into the 2 sacks. This was one "prickly" chore since exposure to the palay made one very itchy all over, aggravated by the intolerable heat in that very cramped space. But it had to be done.
The sacks were then loaded to a tartanilla and delivered for milling to Buhayco rice mill somewhere along Real St. near its intersection with either Gomez or Luzon Sts. One retrieved one sack of milled rice for the two sacks brought. Then back to the house. And this chore was repeated as the need arose.
Initially none of us young kids in the house raised any question about the source of the palay. .As I got older, certain things began to add up, and not because we started asking questions. But simply because one added to another.
One very vivid recollection I have as a kid is of a trip we made to a place in Opol, riding in a relative's shiny Ford sedan. Our uncle and aunt who were our next door neighbors, brought some of us siblings together with their only son for the trip. It was to be a day long trip, where food was brought and handled by a helper who came along for the ride.
The trip was among other things memorable because of the number of times we had to disembark during the entire trip. Not that the car was not reliable, but because it was determined that the precaution was critical for our protection.
First, from the house in Victoria driving to Carmen, we had to disembark as the car negotiated the steep downgrade leading to the makeshift ferry docked near the City Hall. The old bridge bombed during the last year was not restored yet. And then on the disembarking procedure was repeated for every bridge all the way to Opol. Can't remember how many. But understandably it had to be done since all the bridges then were made from coconut trunks that were not considered reliable. So each time we disembarked, we walked behind the car as it negotiated the bridge, then back inside on the other side. This was the routine.
We reached Opol and were thrilled to see irrigation canals running parallel and vertical to the highway, with clear and cool waters flowing noisily. We were told that they were fit to soak in, which we did without a moment's delay.
Later, we learned that our uncle and aunt were visiting their basakan in Opol and that our parents also had theirs in the same location.
Back to the house, on occasion we would get visits from a soft-spoken and kindly old man named Iyo Unque. And we would overhear conversations about palay production and how much we could expect. Pretty soon sacks of palay would arrive and they would be unloaded into our little stash..
Th equation therefore as best as I could figure out was that Iyo Inque took care of planting and harvesting palay from basakan owned by my parents, and the production was shared between the two parties.
So ends a clear enough exposition of one particular arrangement consenting people had during those times. Arrangements that ostensibly benefited all parties concerned.
One last lingering thought on the whole thing. I can only imagine the rat problem we were initiating because of that palay storage right on the ground floor where it is very accessible. And so to this day the scourge of that little neighborhood is, you guessed right, the rat problem.
