Memories Of Cubao—Bow!

(In a previous episode I reminisced about Cubao the place. Now I remember our life there in the 60s.)

We first lived in a two-storey apartment in Cambridge Street, Cubao, QC. They say we remember sounds better; my earliest memory was liking the song Obla-di, Obla-da by The Beatles. I also remember playing with the walis-tingting on puddles of rainwater.

I vaguely remember waking up in the middle of one night to the sound of thunder and a raging storm. As a kid I was scared of thunder, lightning and strong winds. I was sure of one thing: the brighter the flash, the louder the ka-boom. So to block out both, I crawled under the bed. The next day everyone went into a panic looking for me.

As a kid I swallowed a hairpin; I was pretending I was smoking a cigarette in bed. My mom panicked and gave me lots and lots to drink. Then she forced me to take a dump. Sure enough, the hairpin came out; my mom told me the pin could have punctured my appendix. After that I never played with hairpins again.

We had a neighbor, a woman who lived by her lonesome. She was cranky to everyone. We were afraid of her and hid when she was around. We dubbed her “Karakatoa” after the volcano which erupted in East Java.

I always asked Santa for Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks; I’d always get toy airplanes with blinking engines and folding wings, or robots with blinking eyes. My older brother and I would always get similar gifts; everything had to be equal between us. But I often thought my brother’s toy was cooler than mine.

There were days when my dad would be away on a business trip in the provinces. Once we accompanied him to Iloilo. To while away the time while my dad worked, my mom took us to watch Dracula starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in a downtown movie house. I don’t know why two under-aged children were allowed to watch a horror movie, but that was in the province. I don’t really remember watching it, but I remember being scared of vampires.

Another time my dad came home with live crabs from Davao. One time several of them got loose and crawled all over the living room; my younger sister was so scared she refused to leave her chair until all the crabs were caught. One of them crawled under the bed; maybe it was afraid of lightning and thunder too.

I grew up afraid of vampires, my sister of crabs. Ironically, today she loves eating crab much more than anyone of us in the family; meanwhile, I’m now the one who loves to suck.

I remember watching the TV show Gentle Ben, a story about a kid and his friend, a grizzly bear. We were also fans of Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Tang Tarang-Tang, starring Pugo and Patsy. I remember an old commercial for Frigidaire (a refrigerator brand) featured Pugo saying his trademark line from that sitcom: “Datsa latsa nansens!” (That’s a lot of nonsense!)

Sundays after mass we’d go to Farmer’s Market. Farmer’s mall-like shopping center was color-coded—the floors were blue, red, yellow and green. There were maps all over the place; we’d check each and every one of them to see if the “You are here” sign was correct. There we’d eat lunch at Elly’s Panciteria—it used to be along Aurora Blvd but moved to the third floor of Farmer’s. I always ordered my favorite: lumpiang hubad and pancit bihon. I’d put lots of patis (fish sauce) and kalamansi on the pancit. Afterwards we’d troop to buy soft ice cream at a stall under one of the stairs.

In 1970 the family moved to SSS Village, Marikina, but we’d still go to Cubao for Sunday mass and lunch at Elly’s. This went on until they put up a church in SSS Village a few years later. But the Marikina memories are for another episode.