HOW IT WAS.

Compiled from my previous Facebook posts. 

When was the last time you climbed trees? I bet you won’t even do it to rescue your cat. You’d call 9-11 for the Fire Department, I am sure. My childhood was about climbing trees. Pick some mangoes, catch combat spiders (yuck!) fetch my tied-up kite, just climbed trees for no reason. I was like Li’l Boy Tarzan. Those accentuate/d the wild abandon of early youth. Freedom. These days, children “climb trees” only via VRs, while “surfing” the net, or watching YouTube. 🌳🌴🌳

Me and my brothers would gather in one room to watch “The A-Team” and “Wok with Yan” when there’s no basketball on TV, 1980s. Remember Mr. T as B.A. Baracus? The harshest cuss word then on television was “You fool!” And “Wok with Yan,” a Chinese/Canadian cuisine cooking show with Stephen Yan. Recall these words on his apron? Wok & Roll, Wokking My Baby Back Home, Wok Around the Clock, Wok the Heck, Wok Goes up Must Come Down. LOL! 📺🤣📺

The “banga” or water dispenser that is made of clay. I bet there are more of these in the barrio? Not many houses in rural villages of my youth had running/tap water. So peeps would heat/boil water and then stock `em up in “banga.” Rainwater was usually saved, flowed from the roof to bamboo tubes into giant drums–for washing dishes, watering plants, and laundry. Rice was also cooked via clay pots in the outdoor kitchen clay “oven,” fired up by wood. Life then. Alive. 🧺📞📻

Typewriter. In 1575 in Italy, Francesco Rampazetto invented the “scrittura tattile,” a machine to impress letters in papers. Improvements ensued through the years. The first typewriter to be commercially successful was patented in 1868 by Americans led by Christopher Latham Sholes. Ah! Typewriter days. Writing was less physically “complicated.” Internet technology has a lot of advantages but it also ushered “justified” complexities that are not needed. 📺☎️📸

I was born into a culture of walking. In grade school in a mountain/mining town, I walked 4 miles to/from school. Me and grandpa Severino used to walk to the open market, almost everyday, while he taught me how to read. Billboards, store fronts, jeepney and bus sign boards. Hence, when I was living in New York City, walking 20 blocks (!) to the subway wasn’t so big deal. These days for years now, my walking ritual is set every afternoon, with the babedawg. 🚶🚶‍♂️🚶

Smoked fish. Foods have been smoked by humans throughout history. Originally this was done as preservative. In more recent times, fish is readily preserved by refrigeration and freezing. AI may even do it, ha! In the Philippines, most popular smoked fish is “tinapa,” which is often made from blackfin scad or “galunggong” and milkfish or “bangus.” A relative in the province used to smoke fish in his house, as business. The delicious aroma stayed in my mind. 🐠🇵🇭🐟

Remember how we used to engage in conversation, or discuss and debate, easy banter or intense jousts? Barbershop, cafes and diners, backyard barbecues and porch tea. College days? Steps of Arts/Sciences building and school canteen. Luneta Park in Manila, Washington Square Park, Pritchard Park. And then the Internet was born; Social Media followed. Less face to face interaction, sadly. Suddenly we forgot how to talk as grownups or communicate as humans. 🗣👥🫂

When the family lived in a mining/mountain town in the Philippines, me and friends would go up the hills and pick ripe guavas during summer. We’d climb trees or simply reach and pull them up from tinier trees. Guavas were abundant up there. Culinary pleasure. Medicinal wonders. The fruit is used for “sinigang” broth/stew, turned into jam, and other food delights. The leaves, when boiled, washes bacteria off wounds or a warm bath with it eases up fever etcetera. 🫒⛰🫒

A kid delivering newspapers in the morning was an image that inspired me as a boy. My grandma always reminded me of the wisdom of toil at an early age. My first “paid” work was in a printing press folding newsprints off the giant Webb/Heidelberg machine. I was 10. I spent my salary on books and LP records. I was a professional beat reporter at age 13. So proud of that. Times have changed. Parents of a “working child” go to DSS reprimand. Child abuse? 👦📰💵

Filing stuff. During typewriter days, I used to maintain my own filing system at home. Cut-out newspaper/magazine articles, neatly-catalogued photographs, some in binders. In these internet days, we “file” stuff in hard drives, thumb drives, and iCloud. Yet if you ask me what is more secured? Uh huh? I have 7 laptops, majical cellphone, dozens of thumb-drives, google docs, blogs, Yahoo and Gmail inboxes. Safe? Nope. So bring me back to the 1980s! 📰🗄📰

Photos: 123RF. SEARCA.