Like budget preparation, it’s consultation time or shall we say bargaining time again for our children’s daily baon or allowance to school. I never tire of telling my teen-aged sons that way back then, my twenty-five centavo daily baon could already buy me a Coke and a cheese pimiento sandwich. And they keep complaining that times are different now. I would just keep quiet, close my eyes and go down memory lane.

As a child, I looked forward to three major occasions for which the entire household really prepared for. Our ancestral house in Sariaya, Quezon, where I was born and lived for fifteen years, was a sentimental witness to these memorable events that are nowadays a rarity due to the spiraling cost of living.

Christmas Day. First, of course, was Christmas Day when ready-to-eat ham was not yet in fashion, so my mother had to cook a big one bought by my father from Echague, Manila. The long table was decked with fruits from the city – apples, grapes, oranges and castañas – and also native ones – bananas, papayas and dalanghitas. Neighborhood children would come knocking at the main door straight from the early morning Mass, and my mother would give them golden new coins which she earlier requested from my paternal uncle who worked at the Central Bank. Or, should the coins run out, a piece of fruit for each of my kalaros or playmates would draw toothless smiles from them, so their bags would already be heavy by the time they reach home after going from house to house. Sometimes my mother would take a carefully wrapped gift from under the native and usually spiral bamboo Christmas Tree, if the mamamasko was an inaanak.

Christmas lights were a rarity then, but our capiz windows were never without the native parol which were usually my cousins’ projects in work education. I always opened the barandillas under the capiz windows and peeked through the ventanillas to admiringly watch and listen to the night carolers who were usually my mother’s high school students. They would be served snacks and given Christmas money for their well-practiced songs. And because the Christmas season ended with the Feast of the Three Kings, some latecomers still came to the house to claim their Christmas gifts on the day of the Magi.

Food preparations started as early as a week before the bisperas. My Tia Simang would come over to make the matamis or pastillas de leche over the native abuhan, manually mixing condensed milk, ground peanuts or macapuno and butter in a large brass kawali until done. I would watch the process faithfully as I served as the human scraper for the cans of Milkmaid and the kawali for leftover pastillas. I was a good designer/cutter of colorful papel de hapon wrappers similar to those of Bulacan Sweets, which as time passed, was replaced by the more practical and shiny cellophane.

On or about September 10, my aunts would already prepare cooking the native tikoy, a delicacy indeed perhaps because of the prohibitive cost of ingredients, by rural standards: lots of eggs, milk, butter, and galapong from the native malagkit. The mixture would be steamed under close watch inside huge tulyasis fired by dried wood from the farm. The cooking would take several hours and the finished product would be tan-colored, usually two to three inches thick with diameter depending on what one liked – in oblong llaneras sized like the regular leche flan or in sizes of bilaos – small, medium or large. The delicious tikoy would be kept in a secure place out of anybody’s reach to be sure that it got to the fiesta table intact.

On September 12, a pig would be slaughtered to serve as basic ingredient for several putajes – embutido, morkon, menudo, pastel, lumpia shanghai and dinuguan. Of course the entrails would not go to waste but end up as longganiza Lucban-style. All the cooking would be usually done by a kusinero from the nearby town of Tayabas, who came annually to stay during the four-day celebration. Another pig would be roasted into a golden brown lechon early the next day. But in leaner times, only one pig would be slaughtered – the body would serve as the basic ingredient for the putajes, and the head would be sent to the panaderia for roasting in the oven. It was also on the bisperas that my aunt would cook the mouth watering sweet shiny white makapuno and pick up from the other end of the street two or three baldes of the now famous brojas from the Villamater Bakery. This early, the local band or musiko would already be marching down the streets led by an attractive majorette skillfully twirling her baton up in the air.

Come September 13th, the first day of the fiesta proper, and during the next two days, every member of the household would attend the early morning Mass in order not to be caught flatfooted by early visitors from the city or nearby towns and barrios. This was also my favorite day of the fiesta because my uncle would make the ice cream in the antique grapiñera. A mixture of milk, sugar and any flavor desired - cheese, vanilla, chocolate, cream corn, mango, avocado, or imported butter for the mantecado – which already made my mouth water, would be poured into the cylindrical two-feet tall steel container, covered and placed in the center of a wooden barrel lined with salt-sprinkled crushed ice from the local planta. Thick jute sacks or kustal would be used to cover the top of the barrel to keep the ice from melting fast. Then I would volunteer to do the stirring, which was actually steering since a relatively huge spiral metal accessory inside the cylinder would stir the ingredients inside if I steer the handle outside. So, after about two hours or so of hard labor, I would deserve to make the first taste test of the finished product. It would then, barrel and all, be locked up inside the only bathroom upstairs, which was in fact the only concrete part of the wooden structure. So everybody should already take a bath early in the morning before Mass, otherwise, the only other banyo available was a roofless one at the back of the house where on wash days the lavandera lorded it over with her batya and palo-palo. Because my uncle trusted me, I would also be made to stand guard at the bathroom door so my cousins would not attack the ice cream. In appreciation of my loyalty (to the ice cream), I was allowed to have a cup of the cool mixture every now and then.

So, for three days, the long dining table at the comedor would be covered with starched white linen tablecloth with matching table napkins. China, glass and kubiertos which were family heirlooms, would be taken out of the cabinets for the use of visitors, with my aunt keeping a sharp eye on them out of worry that the utensils would be broken or damaged. Disposable eating utensils were not yet in fashion then. Food would be continually shuttled from the kitchen to the comedor to refill the empty bandejados. But as far as I could recall, there were no instances when we ran out of food to serve visitors. I thought perhaps it was because the visitors would not eat to their fill as they had to visit other houses too.

After the fiesta, we would still have leftover putajes and eat longganiza Lucban-style and latik for breakfast for about a week or so, with native chocolate from tableya manually mixed in a brass batidor.

Feast of San Isidro de Labrador. While the September town fiesta delighted my palate, the merry month of May excited my sense of sight. Not only was it the time when traditional santacruzans basked in the limelight, usually sponsored by the town’s wealthy hermanos and hermanas de mayor, with the Reina de los Flores’ flower-bedecked caroza spreading the rustic fragrance of the native blooms along the procession route. It was my most awaited time of the year aside from Christmas Day and the town fiesta because of the now famous Pahiyas, then known during my childhood days simply as San Isidro.

It was actually the feast of San Isidro de Labrador, the patron saint of good harvest. Celebrated on the15th day of May, I looked forward to this occasion for the extraordinarily festive atmosphere it exuded because of the almost passionate preparation the whole town put into it. In the ‘50s and the ‘60s, prominent clans and wealthy businessmen poured time and money to have the most impressive if not extravagant decorative presentation of all. This attracted both local and foreign tourists until such time that the neighboring towns of Tayabas and Lucban, which also celebrated the feast, went out of their way to publicize the event, thereby drawing more tourists to those part of Quezon Province. Lucban proved to be more aggressive in its tourism efforts, and from then on, the feast had been renamed as Pahiyas, the Tagalog term for decoration. The trademark decoration remained the kiping, which were actually brightly colored and almost paper-thin crisp rice sheets usually shaped into leaves. But tourists or no tourists at all, the glory days of the San Isidro during my childhood remain embedded in my memory to this day. Let me share them with you.

For regular residents like our family, preparations started only a week before the feast. Bamboo slats were interwoven into frames called balag similar to those made for the pabitin, the only difference being in length which would depend on where it would be fixed. In our case, we hang a long balag under the media agua fronting the street. But first, it would be filled up on the day itself with freshly cut maroon, yellow and green san francisco leaves to project a natural look. We would then use buntal strings to hang goodies such as tira-tira candies in colorful wrappers, leaf-shaped multi-colored kiping, as well as made-to-order bread shaped like guns, stars, and even boys and girls. We also hang the native suman which was cooked and made to cool a day before.

Early in the morning of the feast itself, three freshly cut bamboo trees would be taken from the farm and decked with goodies like what was done to the balag, making them look like tall native Christmas trees. They would then be separately tied to a makeshift bamboo fence in front of the house. Three freshly cut banana trees (of the saba variety), usually with hearts proudly hanging, would also be tied to the makeshift fence alternately with the bamboo trees. Clusters of coconut bukos, pineapples and even langka or jackfruit would also be artistically arranged and tied to the makeshift fence, along with freshly cut sugar canes with long bright green leaves gently waving in the air. Depending on availability, talong, sitaw, kalabasa and even ampalaya would accentuate the now fully decorated fence. We would also decorate some lanzones from the trees planted beside our house.

And trying hard to be hi-tech, so to say, my cousins would make bamboo-framed airplanes capable of dropping candies and other goodies to passers-by who were mostly tourists. The other end of the pulley would be fastened to our neighbor’s house just across the street. So, I would load, pull, drop, pull, reload, pull, drop on and on until my mother would tell me to go easy as we might run out of goodies. That would be the time I’ll go downstairs and stand in the middle of the street to enjoy the sight of bamboo Christmas trees lining both sides of the street down to the last house in Rizal Street. I say down to the last house literally because Sariaya lies at the foot of Mt Banahaw, making it actually a rolling terrain, and making it floodless as floodwaters flow down to the Pacific Ocean. Anyway, that sight of an almost endless line of colorful bamboo Christmas trees never fails to give me a refreshing feeling up to this day.

It had been an unwritten code for Sariayahins that all decorations should remain untouched during the whole day, not only for the tourists to appreciate, but also and more significantly, to prepare for the culmination of the day-long festivity.

By tradition, the procession with the caroza bearing the image of San Isidro de Labrador would leave the parish church at four o’clock in the afternoon. Composed of devotees and tourists, the procession would pass through previously designated routes, as some residents complained that having the procession pass their houses yearly would be a big drain on their finances, which was indeed true. So the procession route was made on a rotation basis, allowing the concerned residents to prepare for the occasion almost every other year. Despite this reality, everybody would still enjoy the festivities by going to the houses of relatives and friends where the procession would pass.

As soon as the church bell rang at four in the afternoon, everyone was already on his toes, eagerly waiting for the procession to arrive. Take our household, for instance. As soon as we hear the drum and bugle corps approaching, we would immediately go to the windows and watch the procession pass by. And as soon as the caroza of San Isidro de Labrador passes our house, our visitors and us would immediately grab at the goodies hanging from the bamboo balag as a symbol of bountiful harvest. In front of the house, my cousins would cut down the bamboo and banana trees as fast as they could for the devotees and tourists to get whatever goodies they liked. My uncles would also untie the sugar canes, bucos, pineapples, kalabasa and the rest of the vegetables. In short, everybody was free to get all the decorations which were so painstakingly arranged and prepared by the host. Most of those joining the procession had large sacks to hold their accumulated goodies, and although there were minor scrambles, the festive atmosphere always prevailed. There were rare instances, however, when visitors requested that some decorations be reserved for them, and they were accommodated in the spirit of Filipino hospitality.

The procession route would leave a mess – bare bamboo trees and trunks of banana trees, candy and suman wrappers, banana and dalanghita peelings, but in no time at all, the residents themselves would clean them all up.

But as the song goes, “those were the days, my friend, I thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day”. Those were the days indeed when the dollar was still worth two pesos and Coke was only ten centavos. But everything has its price. A dollar might be worth more than fifty pesos now and Coke more than five pesos, but we have cell phones, computers, LRTs and MRTs, and other hi-tech conveniences. It’s still worth it, isn’t it? Our only consolation is that we can still keep the memory of the glory days of the peso.

…also published in the PAGBA Chronicle