From My Own Perspective
I.J. CASTILLO
Toronto, Canada
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- 1975 – Newly arrived in Toronto sporting long hair and bell-bottomed pants. Groovy kind of thing
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- 1980- My once full head of black and culry hair
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- 2004 – A halo of grey patches had replaced my once full head of black and curly hair
Part I
In a recent gathering here in Toronto, an old acquaintance whom I’ve not seen for ages blurted out in a very typical Cavinti Taglish (Tagalog-English) accent, “Yae, you still look great,” then with a wink, wink and naughty smile she trailed off with the opt-quip mostly directed at seniors, “At least for your age, hamo ka”.
Totally caught off guard by this smack of reality, I could only smile in ironic and mock amusement, yet I couldn’t agree more with her. With advancing years my hairline has inversely receded with my age, my once full head of dark and curly black hair has already thinned into a halo of gray patches and my five senses tend to diminish.
Regardless of my inevitable age-related physiological changes, I find solace that my mental faculties still serve me well. I can still retrieve from the deepest recesses of my mind vivid memories of years long past like growing up in our old hometown Cavinti in the early ‘50s.
The Dawning of the 1950’s
Like many towns reeling from post-war rehabilitation, infrastructure in Cavinti in the 50’s was slow and very inadequate. Roads if ever asphalted were the main streets only such as Rizal and Cailles Streets; the others were simply graded with flat stones hauled from the nearby Magdapio tipakan (quarry).
I started grade school at the dawning of the restive 1950’s during which there were an acute shortages of classrooms, school supplies, and equipments such as desks and chairs. Many displaced classes, including our Grade 1 class under Miss Ascion Arguson, were temporarily accommodated in unoccupied ground floor of private houses.
In view of our unsecured classroom I would bring my bangkito (small chair), as did some of my classmates, to our temporary classroom in Mabini St. (at the ground floor of Amang Kiko’s residence) in the morning and taking it home at the end of the day to prevent it from losing to vandals.
Interestingly enough, in spite of the hardships that we went through during this crucial transition our sacrifices and perseverance to learn paid off. By the end of the school year, we were able to read and write simple sentences in English, thanks to that little book “Pepe and Pilar”.
Cavinti in the early ‘50s didn’t have electricity yet, so we would do our school homework amid the flickering light of a gasera (kerosene lamp) or the hasag (kerosene lantern). In the evening we normally played in the shadow of darkness or under the full moon at best.
During our childhood we would play all day and at night like there was no tomorrow, frequently skipping meals and neglecting homework, let alone helping in the household chores (most children were expected to share with the house work as part of traditional Filipino upbringing).
Therefore, in order to rein us in most of the parents would scare us kids with stories of asuwang, kapre, tikbalang and Sipay (allegedly a sack-carrying body snatcher who preyed on kids for their blood, the latter purportedly to be used as a concrete admixture to strengthen bridge construction) – all folklores that meant to frighten us from wandering away from home.
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