I Was A Street Boy

It's no Revolutionary Road where Winslet and DiCaprio
never met halfway.

It was our humble street outside the Business District.
It was where dilapidated old apartments contrasted the then
burgeoning Ayala skyline in the making,
the Manila version of Manhattan that
you see now. It's a case of so near an urban dream,
yet so economically far away.

Facebook does have proven its reach by
resurrecting characters I've met spending
my childhood days on that street, either after school,
or when our parents were asleep.

It's a world where neighbors were really neighbors.
We were crammed in a densely populated district,
so even the snore of an alcoholic neighbor
can really rouse you from slumber.

Forgive me for recalling once more
the days of yore.

By reason of association, images
vividly played back on my mind.

Those colored unbranded
cereal snack curls in clear plastic bags
was an infusion of artificial flavors, which to my mind,
may be to blame for my slightly bent thinking.

If it was branded at all, they were
backyard industries of origin.
Snacks like "Barok" and "Dabiana"
come back as though they were
just right outside the neighborhood store,
then an extension of a home, doubling
as a small enterprise. And it's definitely
a far cry from today's 24-hour convenience stores.
Those brands were inspired by local
comics characters, "Barok," being the tribal native,
and "Dabiana," the adorable obese goddess.

Toys were crude. A spinning top was made of
excess wood blocks, and its foot, was made
from an old nail, or maybe removed from a hinge.
A slingshot was similarly of wood, with elastic
rubber band serving as the bow. Large plastic
straws were filled with mongo beans, which
you blow to hit a person out of nuisance's gratification.

Hopscotch or piko, was done by using chalk
to outline the "board limits," the token
was a peel of banana. If it wasn't chalk,
it's the clay pot colored orange, a broken
piece from it can serve as a chalk as well,
the hopscotch perimeter , now livening up
the gray road with its color.

We played street baseball too, using
a slab of plywood as a bat, and another block of
wood served as the ball.

There were no mp3 players then, but
a display of portable transistor radios,
to add noise to our street sessions.
Its centerpiece was a store's wooden bench,
which upon closing, is placed on the sidewalk,
where the youth bums sit and simply
while their time away.

Joining this crude music source
were jeepneys whose "tweeters"
make one feel the word "bass"
was eliminated and it was pure "treble."
Noise reduction by Dolby was unheard of then.
And the music comes from larger cassette tapes
known as 8-track.

I can still remember
the handmade artist's names labeled on it.
The font so distinct, yet so manually done.
It screamed "Nazareth" or "Black Sabbath."
Yes, truly 70's pure rock, it's like
being transported to San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury.
(The smell of weed included).

In spite of the low socio-economic class district
I grew up in, some neighbors managed to bake
fresh bread. Ahhh, how I remember their
oven's steam rippling outside their window.
This smell gives me childhood joy up to now,
when my nose discerns homemade bread made out of the oven,
rather than readily wrapped in supermarkets.

Those were the days when waterworks was lousy.
We had to contend with yellowish brown water,
meaning, filled with ferric oxide, or more commonly
known in layman's term as RUST.

When the pump motor, even if it was strong enough
can't siphon water deep beneath the topsoil,
so we had to line up in the neighborhood's common artesian well,
PILA BALDE, indeed, waiting for your turn
to fill a recycled plastic gallon container with
much-needed water.

I was often spared from lifting heavy things,
like this filled water container.
I was so lanky when I was a kid.

If it was heavy, it's my brother's.
Imagine my sibling's wrath then
as I exempted myself,
from such yoke that wasn't too easy to bear.

That water made my school uniform yellowish white.
It made my black smooth hair brown.
It's as if I was a pearl diver from the south,
or bleached with cheap hydrogen peroxide,
used more as antiseptic for wounds.
"Muro Ami" hair color was mine.

I miss the neighborhood I grew up with.
In spite of the occasional crime incidents,
and domestic but sometimes violent squabbles,
which to us, are as ordinary as daily rice in our meals,
that they aren't as sensational anymore to
be featured in tabloids and newspapers.

Now I can't even follow Christ's commandment
of loving my neighbor as myself.
because I rarely see who occupies the
other doors beyond my unit in my building, anyway.

This childhood reminiscing only came about
just because of a Facebook invite, since that
contact was a part of my growing up years,
long fossilized like the artifacts of Pompeii.

It gives me a good retro feeling.
"Just like before, It's yesterday once more."