I got the idea for this post from my friend Cessna's blog. She said she's not particularly fond of wet markets and depends on SM supermarket for her wet market needs. However, I guess I'm the opposite.
No, I don't make it a hobby of trudging or visiting all the wet markets around the Metro. I guess I just have good memories of those places. When we were kids, particularly around the elementary age, my parents would send us to the province to spent the summer. My aunt or grandmother would go to the wet market everyday to buy fresh meat, fish or vegetables to serve for lunch and dinner. I would gladly accompany her. I don't know why but I find myself fascinated whenever she would buy live catfish and have the vendor clean and chop it for her. Hmmm...that speaks volumes of my personality. Must be some Freudian thing. But, the best thing about the wet market in the province is when we would stop by the sweets store. Note that a provincial sweets/chichiria store rarely sell those imported candies. They sell the locally made ones and they're not even branded. I forgot what some of them are called but I love this small round yellow sweet thing. It's like a cookie but it's too soft. Also there's a sweet candy called "tira-tira". It's basically brown sugar molded into sticks. And the local cheese curls. I forgot the brand but they're sold in little packets and you can buy them in bulk (like 20-30 pcs in one big plastic).
My best memory of our summer is when our ice cream "suki" would pass by. We call him "lapit-suki". I innocently thought that it was his name but apparently, it's just something that he keeps saying again and again and my aunts just call him that. Anyway, he sold really creamy ice cream. It's so good that instead of buying a cone, we'd bring out our glasses and have him fill those up. And during fiestas or any celebration, my lolo would buy one whole can of ice cream (his favourite is langka. mmmmm...yummy). The can is not the ordinary 1 kl can you can buy in the supermarket. It's the long silver one. I don't know how much ice cream that holds but it can certainly feed all of us.
Actually, it's not only summer that we get to go to the province. My maternal grandparents and relatives have a big house in the province. Big enough for their brood of 13--most of them married. So every weekend, or every summer, we would get picked up and my siblings and I would join some cousins for a nice short/long vacation. As there were so many of us, we would never get bored or find nothing to do. We have relatives all around Batangas so we'd take trips to visit them, and we'd bring back food in the process. We would bring back a kaing of lanzones and eat them in front of the TV. My grandparents also owned a betamax rental then, so we'd bring home the latest movie (Night of the Living Dead--that certainly caused me some sleepless nights there. It did not help that the room that I shared with my relatives overlooked a wide expanse of lawn and I was calculating the distance of the house from the cemetery) and watch it while eating green mangoes (either with bagoong or with my favourite dip--soy sauce with sugar!). The house also has two bathtubs and we'd fill up one and soak in it with our cousins.
That big house really holds wonderful memories of my childhood. Too bad it's not the same as it was before. Everything changed when my grandfather died fifteen years ago. Though my grandmother is still alive, her health began to deterioriate after his death. She's based in the US now and she'll probably stay there for good. She doesn't have the strength or stamina to endure the long travel back home.
I remember my relatives and I would be sitting at the marble front steps in the late afternoon or early evening with my grandparents. We'd play games or hold contests there to amuse ourselves (cable was non-existent back then). The front lawn was so wide that we can play tag or any outdoor game imaginable with lots of room to spare. I'd lose out on "monkey-monkey" (I was not a very good runner), but I loved the "luksong tinik" or "piko".
It was in the province that I learned to do household chores. My grandfather did not tolerate slackers and he ran a tight ship. He would have us cleaning the house, the garden and there was even a time, had us help with the slaughtering of the chickens (they had a poultry farm at the back of the house, beside a small piggery). He did not exactly had us do the killing, but we had the distasteful task of dipping the chickens in boiling water and pulling out the feathers. Aaaaaaahhhh!!! I must have a strong stomach because am still eating chicken up to now.
As we did not have any nannies back then, we had to do our own laundry and make our own beds. My siblings and I would wash our clothes by hand at the back of the house. I did not worst job of all compared to my sisters. They would patiently scrub or make "kusot" their clothes while I, taking the easy way out, would stomp on them, mimicking the washerwomen at the small river nearby with their "pamalo".
Those were the days indeed. I wish my future children would have the same experiences that I had. It has certainly helped me in more ways than one.
