Mango Days of Summer

Among PD’s fondest childhood memories are of summertime and mangoes. PD could never think of one without recalling the other.

Mango trees of different varieties abound in the barrio. Just a few meters downhill from PD’s house were a cluster of carabao mango trees. The carabao variety is what they refer to when they talk about the Philippines as having the best tasting mangoes. PD recalls that it did not always taste as sweet as they say, but maybe that is just because the trees in the barrio were not properly cared for. Instead of the usual spray of that chemical that causes them to bloom profusely, mothers and children would just burn dry leaves and let the smoke do the job.

Not a hundred meters at a neighbor’s backyard was the prized Indian mango variety. It was prized because all the children preferred it to all the other varieties and would wage war against each other to get a piece or two. Many a black eye was caused by scuffling over one Indian mango. But this is getting ahead already.

Scattered around the hill where PD’s house was were pajo trees. Pajo mangoes are smaller and sourer when unripe than the carabao variety and are characterized by fibrous tissues that usually get stuck in between the teeth. They are sweet when ripe, however, and sometimes even sweeter to the children than the carabao. There were more pajo trees in the barrio than any other tree. Perhaps there were more pajo trees than all the other varieties combined.

At the start of summer all these trees would bear flowers, which would signal the start of the ‘War for the Mangoes’, as PD now fondly recalls. There would be a palpable excitement among the children who were now also freed from the burden of schoolwork. This excitement extended to the games they played: climbing mango trees started to become the in thing and the base of the taguan was now the nearest mango tree instead of the usual coconut tree. It was also a very loudly spoken rule that no one was allowed to throw tsinelas at the mango tree braches lest the mango flowers be destroyed and the bounty of fruits later on diminished. Any violator was made a pariah for days by the other children and forgiven only when he vowed never to do it again, with some peace offering, which was usually food or trinkets for the older children.


When the fruits developed and grew large enough to be eaten, the shorter pajo trees would be the first victims. PD and the other children would beat each other at climbing these trees and getting to the fruits. Usually the older ones won and the younger ones were left to beg for small bites, which they usually did not get. The more cruel kuyas would take a small bite and throw it away, expecting the supplicant to scramble for it. Not a few hardheaded boys fell down from these small trees only to be beaten by their mothers for falling down (until now PD cannot seem to understand this). In no time all green fruits would have been devoured and the children reduced to watching out for the next batch to grow big enough for them to consume.

The taller trees, including the prized Indian variety, would be spared these climbing attacks and so their fruits usually attain what a child would consider to be the most prized state a mango fruit could attain: ripeness. Of course, PD and the other children would attempt to throw things at the fruits hoping these would be hit and then fall. But most of the fruits would be spared and reach ripeness, especially those not easily visible. The more cunning ones would devise a panungkit made of bamboo pole tipped with a grappling hook but the reach of these were also limited. And they were heavy besides. Children being children, more fun always involved a scuttle and a chase, even with mangoes.


When the fruits start to ripen and fall to the ground, that’s when the war was at its fiercest. The really dugas ones, PD included, would wake up before dawn, a plastic bag in one hand and a wooden stick in the other (for beating those dogs the neighbors suddenly stationed near their mango trees during these times!) Then barefoot they’d rush to the mango trees and in the darkness search for ripe mangoes that fell during the night. No flashlight was needed: the children seemed to have developed the uncanny ability to distinguish a stone from a fruit in the dark. Fist fights over who saw or felt the fruit first was not uncommon, and so were dog bites, as in the rush of things some of the children forgot to take seriously the sudden canine growl nearby.

At sunrise, after all the racing and running and cuts and bruises, PD would come home with a bag full of ripe mangoes and a heart swollen with pride. He would give the mangoes to his nanay, who would take them with a fond smile and prepare them for their day’s ulam.

Kropek & Chicharon Kayo Dyan!

PD has never been fond of potato chips and crackers and would not normally include these in his grocery list or his snack. In fact, his definition of snack would involve rice and not chips or crackers. It’s not out of being health-conscious, though many of these really contain high levels of sodium and saturated fat, which are anything but good to the body. This is not to say, however, that he does not consume a pack or two once in a while, especially when it is the pulutan. It’s just that PD has never craved for them.

While they don’t always have a place in his stomach, kropek and chicharon have a special place in his heart. For those who don’t know kropek, it is that flour-based, rectangular cracker that is usually colored yellow and tastes like, well, a cracker. Sometimes it is shrimp-flavored or coated with sugar. It is usually packed in a rectangular cellophane container in twelves or twenty-fours. It is more popular in the provinces, where it is actually called chicharon (in the city, chicharon = chicharong baboy and we will stick to that equality here) and PD has seldom seen these in the super or wet markets.

The special place in his heart was created on the summer before first year high school. Early that year PD was accepted into the premier high school of Cagayan de Oro under full academic scholarship (another story altogether; oh, yes, PD thrived on scholarships). He knew that the per day baon of two pesos that he had enjoyed his whole elementary school days was not going to be enough anymore. Not even close, since this was an exclusive for boys high school, not like his very public elementary high school. An idea came to him to prepare for the incoming school year: earn and save enough baon.

So he asked his neighbor, Auntie Mimi , who packed kropek at a small kropek and chicharon factory, to get him the kropek-packing job as well. He got it, his first paying job. There were only five of them ‘packers’ of kropek. He, of course, was the youngest at eleven. And the only male. The others, including Auntie Mimi, were old, ageing or work-aged mothers. Money was earned by the pack: isang piso for twenty-four of them. They also packed chicharon but only sometimes since in those days the orders for chicharon were few and far between. The work was tiring, and it took some time for PD to get used to packing the kropek the right way so as to maximize speed. At the end of the week PD would earn a little over one hundred, which to PD at that time was already a fortune in implied possibilities if not in amount.

PD can tell you that the first bites of kropek and chicharon while packing them were delicious, but that point came when you stop looking at them as food and start treating them as useless objects to be packed. Our employer, Kuya Dodong, was a nice man who probably admired my initiative and sort of promoted me from a packer to actually cooking the kropek. He, of course, was the only one who knew how to mix the ingredients but when this was done, it was my and his other assistants’ duty (his older daughters actually, since he had no son) all the way – from putting the mixture into these elongated trays to putting these in the oven to cook the mixture to slicing the hardened mixture into rectangular shapes to putting them on these rectangular nets for the sun to dry them up and to actually frying them so they’d expand and take their final, crispy form. The final step was when PD and the daughters would deliver the packed kropek and chicharon to the customers.

Those were exciting days for PD and he remembered waking up excited and running to work. Money ceased to be the motivation; after a while it was all about the work and the sense of accomplishment every kropek delivery brought him. And the nod of approval from Kuya Dodong and his daughters. PD would sleep tired but satisfied and happy with his small accomplishments. It was the one of the most unforgettable summers of PD’s life.

These days when PD takes a bite of chicharon he gets to be reminded of that kid who did not mind spending summer working at that kropek factory, while other kids his age were playing jolen and taguan and hitting the rivers. It reminds him of the sacrifices that gave him very good learning experiences.

Bruxism and the promdi

Piolo, a friend of PD, recently told him that he suffers from a sleep disorder called bruxism. It is a condition where a person grinds his teeth during sleep and is though to be caused by ‘repressed anxiety,’ to use his words. Apparently, PD was gnashing his teeth to death in his drunken stupor in one of the gang’s outings loud enough for Piolo to hear. PD explained that his mother is also a bruxer (what a term, parang boxer?!) and so it is possible that PD got this disorder from her by some imitation-by-teeth-gnashing mechanism. And, yes, the ‘repressed anxiety’ portion definitely hits the bull’s eye: PD thinks a lot and worries a lot.

PD has no idea when this started, probably while growing up when worrying was an everyday occurrence. PD has this theory that it all started that fateful Sunday night during his first year in high school. That Sunday afternoon he and his tatay were gathering panggatong (they did not have a gas stove and had to use firewood for cooking) as they regularly do.

Gathering panggatong was a usual chore for the neighborhood's children including PD. It was some sort of a communal activity when all the neighbors’ children and fathers bring their itak and head for the barangay’s hillsides, where it was more densely peppered with shrubs, small gemilina trees and other trees ideal for firewood.

At more desperate times these panggatong were sold (or bartered) to augment the family’s meager income.

On that day he and his tatay were gathering firewood nothing was out of the ordinary. His tatay then was a healthy 51-year old. All seemed normal until that night PD woke up to the sound of his tatay’s distress. To his shock and horror, blood was oozing out of his tatay’s mouth and he could hear the mad gurgling of blood as it escaped from his lungs. PD had no idea what was happening and why. What could a child of twelve do except hug his bloody father to comfort himself and cry? His nanay was away in Davao and so could not be relied on for help. In all the madness that it all seemed, did it occur to him to rush his tatay to the hospital? No. His tatay knew all too well that they could not afford a hospital. So they both waited for the mad rushing of blood to stop and when it mercifully did, sleep was a long way coming.

It was the start of perhaps the most traumatic period of PD’s life.

Episodes like that came and went sporadically at home, in church (they did a lot of praying then because that was all that they could do), in the morning and at night. PD has learned to dread those nights and the uselessness and helplessness that his tatay’s attacks made him feel. One time it came when PD was about to go to school. His nanay was still not home so he was left to care for his tatay, who did not (and could not) stop peddling vegetables despite his illness. What would they eat if he did? PD volunteered to skip class to help his father but he refused and told him: “You have to go to school. That’s more important than this.” These lines are forever etched in PD’s heart for they are lines uttered by his beloved, selfless tatay who was clutching his chest while blood was gushing from his mouth. So PD went to school with tears in his eyes and a very heavy heart, fearing what mad scene he will encounter when he went home that afternoon. And dread coming home he always did during those dark days.

If all this is the root cause of his teeth-gnashing, PD will be very grateful. It is a scar he is very proud to wear, for it reminds him of the sacrifices of his selfless and gentle tatay who nudged his son to value education for that was the only thing he could do.