The picture of the old house in Pandacan shows an open wide window at the front. It also has similarly sized windows at the other sides.


At night time, the window spaces were closed with sliding wooden panels with capiz shell panes. These window panels were very popular at that time. 

There were no screens yet, so we all slept under mosquito nets. I had not heard of the term "dengue" during those times.

What we used to hear were those scare stories of vampires hovering by the windows at night. A tactic used by Mom's brothers to scare us to sleep. And it worked perfectly.

Mom's brothers and sisters would alternately come over from the province to help care for us, since Dad was almost always away for months due to his assignments at sea.

One of the regular fixtures at our place, and in our future homes, was Lolo Mediong, Mom's maternal uncle, who was a tailor by profession. I learned how to alter clothes and pants with a sewing machine from him, since I often watched him sew new pants and shirts for us.

One of the biggest issues at that time was Kuya Sander's [our eldest] disappearing acts. Lolo Mediong or any of my uncles who was with us at the time, would go out and search for him. And most of the time, he would be found swimming in the Pasig River. I wonder how many sticks he tasted on his ass for being so stubborn. ha ha ha. He was only about 6 or 7 years old at that time.

There was also a big, big fire that hit Pandacan just opposite the street. I remember the wailing sirens of the responding firetrucks which heightened our fears. We were already prepared with our bundled clothings, ready to evacuate anytime. By God's grace, the fire did not reach us.

When I reminisce on the past, like the old house in Pandacan, memories like those mentioned above just crop up on my mind. It makes my memoirs richer.