Manang Conchang (Conception Valera) was like my older sister. She is Fina’s mother. At an early age of 5, I used to sleep with her, take a bath with her, sit side by side with her in their two-holed toilet, and ate with her almost daily. She was around ten years older than me. Her […]
Archives for February 2017
1994 Memoir – 46. Bangued Memories – A New Hotel Restaurant
The first hotel and restaurant in Bangued was the Bayquen Hotel & Restaurant, located west of the plaza in a building which is now the Abra Valley College. This hotel and restaurant was frequented by out-of-town visitors whose terminal point of arrival was at the bus station near the plaza in front of the church. […]
1994 Memoir – 45. Bangued Memories – Gambling
As with marbles, so we also gambled with rubber bands (lastics), washers (tarkas) used by carpenters to nail G.I. roofing, or gogo (biay), the fruit of a vine used for rinsing the hair, round and shiny, in the shape of a round kidney, or bittaog, a fruit of trees growing in the plaza, round in […]
1994 Memoir – 44. Bangued Memories – Marbles
Our next craze was gambling with marbles. We had no marbles made of glass then. We gathered lime stone pieces from Casamata and polished them round, into marbles. We drew a circle on the ground, placed marbles inside, one or two or three each bettor, then would fling our remaining marble with our thumb until […]
1994 Memoir – 43. Bangued Memories – Kite Flying
My favorite pastime was flying a kite. We made our kites with bamboo sticks as frames and newspapers or silk paper as the main body. I had a friend and neighbor, Pastor Benedito, who taught me how to makes kites, fly them, and fight other kites in the air. We had a stone grinder where […]
1994 Memoir – 42. Bangued Memories – Passenger Buses
With the construction of the TANGADAN road linking Abra and Ilocos Sur, buses started plying between Bangued and Vigan. The first buses were the SANTIAGO SAMBRANO of Vigan, the VALERA TRANSPORTATION, the BENEDITO BUS, the bus owned by one from SINAPANGAN called Moriana Favorite, all competing against each other for passengers. Buses were parked in […]