Black Saturdays

We usually spent Black Saturdays at home. When we were children, our grandmothers and aunts told us that during that day “patay pa ang Diyos” (God is still dead.). The concept was easy to understand. After all, we were also told that Jesus died on Good Friday at 3PM. [As such, for some other reason, we were also made to believe that it was prohibited to bathe after 3PM.] We were also told to observe silence on Black Saturdays and in the province it was quite easy to be so since only a few AM stations did have programs and then the broadcast usually had the Holy Week theme. There were some homes that played old songs, apparently refraining from playing the more lively tunes and reserving the loud music to the inevitable Easter Sunday. These customs or traditions are no longer practiced today and the last time I was in Cabatuan to observe the Holy Week I did notice that people went about their ways as if there was no religious commemoration. People played popular music on their stereos and youth played basketball and other sports in the town plaza. Of course, there were still activities in preparation to the “Salubong” and Easter Sunday festivities the following day. If it were a homecoming year at the high school, then there were already “preliminary” activities by the different batches especially the Silver Jubilarians who were the main sponsors of the homecoming. [I will write about this another time as the homecomings at my father's high school deserves its own space.]

We observed abstinence though fasting was not strictly imposed in Cabatuan. I remembered I could even get away with eating in between meals as long as I ate only bread. Back then as now, I enjoyed bread even without the “palaman” as long as the bread was fresh enough. We never ran out of bread at our home in Cabatuan. There would always be “pandesal” bought from the local bakery that never seemed to close even during the Holy Week. But usually arriving on Holy Wednesday allowed me to purchase other types of bread like the star bread, which tasted like “monay” but had a sprinkling of sugar on top, and “pagong-pagong,” which was interestingly shaped like small turtles. 

The “pandesal” was dipped in hot chocolate made out of tableyas. I have fond memories of the taste of the cacao concoction we sipped not in the mornings but in the afternoons. Morning drink for us children was either Milo or Ovaltine, still chocolate but of the mass produced and diluted kind. My uncle, Tatay Adoy, had a store back then and we would always stay in the store and acted as shopkeepers even if we couldn't understand the Kiniray-a spoken by customers, and we ended up always fetching Tay Adoy or our cousin, Manang Dora, who always vacationed from her work in La Carlota City in Negros Occidental (which was at the time a 6 to 7 hour trip by jeepney, boat and bus from Cabatuan as there were no fast ferries then and the highways were not yet as good as they are now) to attend to the customers. Frequently, the customers, realizing that there were “bakasyunistas” from Manila and that we were the children of “Tay Eyong,” would try out their broken Tagalog blended with the “malambing” Ilonggo accent. 

I do miss those days and write about these times past but cherished as my way of documenting memories for those who wanted to have an idea of how it was during my childhood days – mostly during the 1980's.