sagay urban legends

every place has them.   interesting characters, scenes or settings  that give a place its distinctive feel. sagay, where there’s a most fabulous sandbar in pinas, does have its share of  such “urban legends.”  

the fashionistas :  tita day and her beaded slip-ons or step-ins, well-coiffed tita neneng amy and her umbrella, tita marne in full tennis gear and glittering diamonds.  linda ni otay  is a breed of her own with her colorful skirts, peasant blouses, pedal pushers and hats.   definitely not to miss the rodriguez matriarch, tia suloy, in perennial red nail polish and red lipstick combo.  tia suloy stands out even in death.  her tomb, visible from the road to old sagay, is raised from the ground on four legs, reportedly to ward off ants and other creepy crawly creatures. 

three elderly gentlemen :  mr. parcon, tio iking lopez and lolo totong tupaz  who took early morning walks together. no fail at all, every morning they’d do the rounds from the market to the plaza and back… berets bobbing, canes a-tap-tapping. 

at church :   tia poping and tia monsing would rouse the sleeping with their impassioned singing “pa-laoy laoy”  especially in the 5 a.m. daily masses. tia lucing and edith faithfully kept the church affairs in order.  the CWLs, to which nanay belonged, would take charge of various events, such as processions, which i wasnt particularly fond of.  too many times we’d be forced to wake up at dawn and walk  the streets as angels, wings and all.

the mind-moulders :  miss aguilar was the  the moon (luna)  of  the three aguilar sisters named after elements of the firmaments, the other two being sol (mrs pulido) and estrella. i’ve always suspected that miss aguilar trained under the thomasites, a group of pioneer American teachers who were sent by the US  government in the early 1900s.  ching plana might have taught at either maria lopez or jose b. puey, but that didnt figure with me much. piano lessons with her did, and the big curved  staircase in their house, where we’d nervously descend for our grand entrance come recital time.     letty pacheo, victoria uychiat nee salangsang and marilou fernandez were,to my young impressionable mind,   the stars of jose b. puey at that time. letty pacheo pioneered the class for fast learners in sagay and trained nancy my sister in declamation, deftly so that they competed and won at regional level events. m’am uychiat and m’am fernandez made many students discover the fun or otherwise of hula dancing.     

dalaquit was that forbidden area behind b.puey school, said  to be enchanted.   a huge banyan tree looked sinister enough to scare the timid as well as the not-so  among us and stories abound of encounters with the “dili ingon nato.”   i wonder whose house it is now that stands exactly on the spot where the tree once was.  

luis ni ateng  :  sagay’s version of yao ming, long before china’s  basketball export was born and became famous. luis and yao ming - both tall and both chinese.  the similarity ends there.  luis was the adopted son of bakers ah teng and ah tse.  he’s best remembered astride his tricycle or ambling along the streets like a walking bean pole with a toothless smile.  no one had ever ever ever seen luis attired other than in khaki pants and white undershirt. 

the mentally challenged:  first there were melanio and maria marikyat, then coroy.  only a true-blue sagay townboy like boysie would have remembered melanio (btw -  thanks to boysie for the urban legend idea). melanio was tall, dark and gangly, he could pass off as an ethiopian.  while melanio was quiet, though could be rowdy when drunk, marikyat was the better known because of her temper. coroy i thought was sweet; she liked to sing to herself.  to this day i fume at how some bastard/s could have impregnated and taken advantage of her. and tacing, or tacion, who was said to have been wooed by a “tamawo” which accounts for her mumblings and being in a world of her own. she was constantly by our side during papa’s funeral in a touching show of sympathy.  

technically, urban legends are a type of folklore, defined as the handed-down beliefs, stories, songs and customs of ordinary people (”the folk”).  urban legends tend to emerge spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single author or point of origin.  unlike fiction or drama, urban legends are transmitted primarily through interpersonal communication, from individual to individual.  lastly, urban legends tend to change over time through repetition and embellishment, hence no two versions are ever exactly alike; there can be as many variants as there are tellers of the tale.

stretching the definition a bit, this is my  version of  urban legend, what and who  i think are sagay’s urban legends.  definitely  a host of others should be in too, such as tia asion the ibos seller, tia tading and her fresh lumpia, bayawa the barber, cesar kumpol, tita sally the midwife who had helped  bring out many sagaynons into the world, etc. 

my apologies (for omitting them) come with the hope that other sagaynons put in their pieces as well, thus offer a wonderful gift  to future generations, crafted from our collective memories.