By Sol Vanzi WHEN LIFE WAS SIMPLE A warm summer sunset in Sorsogon City. (Image by Sara Grace C. Fojas) Summers in the ’50s defined the weeks of vacation from school, grand town fiestas, and days of exploration. We would leave home after breakfast to meet with playmates, all from the same barrio, and disappear until lunch time. Sometimes, we did not come home until sunset, in time for Angelus and prayers in front of a small altar in the living room. After praying, we would kiss the hands of everyone a generation older: parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, and older visitors. Life was simple, too simple by today’s standards. Our parents never asked what we did with ourselves all day. They knew because our childhood was just like theirs—full of games, laughter, friendships, and discoveries. Children roamed and played without fear of pedophiles, kidnappers, drug pushers, and human traffickers. There were no refrigerators or freezers in our kitchens, yet no food got spoiled. We made do with ice boxes and a daily supply of ice from an ice truck. Grandma kept track of the food supply, which was preserved with salt, vinegar, smoke, and her recipes, which made some food taste better the next day. Our stove used scrap wood from a lumberyard and from thousands of ipil-ipil trees planted to serve as green boundaries dividing salt beds, fishponds, and rice fields. Before the rainy season, we trimmed ipil-ipil trees deliberately planted along fishpond walls for firewood. DIY TOYS AND GAMES We had no store-bought toys. Our older siblings, cousins, uncles, and neighbors showed us how to make our own. Our favorite was a cart fashioned from oval cans of sardines imported from the US, branded Portola. Bottle caps often served as wheels. I was lucky to find empty thread spools from a dressmaker. When strong amihan (easterly) winds blew, it was a signal to start making kites from bamboo, Manila paper, and string. Corn starch and water were heated to glue the kite parts together.  Beginners learned to construct the simple kites with long tails. The older ones among us made guryon, a tail-less kite designed to attack and destroy other kites. Every summer, the whole neighborhood spent afternoons watching their children’s kites in fierce aerial combat. When the rains came, it was time for indoor activities. We climbed trees, rooftops, cables, and certain shrubs to collect spiders and rhinoceros beetles, the gladiators of insect battles, which always ended with one or both protagonists dead. Housing for insect warriors were match boxes. Spider duels were sometimes watched by men, who made big bets on their chosen insects. FIESTA TIME The last week of April meant preparing houses for the town fiesta on the first Sunday of May. All the houses in our barrio had to be cleaned with soap, water, and plenty of sandpaper-like leaves from the isis tree. The annual clean up involved everyone, bayanihan style. A list was followed, containing all the houses and the corresponding clean-up dates. The home owner provided food for everyone—no payment was necessary. By the last week of April, all the homes were spic and span, ready for the expected fiesta throng of visitors. Most awaited by children and single men and women was the preparation of buntings to decorate the streets. First, the single men cut bamboo poles from several bamboo clumps growing near the rivers. The bamboo poles were planted on both sides of the street, waiting to hold up the buntings, consisting of triangles of colorful paper glued to lengths of abaca string. Single ladies spread glue on the triangles, then handed these to young men who glued them to the strings. NON-STOP MUSIC Making the bunting preparation lively were members of the barrio brass band playing popular songs instead of their usual marches. Everyone sang along. The camaraderie and joy pervading during those days were so genuine, impossible to recapture in these days of gadgets and instant everything. On the day of the fiesta, almost everyone but the cooks went to hear morning mass at the Church of St. Joseph, better known as the Bamboo Organ Church. Each of the town’s six barrios had a brass band. They marched all over the town, stopping only for lunch and afternoon snack at designated sponsors’ homes. By nightfall, the musicians would form six-piece groups to serenade each house, receiving cash and other gifts from the homeowners and their guests. Festivities often lasted until dawn the next day. NATURE’S BOUNTY Tired of rich fiesta meat dishes, we walked a kilometer to the shores of Manila Bay to gather shellfish. Our path went on a zigzag through salt beds and fishponds. Manila Bay was blue and pristine. There were no fish cages, only a few bamboo fish traps (baklad) used to keep the day’s catch alive. Nobody owned the beach. One could walk along the shore from Las Piñas to Pasay and not be accosted for trespassing. At low tide, oysters were aplenty and free for the taking. So were clams and mussels. We gathered as much as we could carry home. The shellfish were prepared very simply with garlic and ginger. The oysters were served raw, dipped in spicy coconut vinegar. RICE FIELD ESCARGOT After the first rains of May, hibernation ends for snails and freshwater fish like dalag (snakehead mudfish), hito (black catfish), as well as kuhol (rice paddy snails). We caught fish using a simple bamboo basket fish trap. The snails were all crawling out in the open, waiting to be picked up and cooked. Heavy rains and typhoons usually started in June, right on the first weeks of classes. We went back to school babbling about how I spent my summer vacation. I wonder what today’s kids could narrate about their summers?