ONCE UPON A TIME IN ASINGAN
I grew up in Asingan during a time when there was no TV, movie theatres or any kind of electronic entertainment..In fact there was not even any electricity yet!
Some rich Asinganians at that time have radios, particularly the Chinese merchants. My bedroom is just a hundred feet away from the RICE CONO of Monyang, a soft spoken Chinese merchant who at that time was married to an elderly lady.Both of them ran the rice processing mill plus a retail store . When I was about 7 years old I always go to that store to buy snacks, especially American chocolates..! At one time, there were American chocolates in Asingan, believe it or not.. Each time I come home from the Dupac Intermediate School ( now Angela Valdez ), I always pass through the open door of the store just to see if they have some yummy chocolate bars in stock..They had Milky Way and Babe Ruth before...And Milky Way cost only 15 centavos! If I see a full jar, I would go straight to my dad and pump him for some snack money...And he is one person who can not say NO to his kids especially me.
Then at night, I could hear Monyang's radio play some of the 1950 hits ( I am narrating events that took place in the early 50s..) There is this daily radio program that goes on every 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm..Manila Hit parade..The announcer, in between jokes, would play the 10 top hits in Manila..Of course, since there are 10 songs and each song is about 3 minutes each, then he has no time to play the complete song..He would just play a part of a song, cuts it, then play some commercials..But he always play completely the 3 top tunes..I would be lying down in bed, straining my ear to the open window to listen to the program..But many, many times just before they would play the 2nd or Number one song, somebody would change the station to a Chinese Broadcast from Mainland China! I assume of course that it is Monyang, the Big Boss!
We can not afford to buy the batteries that would run the radio at that time..Food was always the priority..Transistor radios were still a few years away, so Monyang ( and some other radio buffs in Asingan ) rely on those vacuum tube radios which run on batteries..Oh those radio sets would suck DC power like vampires! You need around 30 D size batteries 10 connected in parallel and 20 connected in series...Those dry cells cost a fortune and the whole battery would be enough to buy food for 5 days! But when my Mom has extra money, she would give in to my needling her..but it is not often that I buy the cells for that antique DC powerd radio in our living room...I did the soldering myself ( I was already an electronics whiz kid at that early age ) and for a precious few weeks, we would listen to some comedies from Manila..Like Edong Mapangarap with Eddie San Jose, Sylvia la Torre and Pugo ( Mariano Contreras ) ..Togo was also his sidekick but he died earlier..Plus those hit parades that come every night, or the weekly KAPITAN KIDLAT over DZRH..Or BUHAY TSUPER every Friday evenings! After a few weeks, we notice the sound getting weaker and weaker..Sometimes we try to expose the batteries to the sun so it would boost up the power..Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't...When our radio conks out, we have to rely again on Monyang's radio..Its better than nothing and it keeps me well informed of the hit tunes in Manila which not many in Asingan would ever know...! All the other kids know only the records that the local Sound System Operators would play..Yes sir, Asingan, before the advent of electrical power, was literally living in the Dark Ages!
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