TWO TRAGEDIES

Asingan in the 50's was a laid back, peaceful town except for that night when a group of armed men attempted to burglarize Moniang's rice mill. We were already sound asleep when a series of popping sounds jarred our deep slumber. "Gunshots!" exclaimed my Father who was also the excitable type and he told us to go to the living room. Our bedrooms faced the main street and the rice mill is just about a 100 feet away. He looked out of our window and a few more shots were heard. In the moonless night, the gun barrels spouted sparkling beads looking and sounding like firecrackers. After the second volley of shots, there came an eerie silence. We heard shouts and running footsteps that dissapeared. The burglars seemd to have run away.

It was said that one person ran to the Presidencia by way of the Catholic church yard to ask for help. Some ten minutes later, we heard the shuffling of feet and they stopped near our house..One policeman shouted "Moniang, are they still there??.." What a moronic question to ask; what did the guy think? Would Moniang know whether they left? Was he watching the shootout from an open window, maybe through some night vision googles? The cops finally went to the scene of the crime to find one dead body and a houseful of scared witnesses..

The next day, everybody was talking about the crime: in barbershops, in the market in dinner tables.. The fatality was a relative of Nana Talen..He was shot, a friend of mine who is close to the family said, because as the robbers were trying to open a door, he switched on his flashlight on the would be robber. One robbery suspect shot at the flashlight. The victim was hit at close range. They never caught the suspects.

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The second tragedy that befell Monyang was the big fire that the town thought would wipe him out forever.At first it was just a small fire manifested by a small column of black smoke plummeting up the sky. It is amazing how something small could become so big and destructive if nothing is done about it.

Being a rice mill, there was lot of fire hazards inside: diesel fuel for the engines, the sacks of palay to be milled, the empty burlap sacks and the dry, structural timber that made up the whole building.Plus there were no fire extinguishers in the plant and the town had no fire truck. Water sources would be hand pumps, wells, artisian wells plus an old fashioned bucketbrigade that would bring the water to the burning building via human hands. 

Soon we saw the wall of flame getting bigger and wider. Burning debris, like lethal beautiful flowers could be seen flying and dancing on the wind whipped into motion by the rising temperature. And the Asinganians, having not seen a major fire before, formed an audience watching the fire like it was a movie set...Even as noon time passed, there was no sign of the fire abating. My mother started packing some clothes out of anticipation for the worse. Other houses were closer to the burning building than ours: the Suratos residence was just across the street, then the deMesa building was just a neighbour of the Suratos family. The Romero residence ( house of my Kumpare Alex ) was just on the right side of the blazing inferno. And experience shows you can never expect what the fire would do next.

Then came that one big explosion causing one small cloud of fire that rose up in a flash then came down just as fast as it went up. The onlookers screamed and ran away thinking the fire would eat them too.I also felt a momentary heat on my cheeks.All the time I was watching the hellish spectacle from the second floor window of our house. It was believed that the fire reached a pile of gasoline tanks ( or some other volatile substance )somewhere and it just exploded in flames.In a few minutes, the onlookers started trekking back to watch the rest of the "show.." There were no more big explosions after that.

 

Then the fire gradually dwindled, only because there was nothing more to feed on. The fire gradually reduced itself into a small bonfire, just like in the beginning. The people did not go away immediately. They waited until dark then spectators just came and went as if it was a sideshow, a freak exhibit, or something to gawk at. The next morning found some people going over what remained of the rice mill...Some said they found a few blackened coins, some say the place smelled like a mixture of burning rubber, ( rubber takes time to burn ) smell of burnt rice ( like somebody left the rice pot over a burning fire ). Again it is so hard to control people in a small town especially when there is such a small police force. I saw what was left of the rice mill the next day on my way to and from the school in Dupac. The people just came and went until they found no valuable coins in the ruins and they just stopped coming. In a few days, their curiosity was satsfied. Show is over. The End.

 

Locals thought that that was the end of Moniang. But in a few weeks, the construction of a bigger, better CONO started. The rice mill rose again like the mythical bird, the Phoenix.It might have been arson, who knows? There was no Criminal Investigating Unit  in Asingan at that time. They said the "Chinese Brotherhood" among the Chinese Community in Pangasinan  helped Moniang  stand on his feet again. The truth behind this incident was burned and buried with the  blackened ruins of the building. This happened almost 60 years ago. This building is still there in the same spot up to this day.