Once Upon a Time in ASINGAN, part 5
After my grandfather died, my grandmother carried on the work of maintaining the business establishments which they founded. There were quite a few of them.. They had this KONO/KISKISAN, a machine which converted palay into rice. The workhorse was a heavy duty diesel machine called BLACKSTONE and it could run 24 hours a day, with minimun maintenance. It has two driving wheels and it could run two rice kiskisan at the same time ( there were 2 driving wheels on opposite sides of a big axle ), but usually there was only one kiskisan being driven at a time.
But the work was hard and one has contend with the "palay dust," a very fine dust that floats around inside the place. It is borne by the air and it is an aftermath of the process of unhusking the palay. My Mom said there were times when customers would be stuck there even at noon time, so my Grandma would give them lunch while they waited for their turn. My Grandma was a good hearted woman; a church goer and she prayed regularly as the church bells tolled the Angelus at 6:00 pm.
When I was already about 5 or 6 years old, I became aware of my world: the big Spanish type house where I grow up in Asingan. In 1948, I went to the Asingan Elementary School situated just beside the Public Market. In my Grade 1 class, I met friends like Rudy Dumapias ( now a retired Consul living in Texas ), Juan ( Johnny ) Pascua, a retiree who spent much of his life in Asingan as a teacher before he came to the US. Johnny must be a retiree by now and I met him recently during my last visit to California. Then there is Nueva Domaoan Elma who is now in New Jersey having also attained a high position in the government. There were several others: Jose Montoya, Amelia Eleazar, etc...My Grade 1 teacher was Mrs. Valentina Lising. She lived in Calaoagan, Poblacion.
Anyway, let us go back to my grandmother..
My Grandmother was already sick when I first saw her during my early childhood years.. She refused to see any doctor or to take any medicine. She had a caregiver, an old woman named Maria who attended to her every need because my Grandmother was constantly holed up inside her room. At that time, she could not walk any more. She CRAWLED when she went out ofher room to the BANGSAL just to have some fresh air. There I saw her sitting down quietly, looking at the trees and the sky and sometimes looking at her palms just wondering maybe how much life she had left. Maria was at her beck and call, 24 hours a day. She did not want to bother much my dad about her care. But we all know she was very rich and she must have paid her very well. But maria had to do everything related to the nursing of my grandma. The Kiskisan was still operating under the management of my Dad.
Sometimes, as I passed by her room, she would call out my name. Her room was half shut. Slowly I would step in. The room was so dark. But under the light of the shell covered windows I could see her smiling face.It was already emaciated.
"How do you like a can of powdered milk?" She would ask me.
It was a can of KLIM ( milk spelled backwards ) which was very popular in the Philippines at that time. It was still unopened. I would softly thank her, then I would step out quietly. The powdered milk is supposed to be mixed with water. But I just take a spoon and eat the powder with gusto. Sometimes my dad used it to whiten his coffee.
In her room, I saw lots of statues belonging to the Crucified Jesus, the Holy Family and there was one bearing semblance to San Vicente de Padua. I guess she must have named my dad after him.. All statues were about 2 or 3 feet tall and they were carved exquisitely out of wood. Very beautiful pieces.
next: THE DAY MY GRANDMOTHER DIED
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I was but a young barrio boy when I become aware of the illustrious family name, Costes. During harvest time, around December, farming folks in our barrio would organize to bring all their harvest of unthreshed palay in a common open space. There, they would pile up the rice, still in its stalk and straws, in tall, tapering round stacks called “mandala”. Its not unusual to see twenty or more mandalas in one place as each farmer own at least one of these. From afar, the group of mandalas would look like thatch-roofed dwellings in an African congo village. One of these wide communal sites is located near our place in Dupac, just at the back of the Cariazo-Quillopas compound which is our neighbor. My playmates and I would volunteer to camp out and sleep over the place to guard the rice stacks from would-be robbers (though I seriously doubt the puny deterrent provided by soundly sleeping boys). Here, the mounds of palay wait to be visited and threshed by a roving mechanical wonder called the “Trilyar”. Its arrival is heralded like a parade and a cause of much excitement and boyish wonder to me and my playmates. It’s a large threshing machine on four wheels towed by an agricultural tractor which is also the source of its motive power. Once it is parked in position before a mandala, and powered by a transmission belt from the tractor, it will effortlessly gobble up bundles of palay thrown to its menacing jaws. In a fraction of the time it takes to do it manually, the trilyar separates the golden grains of rice from the straws which it blows out in mountainous piles of hay at the back. Overnight, the mandalas would be reduced to a soft mountain of hay and sacks of clean rice grains. This is an ultimate spectacle to us boys so we would hang around and watch the machine like it operates by rocket science.
Now, it is on these occasions that I would hear the older folks talk about the machine being owned by the Costes family – and this, must be manong Vic’s. To own such a monstrous wonder then, Costes must be in the big league. Sometimes, the visiting Trilyar is from other operators in Asingan such as the ones owned by the Benitos, the Alturas, and the Guzons. By the late 70’s, the trilyar business started to decline and have, by now, vanished completely. It was replaced by the smaller, portable version driven by the small multi-purpose engine which is also used to drive the cultivator, the water pump, and the now ubiquitous kulegleg. Now, each farmer could mechanically threshed his harvest by his lonesome with the same efficiency as the old trilyar. But the bayanihan spirit that threshing time use to generate has gone to the junkyard, with the old machine.
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