PALENGKE DAY

When I was a kid, every now and then on a Saturday, my father would wake me up very early to take me along with him to Blumentritt public market. It was just the two of us.

Immediately upon arriving, before buying a single item, we would first head on over to the prepared food stalls for a palabok and puto breakfast. But getting to our favorite food counter would sometimes require the skills one would use when playing patintero. You see, we had to pass through a stretch of other food merchants whose help would grab people -- their way of coaxing customers to check out what they had to offer. It was annoying but part of the whole experience.

My father was a good shopper and wasn’t embarrassed to haggle every now and then. But with the vendors we bought from regularly, I noticed he never would bargain with. I guess, since he had gotten to know them, he was sort of embarrassed to ask for any cut in price. Perhaps, this is the reason why an aunt avoided getting too familiar with the public market vendors; afraid she might end up paying more at times.

The meat and seafood section at Blumentritt, as I remember it back then was always wet and sometimes muddy as well. My father would usually leave me near the entrance to it where a classmate (at Bonifacio Elementary School) and his mother sold calamansi on the street. There were times my father took a long time to do all his meat and fish purchases that he would often return to find me and my friend aggressively beckoning people to buy calamansi from us — without the grabbing part, of course, as done over at the food stalls.

As a joke, my father would say, "Since you looked just like a seasoned pro hawking calamansi out there perhaps, I should get you a spot next to your friend's so you could peddle onion and garlic on weekends to earn your keep." It would amuse him furthermore whenever I would ask in return, "But who would go with you to the movies after work today and to the racetrack tomorrow afternoon?"

The foodstuff we bought on those Saturday mornings were usually for the entire weekend so, by the time we were done, we’d end up with quite a handful to bring back with us. But as a special treat, my father always hired a kalesa to bring us home, which I absolutely enjoyed. I loved western movies and TV shows at that time and the kalesa was the closest to horseback riding that I could experience.

Nowadays, I would sometimes do the marketing myself over at Blumentritt and much like my father, get too embarrased to bargain with vendors I've gotten to know. But finding a kalesa is not as easy as back in those days.

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