By Rex Catubig   I’VE always been enamored with bridges. My generation was awed by the Bridge on The River Kwai and stomped to its marching music. But my forever love is the romantic Golden Gate Bridge that straddles the strait between San Francisco and Sausalito. It is the reason…

By Rex Catubig   HE only finished grade 6. Because they were poor. Life was hard and a constant struggle. He did all kinds of odd jobs—pushcart mover, barker, househelp–he had done it all. “Mairap so manbilay na siamiran anak” (It’s difficult to raise nine children), he sighed, though without…

By Rex Catubig   I always fell asleep on my way to Dagupan during my sem break from college. Despite being cramped elbow to elbow on the wooden bench seat of the Pantranco bus, the wind surge from the open sides, the drone of the engine, and the rocking motion…

By Rex Catubig    AS we continue to rally and promote the restoration and revitalization of the old PNR Train Station, which is at the center of our advocacy, skeptics are quick to raise the issue of priority. “Bakit yan ang ginagawa, wala namang pakinabang ang tao diyan?” Coming from…

By Rex Catubig   EVERY culture has its own unique way of grappling with the concept of death and redemption; of life here and life hereafter. Of life in full circle. It manifests itself in some odd rites and rituals: perhaps bizarre, absurd, irrational and fanciful. But beneath all that,…

By Rex Catubig   THE Ferrocarril de Manila-Dagupan, the forerunner of PNR, began building in 1888 following a royal decree issued by King Alfonso of Spain mandating the laying out of a railway system in the island of Luzon. After years of extensive construction by Filipino labor, the railway started…

By Rex Catubig   IT was as if a little God had thrown his jackstones up in the sky and these had fallen down deep into the belly of the ocean, then after a storm surge were disgorged and washed ashore by the tide of time. Around the bend that…

By Rex Catubig   THERE are no road markers to lead visitors to the site. The site, in fact, is hardly known in the vicinity. The name Villa Milagrosa no longer rings a bell, silenced by the hands of time. Undeterred, we found the way through some remembered route much…

(A corollary homage to commemorate Dagupan’s 75th Diamond Jubilee) By Rex Catubig   I did not get to know Pangasinan’s political luminary, Speaker Eugenio Perez Sr, who authored the charter that made Dagupan into a City. But growing up in the 1960’s, I was fortunate to have had personal encounter…

By Rex Catubig   I woke up to a stacticky radio on Saturday, September 23, 1972. No matter how I twiddled the dial, there was only hissing and crackling. And there was no newspaper, either. I was waking up to a bad dream, I thought. I hurriedly took a jeep…