Drive through
By Rec Catubig
“TO live, one must drive away from life occasionally”, so wrote Kerima Polotan, one of the best women writers in the 60’s.
I’ve always taken that to heart, and one weekend recently, I charmed my way into the passenger seat of my friend’s borrowed car and went along as he ran his errand.
Our pit stop in the public market of Alaminos renewed my boyhood association with Padas–those delicate, tiny fermented fish in distinctive tawny brine and buttery flavor. It’s a class all its own. For me, it’s a notch above the muddy monamon, but maybe alongside the exalted hierarchy of the dainty agamang that’s resplendent in magenta.
And then, confronted by hanging rows of the local sausage, one was obliged to get a few dozen of the toothpick skewered Alaminos longganisa as a matter of culinary respect.
On the way home, the popular Rudy-Jing beckoned and sent smoke signals to our already grumbling tummy. The seafood restaurant is actually a spin-off of the pioneer roadside restaurant named “Suratos” after its owners, that was nestled in a fishpond in Binmaley and made pantat rise above its derogatory status as “bottom sweeper” in reference to its feeding off waste on the muddy, murky floor of the pond.
Food is still good and reasonably priced. But the gargantuan building it has grown into from the simple bamboo and sawali structure, is an architectural abomination that has no bearing on its culinary specialty and does not even remotely define what the restaurant is. I sure miss those small smoky grill stations that shouted “Hito! “ (Pantat in Pangasinan) a mile away.
But what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The stomach is the ultimate arbiter even in matters of architecture. That should settle that.
What matters is, the long meandering drive through the labyrinthine maze of rural villages along these midwestern towns, lulled the spirit into reliving the genteel times of one’s boyhood, when there was nary a care. There was living during the time only, now, not later; no forethought and afterthought–only the melting moment in the noonday’s heat.
And as one opened the car window and breathed in the humid air, the heart fluttered, delighted by the whiff of rustic breeze. And for an instant, the nauseating putrid stink of the gutter behavior of our officials who have become incorrigible “bottom sweepers” of Malabanan’s septic tank, was magically whisked and washed away by the wafting memory of petrichor of a sudden summer rain.
The pantat in our midst can drive you insane. To hold on to one’s sanity, it is not enough to pinch your nose. One must drive away from them, else drive them away; or simply siphon them off the muddy seabed of politics. So one can drive happily and live in peace.#
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