Unidentified Forgotten Objects (UFO-1)
Glenn Remorca of Cavite posted on Facebook the photograph of a brown pot asking if anyone knew what it was. There were a couple of dozen replies and the consensus was that the pot is called kamao—nothing to do with boxing— and was used to hold raw ingredients or cooked food. We had one of those when I was a kid and my Lola used it as salt container. I said so and a question followed, was there a cover. My Lola used a plate as cover to keep the salt from liquefying.
It’s interesting how after a few decades, common household stuff—call them antiques or junk—could as well have been left by aliens, their functions forgotten for being part of vanished lifestyles. Of course the number and quality of a family’s possessions depend on its needs, means, location, taste, and on how intensely they want to impress the neighbors. Here’s a sampling.
A typical rural home would have nipa
walls and roof and bamboo slats for a floor, smaller and simpler than the Pampanga home where former President Diosdado Macapagal (the “Poor Boy from Lubao”) was born. Its replica, built by his eldest daughter and former Pampanga Vice Governor Cielo Macapagal Salgado,
was about a meter above ground and has only two rooms—an all purpose room and the silíd, a small room that is really more of a walk-in closet.
Ordinary people stayed mostly outdoors, going upstairs only at nighttime. There was little need for furniture and the indispensable object would have been a baul, a chest to keep the family’s Sunday Best, lengths of cloth, the matriarch’s wedding dress, etc. It is just a plain rectangular box opened from the top.
Daytime, people were out under the trees, in a shed or if there’s enough headroom, in the open-air ground floor (silong). Women and children would do household chores or make items for sale (my Bulacan cousins used to weave little baskets). Men would repair farm implements, blow smoke on their fighting cocks. They relaxed on benches and
papag—a daybed of bamboo slats.
Evenings people slept upstairs on mats laid on the floor. Relatives in Plaridel, Bulacan were well-off but their large house was built low—maybe five feet above ground. The outside stairs led to a balcony and into the house proper that had only three rooms: a silid with an aparadór, the large main room and another even larger room for eating and cooking. Off the kitchen was the batalán (general utility area) from where a bridge led to the comun (the CR).
My parents dispatched me there with
Tia Julî for a few weeks at the start of World War II. I was still a kid and I don’t recall the details, but everyone slept on the floor (Tio Asiong and Tia Pilar probably slept in the silíd) on baníg, mats woven with various kinds of reeds. The best baníg were made of narrow strips of smooth and slightly thick reeds, colored with plant dyes and woven to form a traditional design say a lizard that was popular in some cultural communities. When I was growing up, you could buy mats with a message, “Souvenir of Leyte” or something special like “Alay ko kay Nening.”
During the day, pillows were stacked up on an almario, a 6-8-foot-high shelfless stand with four thin posts, with a simple pediment—my cousins gave me their almario, carved with Tia Pilar’s initials, “PdC.” Examples from the north (practical, the Ilocanos) sometimes have a built-in rack on top for rolled-up mats. At the bottom would be a compartment with a sliding door for blankets or supposedly for an orinola
(chamber pot).
Only the haves had permanent dining areas with a bulky table and accompanying chairs. Common folk sat on the floor while eating, dishes laid out on a low table maybe 10” high called dulang. They were mostly rectangular, seating 4-6 people, although there were less common round ones. A rack called
banggera was attached to a window by the dining area where plates and glasses were placed to dry after washing.
For drinking, spring water or boiled or strained well water was kept in a
tapayan, a large covered clay jar with a faucet near the bottom. Grand homes had Qing (maybe Ming) porcelain jars instead.
Cooking was done using clay pots placed on a clay stove or on three pointed triangular mounds above a wood fire. Cooking could be done on the ground or on the floor upstairs or on a stand called dapog or tungkô, a rectangular table with a layer three to four inches of clay and ash. The cook would blow into an ihip, a length of bamboo with nodes removed to keep the fire blazing. Ladles for serving are made from coconut shell, called sandók.
Baskets suspended from rafters were usually good enough to protect edibles—cooked or uncooked. A paminggalan was probably a status symbol—meaning the family didn’t live hand-to-mouth and had leftovers. It’s a shoulder-high cabinet with slats on double doors and sides, four legs standing on oilfilled saucers. Screened, this was good enough to foil creepy-crawlies.
Washing and bathing would be on the batalán, by a well, or at a nearby brook. The batalán was floored with large bamboo poles split in half, the better for water to fall through. It was hard to walk on it though. My Lola described how the balón in her Lolo’s Marilao, Bulacan home was circular, with steps along the sides leading down to the water. Another well still exists, also in Marilao, shaped like a keyhole, the long part being steps leading down to the round part that is the actual well. Clothes were washed on a one-piece round wood batyâ, a shallow flat-bottomed pan two to three feet in diameter, with a handle for carrying and storing.
Making clothes presentable was a big production and ordinary people probably didn’t bother much about their daily wear. Before clothes irons with charcoal, housewives used mangles or clothes presses consisting of three pieces of wood: (a) clothes are spread on a thick plank scooped out in the middle section; (b) a roller is placed on top of the clothes; and (c) a third piece of wood shaped to prevent feet from slipping out is laid on the roller; and (d) holding on to something, a sweating housewife or child stands on (c) and swings sideways to make the roller roll and make Nanay’s saya and Tatay’s pantalón worthy of next Sunday’s Mass.
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It’s interesting how after a few decades, common household stuff— call them antiques or junk—could as well have been left by aliens, their functions forgotten for being part of vanished lifestyles.