There seemed that Tatay’s roles in our lives were limitless. As a responsible father, he was one who had always looked at us with care from the very time we were born. While we were still infants, he used to comfort us every time we cry for whatever discomforts by playing and motioning before our eyes his two cut fingers like it were insects’ larvae, and we all loved it. He was so caring and playful we could not find another one like him.He was such a great man Tatay went on to be this entertaining and funny even up to his final years.
Despite Nanay’s modest behavior as a wife and mother, Tatay still had guts to poke fun at her expense just to make us laugh. We were already grown-ups that can understand jokes when Tatay started telling us phony stories about Nanay. All and most of his jokes were genuinely his creations. Early on, Tatay usually told us that Nanay came from a very poor family just like him. Sometimes, they both came from a rich family but most of the time he was the one who was really “rich”. Just like when Tatay pointed to me years earlier a dilapidated smoke stack as the bus we were on neared Dueñas as the chimney of Nanay’s “central”, I really took it at heart believing that she was indeed “rich”. I found it later that it was only in this tale that Nanay happened to be rich. Every time Tatay narrated stories about her, though Nanay had never been amused or felt ridiculed she just didn’t mind them believing we would not believe them anyway. But Tatay was persistent.
One of Tatay’s favorite stories about Nanay was that she came from a very poor family and that she was “unschooled” that unlike him, she was only up to “1st grade”. No wonder, Nanay admitted that it was true. He continued that she was “ignorant” too that unlike him, she did not know her exact birthday. And so, to show that she was really that ignorant, one of Tatay’s stories goes back to the time when they were just married. After they were wed, he said, he brought her to their “mansion” to live with his parents. One night, he was surprised on entering their room to find Nanay standing on a stool as she tried to reach the ceiling and “blew” the fluorescent lamp as if it was a candle so it will get dark since she cannot sleep in a lighted room. She was that “ignorant” that she did not know what a “switch” was for, he said of Nanay. At first, Nanay seemed amused by Tatay’s stories that we believed in them, and so with his other tales about our beloved mother. But as years passed, we took them as just his usual jokes.
Tatay’s expertise was not only to be funny but he was one who also talked and shares other subjects of interest to us. He loved to talk about sport with me and Toto and one of his favorite sports was baseball. While he was still in Manila in the early stage of his life, he used to watch baseball at the Rizal Baseball Stadium when baseball at the time was just being introduced by the Americans in the country. He learned many of its rules and appreciated how it’s played but never tried playing. Tatay did not appreciate any other team sports especially basketball which I always insert in our talks knowing that the sport came late in his life. But his most loved sport was boxing, and it’s here where we’re evenly matched.
Although Tatay had never been involved in a “fistfight” or even in a scuffle in his lifetime, he loved this pugilistic sport called “boxing”. Tatay used to talk about boxers and how they trained and knew very well who to admire. While he was still in Manila and during the time when the Second World War just ended, he was already into this sport as a spectator. As a boxing buff, he had his favorite boxers then with the likes of Little Dado, Speed Cabanela and many others who all came from Iloilo and Negros. Cabanela later had a grandson Fernando Cabanela who was in the undercard of the Ali-Frazier III in 1975 better known as the Thrilla in Manila where he outpointed then champion Rolando Navarette to win and reign as the Philippine Bantamweight Champion.
To see how he appreciated boxing, I took Tatay to the Araneta Coliseum in the early 1970s to watch a fight while I was still in college in Manila. At the time, I was already a regular spectator of big fights and the main event in this card was a fight of my first Filipino ring idol Erbito Salavarria. He was then the Oriental Flyweight champion and this was his title defense against a Japanese challenger. Despite Tatay’s failing eyes, he was so impressed by Salavarria’s “stylist” boxing skills and Tatay loved the experience. Even with a sprained right hand early in the fight, Salavarria went on to win the fight convincingly to retain his title. Unable to use much his right, he relied mostly on his stinging left jabs to win the fight. He later became a world champion but by that time, he was already past his prime and in his waning years that he did not last long as a champion
Before that experience, I have earlier introduced and briefed Tatay of my other and first idol – Muhammad Ali. At the time when Ali was still being called by his original name Cassius Clay, I already kept boasting to Tatay that no one can ever beat him then or dislodged him as The Greatest. I cited to Tatay the superior and finest qualities of Ali as “very unique”, that he is the most handsome and prettiest of all fighters and that he remained without a scar in his face. I boasted as well that no one can ever copy or even imitate his moves in the ring and of his other unheard of talents like bragging, showboating, of how he lifted boxing to its greatest height of popularity and of his precise prediction of results of his fights. And that despite his size of being a heavyweight, he is the fastest fighter regardless of weight classes ever to rule boxing. He not only was fast with his punches but also with his feet such that he is the only one to own this tag, “He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee”. And it’s only him who can do perfectly and with grace the “Ali Shuffle”, his original boxing move unseen before in boxing. These, I kept telling Tatay are not just for bragging but for real.
Despite all the best I did to sell Ali to Tatay, he seemed not “sold out” to my sales talks. In fact, Tatay himself has heard of great fighters the likes of Joe Louise, Primo Carnera, Jack Dempsey and of our very own Gabriel “Flash” Elorde, but for the absence then of televisions and VCRs, he never believed in all I’ve pitched. But at least, I tried.
To be continued…
