Our parents welcomed strangers to the house. Felimon came when we were still in our first house in Maigo where we settled in 1951. The house was constructed of round timber, bamboo splits and nipa palm fronds. At that time, the place was known as Ferryside, after the ferryboat that shuttled across the river. Felimon was later joined by two province mates whose names I can no longer recall except that one was tall and rangy and the other short and stocky. The two stayed in our thatched house for a couple of years. I can particularly remember the short one because of his fascinating stories. I enjoyed listening to his tales of faraway castles, kings, queens, princes and princesses.
In our second house at the other side of the highway, I remembered Candido, dark and corpulent, who when drunk, would drop to sleep anywhere including road shoulders, at times with the mound of his puke as a sleep mate. He died of stomach cancer after an open-close operation. He was a watchman at the Bureau of Public Works. The BPW depot was only adjacent to the house of his boss, so most of the time he did errands at the house of his foreman.
A transient boarder of our parents was suffering from schistosomiasis. Vicente had a bloated stomach and emaciated limbs. Fortunately, the snail-borne disease is not contagious by human contact. But he was not a pretty sight and that might be the reason his wife eventually left him.
There was Benturada, a lunatic who used to drop by and stay overnight. She was in constant travel, shuttling from one place to another and survived through the generosity of people like our parents. She was harmless but perpetually smelled of chicken dung since she always tucked a chicken with her as a travel companion.
