Cubao’s ephemeral treasures

My recently renewed interest in rescuing old mechanical writing machines from oblivion and providing them shelter in my home (aka collecting typewriters) has led to me to some interesting sidestreets — you’ll read a story about Manila’s Typewriter Row here soon—but it also reminded me that sometimes the best finds lie in plain sight, if you know where to look.

For this Quezon City guy, that means Cubao, a district for which I’ve had a special affinity since the earliest days of the Araneta Coliseum and all throughout high school, when we played hooky to shoot billiards at the Fun Center and slurp noodles at Ma Mon Luk. In 1978, I found a pair of new-old-stock Parker Vacumatic fountain pens in a stall along Aurora Boulevard, triggering a lifelong passion. Fifteen years ago, Beng and I dragged a splendorously comfortable Schweiger sofa out of a Cubao resale shop, and we’re having it reupholstered again for its third incarnation. On Christmas Eve in 2017, I found and bought the oldest volume in my collection — an English book printed in 1551 — from a seller in Cubao, who had received it from his mother working as a caregiver in Paris.

In other words, unlikely as it may seem, Cubao has always held wondrous things for me, quite apart from the sikad-sikad, the arosep, and the fresh tangingue in Farmer’s Market. A few weeks ago, I picked up two coveted Swiss-made 1960s typewriters — a Hermes 3000 and a Hermes Baby — from two different shops in Cubao Expo, that refreshingly downscale shopping zone which has managed to retain its old-school appeal and integrity. (Let’s give a shout out to the Grand Thrift House and the UVLA Store, both well worth the walk.)

Being in the neighborhood, I recalled reading a post somewhere that a corner of the now-venerable Ali Mall was now devoted to antiques and collectibles, so I crossed the street and paid it a visit, and was pleasantly surprised to discover a series of shops on the second floor selling everything from Beatles records and memorabilia to vintage pottery and Coke bottles.

No pens or typewriters for me this time, but my eyes wandered, in one shop, to stacks of old papers and documents. This is a class of collecting generally called “ephemera” —comprising, by one definition, documents, letters, booklets, brochures, pamphlets, billheads, ledgers, scrapbooks, photographs, and maps. You can’t collect old books, pens, and typewriters without running into ephemera, and I’ve picked up some choice pieces —including beautifully handwritten letters that date back to the 1500s and 1600s — to illustrate both the practice and the culture of writing, or what people wrote and how they wrote.

Ephemera, by the word itself, is inherently transient and easily lost — to trash bins, fires, and forgetfulness — but thankfully, there are quite a few other pack rats like me who save such things as Love Bus tickets and receipts from long-shuttered restaurants and hotels for no grander reason than to be reminded 40 years later of a fun evening (which I must have had on May 16, 1979, according to a receipt from a place called “For the Boys,” charging me P4.00 for food, P5.50 for cigarettes, and P48.50 for drinks).

I plowed through the piles of neatly wrapped papers and came away with a bundle that shows what’s out there — and perhaps just as interestingly, what’s in here, in that part of ourselves that responds with a clutch in the heart to words on a page. My takeaways — all for about P1,000, or a shirt at Uniqlo — included the following:

• A legal document dated June 10, 1897 and signed by Luis XXXX, Valeriana XXXX (I couldn’t decipher the signatures) and Satorneno Antolin, written in Ilocano. I don’t know Ilocano, but couldn’t resist the vivid purple ink. (My friend Frank Cimatu would later tweet from Baguio that it concerned a couple in Sta. Maria who were selling their plot of land which produced three cavans of rice.)

• A carbon copy of an exchange of letters from January 1929 between Senate President Manuel Quezon and Sen. Elpidio Quirino over the appointment of a Mr. Llanes. Quirino’s letter begins thus: “I owe you my most humble apology for having expressed myself too bluntly in my letter of 11th instant. God knows, and you know too, that I am not capable of insulting you, not for a thousand Llaneses and judgeships.” (I wonder how their modern counterparts write today.)

• A printed invitation to the 13th Annual Oratorical Contest of the UP College of Law on January 31, 1931, to be held (oddly enough) at the auditorium of the Philippine Normal School.

• An undated typescript, probably from the 1960s, of a storyline for a “Drama-Comedy-Musical” titled “Little Darling” by Johnny de Leon and Mario Mijares Lopez, about a provinciano named Ikeng who loved his carabao he called, yes, “Little Darling.” (Ikeng later becomes a famous broadcaster in Manila and forgets his pet, who never forgets him.)

Most poignantly, the trove also included a small book of autographs (a slam book, or in Pinoy usage, a “slum” book) once owned by Rosalina “Rely” L. Estrella, from the Provincial High School of Nueva Ecija, replete with good wishes ca. 1935. We learn from later entries that she was enrolled at the National Teachers College in 1940. And then the war comes, and we hear no more from or about “the Rose of Gapan.”

And so we are reminded of how open-ended the past often and truly is, instead of the closed book we imagine it to be. No wonder I keep coming back to it.

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Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.