Chicken feet for the Soul

SHE did me a great favor, bought a couple of thick binders over the weekend, and neatly compiled clippings of my news and feature stories from way, way back.  The clippings came from the office library, which last year began disposing of old materials after having them encoded in the digital archives. Thanks to a timely word from the staff, I was able to sort through the heap before it got hauled off to the recycler’s bin, and retrieved several brown envelopes containing what amounted to be my humble body of work.

 

Yellowing and dog-eared, the clippings covered my bylines from the second half of the ‘90s — from the time I started out in the Metro police beat to my earliest political reports during the short-lived Estrada presidency.  These ‘’souvenirs’’ certainly made for nostalgic reading, often drawing a knowing smile but also sometimes a serious pause (as you would read on later), for I happened to have covered not a few gruesome crimes and other shades of urban blight in those years. Each page brought back long-lost memories. Sinulat ko pala ito!? Kinober ko pala ‘yun!?  How did I even get there? With some stories, it took me moments to recall.

 

I have to give to it to my editors at the time – among them the gritty yet always lyrical Recah T and the late Elvis S of the Metro page, as well as my mentors Carlos H (now Hong Kong-based) and Gerry L of the city desk – for coming up with angles and headlines which, over a decade later, could really make me sigh and say: ‘’Those were the days…’’

 

Here’s a sampling:

 

‘’Man kills mom, sis, dog, puppy’’

 

‘’Only 16 toilets for 300 families’’ (A report on a squatter relocation site)

 

‘’How much is P10 in flies?’’ (About a local government pest-control campaign)

 

‘’Drug lord framed me, says priest nabbed for sex in car’’

 

‘’Drugs sent my kids to school’’

 

‘’2 sisters convicted of murder’’ (They poured boiling water on their housemaid and got caught dumping the body)

 

‘’He tries to kill her, then says ‘Sorry’’’

 

‘’From marketplace of ideas to marketplace of flesh’’ (About a Pasig City plaza that used to host balagtasans and political gatherings but had turned into a shadowy hub for pimps)

 

‘’Videoke bar ‘sales force’ invades DILG’’ (About GROs who were allowed to walk in and hand out business cards to DILG employees during office hours)

 

‘’There’s money for horses but not for workers’’ (Labor unrest at the National Stud Farm near UP campus)

 

‘’‘If you can’t lick ‘em, tax ‘em’’ (About a proposal to impose taxes on gun owners)

 

‘’La Nina blamed for disaster in village named Sto. Nino’’

 

‘’Can the Pasig be a poem again?’’ (A feature on those on-and-off initiatives to clean up the river)

 

‘’Ex-Executioner’s Song’’ (An interview with a retired Bilibid prisons guard tasked with turning on the electric chair during the Marcos years)

 

‘’Spoiled egg pie sends 23 factory workers to hospital’’

 

 ‘’Where Santa will have to take a banca’’ (One of several feature stories I wrote about the perennial flooding in my hometown Taguig)

 

 ‘’Captured rebel pregnant, loses fetus; military blamed’’

 

 ‘’ ‘Pregnant Virgin Mary’ in Muslim dress graces Sept. 21 rally’’

 

 ‘’Caught having shabu session inside mosque’’

 

 ‘’Edgar Mortiz squeezes into council seat’’

 

 ‘’It’s jail for Joko’’ (Joko Diaz was a young action star then, booked for hitting a Sultan’s son with a baseball bat)

 

 ‘’Chiquito is dead’’ (Yes, I reported on the great comic’s passing)

 

 ‘’Namfrel pushes computerized poll’’ (This was reported in August ‘97, or 12 years before reality finally caught up)

 

 Joker accuses Villar of 10 Charter violations (This was written in August ‘98, and Joker reminded the people about this recently at the height of the C-5 road controversy hounding Villar)

 

‘’High EI (emotional intelligence) is Erap’s secret’’ (This was before juetengate.)

 

Sex Triangle: Makati strip is new Ermita (A two-part special report, for which the office gave me a food and beverage budget of P2,000 so that I could go bar-hopping and do a little ‘‘research’’)

 

 Girl files rape charge vs Jalosjos (A scoop, I recall)

 

 ‘’Death toll in Payatas trash avalanche rises to 85’’ (‘’The stench of death grew stronger than the stink of garbage at the Payatas dump site in Quezon City two days after the disaster.’’)

 

 But for some reason, the most striking story for me out of the compilation was practically a mere newsbrief, a simple, faceless, amoral tale of life’s random turns:

 

 ‘’Grass fire burns 3 cars’’