Sunday, September 10, 2006
Covington: Great Filipino mysteries
By Gary Covington
Looking In
1. THE missing pork. No, not that pork, the pork, which is supposed to inhabit a can of pork and beans.
Pork and beans was a novelty the first time I visited the Philippines. There was nothing like it, back home. Baked beans, pure and simple -- "Beanz meanz Heinz" as any true Brit knew -- but nobody, not even Mr. Heinz with his 57 varieties, had thought to jazz up plain old beans with a little something extra.
My first Filipino can of pork and beans was missing the pork -- okay, gremlins on the production line, no process is perfect. I let it pass but then the next can and the next and on and on were all minus the pork.
There was a smidgen of white glop. Could that be the pork? I poked it with a knife. It shuddered, shrugged its shoulders. Apologetically I thought. Buy a can of beans with sausage and there's recognizable wedge of the stuff. Curried beans have currants, adobo beans - and have you noticed that absolutely anything can be adoboed -- have carrots, peas, peppercorns and sundry leaves so why oh why doesn't pork 'n beans contain any pork?
2. The gap in the concrete. Take any subdivision -- the one you live on if it has concreted roads -- and somewhere I'll wager, where a subdivision road joins a bigger road or the highway, there'll be a gap in the concrete.
It'll be a stretch five or 10 or 15 feet long, the whole width of the road, an expanse of mud and pebbles and gravel, which by rights, by all the rules of common sense, should have been cemented but hasn't. Why not?
Some years ago -- thanks to the initiative of a certain someone; it says so on a still-standing board three years after the event -- our subdivision roads were cemented. It was fun to watch. The crew labored mightily, there was a daily procession of trucks delivering bags of cement and aggregate and sand and the bright new ribbon of road crept past Casa Covington, around the corner, up the hill until -- fifteen feet from an older road leading to the high school -- it stopped.
Absolutely. Finito. The crew dismantled their trapal and plywood house, the cement mixer, vibrator and roller were carted off. A lumpy, bumpy, messy in the wet gap remained. Was the contract yardage -- the distance tendered for by the contractor -- on the short side or was the crew in a hurry to move on?
Who knows? But the next time you're out driving close to home and the car goes thumpity-thump look out of the window. Ten to one it's a gap in the concrete.
3. Chairwear. Over the last couple of years -- in the name of research -- I've been lifting skirts. Chair skirts.
The Victorians -- for modesty's sake and if you believe the tales -- were famous for dressing piano legs in a sort of kilt. I've seen toilet tissue holders -- the roll type -- hiding beneath a knitted hat decorated with roses and tassels. The height of absurdity I thought at the time but then I hadn't yet found out that swanky Philippine hotels dress up their chairs.
Chair covers are great for wiping greasy fingers or surreptitiously polishing one's eating irons. Massed ranks of chairs wearing the same color kit do lend a certain order to furniture arrangements but don't you think a roomful wearing frills and flounces is a bit over the top. You know; a bit overdone, a bit yuck.
My research proved that the chairs underneath the ruffs and tucks had nothing to be embarrassed about. Chairs are utilitarian, made to be sat upon, they can't all be Chippendale or Danish designer. As long as a roomful of chairs is reasonably uniform what does it matter if they are wooden or metal or molded from plastic?
In time they'll get scuffed and kicked about but that's why paint was invented and think of the laundry bills for all those fancy covers. Ditch the dresses. Why bother with chairwear?
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (September 10, 2006 issue)
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