“TIME IS FREE, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.”
There’s yearning among senior citizens like me for those bygone eras when everything was cheap. It was in 1967 when I first got myself a second hand Chevrolet I bought from an American serviceman for P4,000. (According to my well-meaning friends it was highly priced, it should only cost P3K only) But I was happy with it. It was a good second hand. It wasn’t a guzzler because a full tank can take me to Baguio with still few liters left after getting back to Angeles. Price of gasoline then was eighteen centavos per liter. Diesel fuel is much less.
Earlier than that, and it was in the fifties when an orchestra ticket in any of those theaters in Angeles was 25 centavos. (I remember Devry, Marte and Eden movie houses were all in the downtown area). A plateful of pancit luglug inside the San Nicolas public market will cost ten centavos. When I was still in the primary school, I was given on school days five centavos as my baon. Ten centavos were for the kids of well-off families. If ten centavos was given to me, that I can consider luxurious spending like having a special halo halo and a mamon to go along. And that five centavos was fair enough, I can already have one boiled sweet potato and a hopiang mungo and a clean drink from the water pump in the school garden.
The daily wage was four pesos for ordinary workers. And with that four pesos, basic needs of a family of five or sometimes seven or eighth can be met. Only rich families owned televisions. And only them can afford cars and motorbikes. Only them can travel abroad. And traveling abroad in those years was big deal. Ordinary folks go to pintakasi on Sundays and the kids will be happy going to a movie even only once a month. Others only ‘once in a blue moon’.
The Angeles-Manila round trip ticket was eighty five centavos. There were no air conditioning among buses then. Two of the popular bus lines were La Mallorca Pambusco of the Enriquez family of Macabebe and San Fernando. Its main competitor on the road was the Philippine Rabbit Bus Lines of the Paras and Buan families of Tarlac. Fare was a lot cheaper when taking the government owned Philippine National Railway train that run from Damortis, La Union to Tutuban in Divisoria in Manila. It makes stops in Angeles, San Fernando and Malolos in Bulacan.
I paid one hundred five pesos as matriculation fee for one whole semester when I entered first year at College of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Sto. Tomas. That was in the sixties and Diosdado Macapagal was President. Our country had the second biggest economy in Asia. At forty pesos a month there was already board and lodging on a well appointed apartment around the so-called university belt in Manila. Me and five other friends stayed on what they called bed space room which was priced at fifty pesos per month. And the six of us shared less than ten pesos for the rent.
Now this is the challenge of the BBM administration. How can they halt the spiraling prices and match it with present day wages. President Bongbong Marcos will have bothersome items in his menu. The West Philipine Sea (WPS) issue. The drug problem. The almost P13Trillion indebtedness and more. We can only wish him the best of luck for the sake of our country.