We moved to our new house in 1964 when I was eight years old. My dad was then posted in Papua New Guinea so it was my mom who had the house built with the help of her brother Onib Olmedo. He was an architect before he became a painter and he designed the house. It was your typical 1960’s style three-bedroom split-level house with a garden. The houses in the neighborhood looked pretty similar in design. It was a new subdivision for growing familes, far out from the old city of Manila.
Coming from Sampaloc in Manila, Kapitolyo seemed such a remote place to move to back then. You could only call us long distance via an operator. There was no school bus service that reached the place. Our dad had to drop us off and pick us up on his way to work. The only places near there that I remember was the municipal capitol building of Rizal outside the subdivision and Cherry Foodarama supermarket farther up on Shaw Boulevard in Mandaluyong.
The families who moved to Kapitolyo were mostly young, growing families like us. It was a fairly quiet neighborhood and we did not have many organized activities. But people knew each other and somehow kept abreast of events in each other’s lives. Different kinds of people lived in our community but our most famous resident would arguably be the TV actress Sylvia LaTorre. We would see her in church on Sundays looking exactly the way she did on television, though I never heard her sing Mr Clean or saw her doing laundry.
The author (in green dress) with her mother and siblings at their house in Barrio Kapitolyo.
On some weekends, we would spend afternoons taking turns on our bike, cycling around Kapitolyo. What I really remember most of my childhood there were the summer school breaks. San Ignacio was a main road leading up to a ravine, the end of the subdivision. A steep drop down leads you to a running stream amid bamboo trees and thick foliage, sort of like a mini-rainforest. We spent almost every day of summer running around down there, playing games or just walking along the stream, sometimes with a carabao bathing nearby. It was a free and easy time then.
It was also a good location for action movies. Once in a while, a movie would be shot there and we would hang around trying to get a glimpse of movie stars. One time, our maid managed to get an autograph of a handsome extra. I was disappointed when I read the slip of paper. No Fernando Poe or Joseph Estrada. It just said Philip Salvador.
The author (second from right) with her father and the rest of the family, in Pasig.
One day, they bulldozed the other side of the ravine, put a bridge across and turned it into a gated section called Phase 8. It became different since then, of course. There was nothing for kids to go to for play anymore. I lived there till I got married in 19XX. We had the house until my mother passed away two years ago. It still is a nice neighborhood. Many of our old friends are still around. But like everything else, it is slowly giving way to progress. So many shops and restaurants have sprouted up. There is more traffic on the streets now and you see so many unfamiliar faces. I guess it is inevitable. Would I still live there? I think I prefer having my memories of days before.
The house on Ignacio Street, as it looks now.
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