RIP Peque Gallaga — Bacolod Days

Fol­low­ing the pass­ing of the film­mak­er Peque Gal­la­ga, my friend Gee Vee S sent me some pic­tures tak­en in Bacolod in the late 1960s, at the Gal­la­ga home. My sis­ter and I had spent an unfor­get­table sum­mer with the Gal­la­gas in their home. Tita Con­chi­ta and Tito Ric, the Gal­la­ga kids (Peque, Chi­ta, Ricky, Mike) were very wel­com­ing not just to us but to all the local kids who hung around their home from morn­ing until night. I recall we had canas­ta games with Tita Con­chi­ta, and Peque and Chi­ta orga­nized all sorts of activ­i­ties and games, most of them very cre­ative and dif­fer­ent.

One game stands out in my mem­o­ry: a “mind con­cen­tra­tion” game where the teenage kids gath­ered around one of us and with just one fin­ger (all of us though) we con­cen­trat­ed to lift up the per­son from the ground. There were hide and seek games, some dozen kids scam­per­ing through­out their house. Peque and Chi­ta had a sum­mer the­ater pro­gram for the Bacolod kids and we vis­it­ing Cebuanos enjoyed observ­ing how that pro­gressed. We vis­it­ed fab­u­lous hacien­das too, which looked like those fea­tured in Peque’s famous movie, ORO, PLATA, MATA.
The movie, by the way, is offered by Ama­zon so you can watch and enjoy it still even though Peque has left us and those Bacolod are now just mem­o­ries. Enjoy the pic­tures, and thank you GV and Chi­ta for the pic­tures

 

Tags: #peque­gal­la­ga #Bacolod #Philip­pines #teenagers #sum­mer­hol­i­day