A Family To Raise

My first post was a baby picture of me from December, 1955.  What followed after that was six more children: two boys and four girls.  Back in the days, that was considered to be a medium-sized family.  It was more common in those days of families with twelve or more children.

How would parents in those days raise those many children?  The parents worked hard.  My father was no different.  On the home front, he raised chickens (and roosters for cockfights), doves, and pigs.  He did various jobs - a policeman, a town councilman, a textile factory security, and a municipal secretary.  He went to Vietnam to work as a power technician in a US Air Force Base at Than Son Nhut.  When he came back, hard-earned money was used to buy a lease on a farm.  He became a farmer and was successful at that.  To this day, we still own the lease to that farm.  He put up a small sari-sari store, bought a jeep with a trailer for rent, a farm tiller for rent, and a tricycle for hire.

He had a strong passion for spearfishing.  With a homemade spear gun and a waterproof flashlight, he, along with friends, would go at night in nearby Manila Bay and hunt fish.  We usually have a feast of seafood (of crabs, lobsters, variety of rock fishes) after a night of good fishing and the rest of the catch would be given or sold to relatives and neighbors.  He thought me how to spearfish when I was old enough and went with him on those warm nights of spearfishing trips.