My First Love

This was my first true love affair, my first real obsession; and I have my dear father to thank for introducing me to this one particular love. It was a relationship that lasted years; one that was both pure and complex. It was pure for its innocence, its honesty, and for the constant and reliable companionship it provided. But the relationship was also complex because it was also marred by abuse, heartache, and loss. With this, I'm referring to my childhood love affair with Matchbox® toy cars.

Matchbox came to my life courtesy of my dear father. It was the late sixties and my father was then working in the Santa Cruz district of Manila. Through his job, he became very good friends with a Chinese businessman who ran a bazaar (a term widely used for small department stores at the time) over at the neighboring district of Quiapo. So there were many an evening when before heading home from work that my father would stop by his friend's store to buy a few of those toy cars for me.

It was love at first sight. Those shiny little cars came smartly wrapped in their trademark yellow and blue boxes. Their appeal to kids like me was their smart and accurate reproduction of actual cars. I found it so cool to hold in my little hands miniature versions of the Ford, Mercedes Benz, Pontiac, and Dodge cars and trucks that were popular at the time.

The following were some of the cars I had in my "garage":

Ford Kennel Truck

Lincoln Continental

Rolls Royce Silver Shadow
(All photos were from the Christian Falkensteiner Collection.)

I eventually ended up with a few dozen of these toy cars. With them, I let my imagination run free. I recreated the traffic jams and car accidents I saw on Manila’s streets right on our living room floor. To recreate off-road driving conditions, I played with them in the garden when it was sunny and on an unmade bed or on the sofa when it was raining. Creases on bed sheets were imagined to be either potholes or caution humps/speed bumps on the road. Recreating the flooded streets of Manila was not a problem for I quickly found sections on our driveway where water tended to accumulate after a rain or car washing. Rainy driving conditions were recreated using my mother’s watering can. I raced those cars too and even named a supposedly annual grand prix after my hometown.

I had a lot of happy and fun moments with those cars. With their help, I was able to assume a variety of roles such as a policeman, a fireman, a garbage collector, a bus driver, and possibly the worst mechanic in the world. In turn, and in their collective silence, they always knew when I was happy and when I was down. They were silent witnesses to the many tears I shed but hid from family and friends. There were even moments when they knew and felt my anger and frustrations. At any given moment, they knew how I truly saw the people and things around me. From them, I kept no secrets.

My father’s retired now. His Chinese friend has long since passed away; the bazaar he ran is now but a memory. But those toy cars that kept me company through all those otherwise lonely moments are still around, safely tucked away in a shoebox in our old family home in Manila. Like my father, they are retired too. Their playing days are over. They bear the scars, bruises, and damage from all the times we shared. Even though they're no longer as pretty and smart-looking as they did on the day I first set eyes on them, they remain very dear and special to me.

For now, they will remain in a shoebox until that day when I fly back to Manila to finally take them home with me.