Knocking on Katoks’ Door

FIRST, thank you for the honor to stand before you here today.

Second, my apologies for my inability to write and share with you something most appropriate for this occasion, age already beclouding memory, plus the invitation passed on to me only last Tuesday.

Under these circumstances, I deemed it best to dig through my files and so fortunate to cobble one good piece for today’s celebration out of two very short essays in the chapter, fittingly titled ““Knocking on Katoks’ Door,” in my book Of the Press published in 1999. 

The first: On Katoks’ Recollections, first published in long defunct local newspaper in 1985.  

Tatang 

Katoks is a chronicler, a historian. His stories are straightforward and therefore easily comprehensible. His style reveals the innate journalist in him. He writes to express and be understood. Never to be impressive.

He shows no air of civilized hypocrisy, of pretensions to intellectualism. As he himself said in one of his pieces in the book, he would rather that high school students understood him well than cater to the elite literati levels. It is perhaps this conscious attempt at understanding, so paramount in his writings, that endeared him as an author through the gamut of social brackets.

His accounts of his various travels can be likened to the brush strokes of a Chinese landscape painter. They are the direct antithesis to the gee-whizz, instamatic blur – in today’s lingo, selfie shot – of the usual travelogues. Picturesque makes an anemic term to describe his stories of his travels as he delved into the ethos of the people he met and the places he visited.

When he wants to be amusing, Tatang Katoks does it with finesse – a reflection of the old buena familia breeding – but nonetheless evokes a chuckle if not a full laugh from the reader. Farting is such sweet sorrow is one story that I shall most certainly re-read whenever I needed a lift. The story has the same efficacy as Aspirin over a throbbing head.

But what strikes me most among his essays is The Vanishing Kapampangan Nation. For one, Tatang Katoks righted a long-held historical wrong impacted upon the people of Macabebe since the capture of Aguinaldo by American forces in the hinterlands of Palanan. Tatang Katos piece is Macabebe’s definitive vindication.

The Vanishing Kapampangan Nation also tugs at the very heart of every Kapampangan reader. It renews the swell of pride for his culture, for his very race, dignifiedly distinct from any other. It likewise awakens him to the reality of its dying.

Was I ashamed to realize that I myself did contribute much to the waning of the Kapampangan culture in so many ways. I talk to my children in English and Tagalog. I cannot write in my own Kapampangan language. I do not read Kapampangan books and periodicals. Not even prayer books. 

If only for that realization, I already elevate Recollections and Digressions to my personal pantheon of great books. And Tatang Katoks to my choicest authors.

Now comes, my second piece: Back to Katok’s Sinners published in the now-defunct  The Angeles Sun in 1988. 

Reading Katok’s Tayag’s twin volume The Angeles Story and The Sinners of Angeles roused multiple emotions in me, ranging from utter disappointment and disbelief, to delirium and déjà vu.

Normally, I grapple intellectually with the author of any book I read. With Tatang Katoks however, I readily submitted to his every word. Having had the chance of a personal think-feel interaction for at least three times with the man when he was still around. Now I feel empty and sorry for not having had the greater opportunity of more conversations with him.

So many years ago after they were published, the concise tomes are as timely as now. One gets the feeling that one reads contemporary news when one reads the books.

The demands for a cleaner market; proper garbage disposal; strict enforcement of sanitary, criminal and traffic laws; elimination of gambling, prostitution, and other vices; honesty in government; and public works improvements are all as real today as when the same were asked by the 1953 Angeles Jaycees of then Mayor Apung Maneng Abad Santos, referred to now as the better of the Abad Santos mayors of the city.

Past and present parallelisms of politics in Angeles cover also newspapers and mediamen. Tatang Katoks’ exposés found print in Don Tomas San Pedro’s Luzon Courier. Current exposés of irregularities germinate from the pages of local papers then as now, and of course, in social media too. Proof positive once more that mediapersons make a community’s conscience, of which Tatang Kakots is pre-eminent.

The aforementioned discussion is but a sampling of the back-to-the-future or past-present mix scenarios in the two books. There are a host of others.

The “abduction” of the image of Apung Mamacalulu during the Good Friday procession of 1928 had a direct bearing to the simmering Apo land ownership controversy. (During a talk with Apung Feleng Lazatin, The Sinners of Angeles cropped up when the intercession of the Grand Old Man on the Apu case was sought).

At the start of this piece, I said I felt disappointed upon reading the books. The feeling came when The Sinners of Angeles blasted to smithereens a myth of sainthood for one I put on a pedestal during my formative years at the seminary.  

I have excised that portion of this story now, in deference to good friend Abong, who, after this was first published, requested me to let the past be buried in peace. Suffice it to say now, that Tatang Katok’s account of what he called “the philosophy of self” was an Epiphany for me. Intrigue, who and what that story was all about? Find a copy of The Sinners of Angeles and learn of the only two sins one can commit in the city: first against God, the second against … My mouth shall remain shut, lest I disturb dear Abong in his peaceful rest.   

It is said that the past teaches us lessons to practice in the present so that we will not fail in the future. One pundit even went on to say that – I quote: “there is no present, there is no future, only the past happening over and over.” If only for this, Tatang Katoks’ books should be made required reading for every Angeleno or anyone straying into the city. For a greater knowledge of Angeles’ past and deeper understanding of the Angeleno’s present.

Postscript: My thanks to Abong Tayag for the books. They indeed make up not only a collector’s item but an enriching nourishment to the Kapampangan soul.

Though non-fictionist, Tatang Katoks approximates the works of the great historical novelists like Gore Vidal in Burr and Empire and E.L. Doctorow in Ragtime. He so imbued the reader with the atmosphere of even long gone times that he – the reader – felt and breathed the same air, saw the same sights, and heard the same sounds as the book characters did.

His chronicles about his beloved Base Town, Asia – that is Angeles City for the uninitiated – and his retrospective on Bataan are comparable to Gay Talese’s back-to-my-roots account in his Unto the Sons.

Like Talese, another journalist who made his mark in literature, Tatang Katoks had that critical eye for detail and keen sense for drama that brought the broadest spectrum of color and the full range of emotions to his works. 

This is most evident in his accounts of his China visits (At Home & Abroad). In 1964 at the dawn of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, capturing the rising revolutionary zeal of the young cadres that subsequently served as the vanguard of that upheaval; and in 1982 at the start of Deng Xiao-ping’s revolutionary experimentation of a hitherto damned market economy that ultimately led to China as a key actor in the world economic stage.

­Tatang Katoks’ perfectly summed up the great chasm of a difference in those visits with: “In 1964 we met ideologues and politicians; in 1982 our hosts were bankers and men of finance.”

Prophetic too was Tatang Katoks’ vision of a Pax Americana in Southeast Asia. Notwithstanding the expulsion of the US bases from Subic and Clark in 1992. Rebranded to the now controversial Pax Silica.

In 1990, during my incumbency as PPC president, I established the Renato “Katoks” Tayag Award of Excellence in High School Journalism and the Jose Luna Castro Award of Excellence in College Journalism to propagate the Kapampangan journalistic heritage among the young generation of writers.

At the awarding ceremonies, the honorees’ widows – Adoracion Suarez-Tayag and Rosalinda Icban-Castro were the guests of honor and speakers.

The winner of the first Katoks Tayag Award was The Pampangan, official publication of the Pampanga High School, Tatang Katoks’ alma mater from where he graduated valedictorian in 1933. He also served as editor of The Pampangan.   

A full circle of greatness there, if I may say. Sharing, even but a bit, in Tatang Katoks’ reflected glory, having had my first printed byline in The Pampangan, as a freshman reporter in 1966.  

Truly an honor to be her today, under the shadow of the great Katoks Tayag.

Thank you.        

(Honoring the life, legacy, and enduring contribution of the late Renato “Katoks” D. Tayag on his 111^th birth anniversary, Angeles City Library and Information Center, 9 Oct. 2026)