maria CASTILLANO's story

As a little girl, I was fortunate to experience some unique activities: from attending professional wrestling matches to performing Filipino folk dancing with my brother Mike at special local city events like the annual Seattle Seafair Celebration and Pier Fishing on Elliot Bay. My godfather, Herman Pulanco, brought me to the wrestling matches and introduced me to fishing on the waterfront piers. We didn’t use traditional rods and reels, but fishing line coiled around Carnation condensed milk cans. The method of fishing was actually called "jigging," where the fishing line was uncoiled from the Carnation cans and dropped through the knotholes on the wooden piers. The line had many small hooks attached on alternate sides. Then the line would be "jigged" (i.e., shaken up and down) to attract the target fish, "shiners."



After a morning of jigging, Uncle Emong (as our family called him) would wrap our catch in newspaper and head for a movie at a nearby theater. As the film progressed, so did the strong smell of the shiners. I’m pretty certain that movie goers seated close to us were wondering what the offensive odor was that they were being subjected to!