Cash and Credits: Make My Day - 11 - Enhanced Edition

About the book "Cash and Credits" In this book, the eleventh book of essays culled from Larry Henares' Make My Day columns, we find Larry back to his old habit of making fun of the high and the mighty. His first article written about the incarceration of his friend Jose Concepcion Jr. is a masterpiece of satire, in which Joe is depicted as a surrogate of God, who does not pay his taxes because God does not, who is in the flour business to give us our daily bread, who can, like God, be in two places at the same time because he has a twin named Raul, and who claims that he and his brother have only 2/3 of God's power, because they are only the Dynamic Duo, not the Holy Trinity ("Sayang, we were not born triplets, otherwise... " he regretfully said.). The second essay is even funnier. It's about the quarrelsome Ongpin brothers and the siopao that both wanted and could not eat because each spat on it to keep the other from eating it. This, according to Henares started a sibling rivalry that kept them in a daily boxing match at the back seat of the car bringing them to school, and eventually as they advanced in their careers moved them to ignite the public controversies that led to the fall of Marcos and the derailment of our industrialization program. These and many more: an essay on the two strong men of the Martial Law era, Cesar Virata the Sunshine Boy and Kokoy Romualdez the Midnight Cowboy, and why the latter is a more effective negotiator ("we do not need a goodie-goodie, we need a rascal to deal with rascals on the other side."); and among others an essay on the origin of money and the national economy, which is considered by many people as the definitive work explaining the financial and economic world we live in. Enjoy and be welcomed into the company of an educated man. --------------------- FOREWORD: About the book Henares, humorist By Daniel "Danby" Henares, son and sportsman My grandmother, Concepcion G. Maramba Henares, had a laugh that sounded like a hop, skip and a jump to the highest note. My grandfather, Hilarion Sr., had a laugh that sounded like two loud explosions followed by a cough. My father, Larry M. Henares Jr., has a laugh that starts from the belly, bounces off the roof of the mouth, and reverberates like a thunderclap throughout the entire house, loud enough to shatter glass. Anyone who has ever known these three would recognize their laughter even inside a darkened and crowded movie-house. Director Bibot Amador of Repertory Philippines never fails to give my father a complimentary ticket, because when he is in the theater, the audience perks up and become alive. He and his parents are also inveterate cry babies, shedding tears copiously and unashamedly throughout dramatic tear-jerker plays and movies. But their most well-known trait is their sense of humor. My father, Larry Henares, is a practical joker, a gentle humorist with a penchant for telling funny stories and for using his incisive humor to insult and make fun of himself and others. He can tell a good story: "During the Liberation, I was assigned by my fraternity to clean the quarters of the Women Auxiliary Corps, billeted in the Nurses Home, beside the ruins of old UP on Padre Faura Street where the US Army was camped. One day I was asked by a WAC lieutenant to accompany her to the Army kitchen, to make sure the WACs got the right food. To our consternation, we saw the Army cook stripped down to the waist, a black man sweating mud and kneading dough. He got a little bit of the dough, flattened it against his stomach and placed it in a pan; and did this several times. His navel protruded and made an imprint on the dough. He placed a raisins into this impression, pushed the pan into the oven and baked cookies out of them. 'Terrible!' exclaimed the WAC lieutenant, 'Don't you think this is simply terrible?' And the Army cook answered, 'Terrible? You should see the way I make the doughnuts!' and then (MORE INSIDE