The Church Carnival

Every fall in October, St. Matthew’s Catholic Church throws its annual parish carnival to kickoff the school year. The local streets are closed down and the church and elementary school parking lots are converted into a makeshift neighborhood theme park complete with carnival rides and food vendors. In the main lot are the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, and every carnival game you would find in your local children’s arcade. There’s a even a dunk tank where carnival goers line up for the chance to see Father Andrew, the parish pastor, and some of their favorite elementary school teachers plunge into an icy tub of water. In the smaller adjacent lot, the parents of the school children, most of whom are Filipino and Latino, have set up booths to showcase some of the traditional dishes and delicacies of their home countries. One of the booths is selling Philippine-style pancit noodles and chicken adobo, while the stand next to it has prepared several giant pots of pozole as well as carne asada tacos. Of course, no carnival could be complete without hot dogs, hamburgers, and funnel cake, all of which are being prepared on the spot at the stand selling “American Food,” as a large sign so prominently displays. Looking around, it seems that most of the attendees are members of the parish, but the event also draws families from the local community and surrounding neighborhoods. When I first walked in, I ran into the little brother of an old childhood friend, who said that the St. Andrew’s carnival has functioned as an annual reunion for him and his elementary school classmates the past ten years. Some of them have even come as far as San Diego just to be here.

            Early Saturday afternoon of the carnival, I met up with Antonio, a Mexican American who was born in the United States, but grew up most of his young life in a small rural town in Michoacan. Promising him his first taste of authentic Filipino cuisine, Antonio agreed to meet up me that Saturday all the way from his home in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley. His neighborhood being predominantly Latino, Antonio expressed his initial angst about going to the carnival since he had never really been to Northeast LA. However, once he got there, the familiarity of the scene calmed his nerves a bit. “There are lots of Filipinos here, but this reminds me of your typical Latino carnival in Pacoima.” Admittedly relieved by his relief, I told Antonio to make himself at home. I gave him some tickets to trade in for some of that authentic Filipino food and waited for him by a set of benches near the parish recreation room where a silent auction and bingo were going on. After about twenty minutes, Antonio had not come back with any food. I became slightly worried that Antonio had gotten lost, but upon scanning the crowds a bit, I found him engaged in friendly conversation with an older Filipino man by the Ferris wheel. A few moments after I spotted Antonio and his new Filipino buddy, a Latina woman in her forties walked over and joined them. From my angle, they all seemed to be having a pretty extended discussion about these two cactus-like stems that Antonio was holding in his right hand.

            “They have pitayas here!” Antonio shared excitedly as he walked back to me. “Dragonfruit, in English, “ he clarified.

            “Is that what y’all were talking about over there?”

            “Yeah. I saw a Latino guy over there carrying the leaves and I asked him if they were pitayas. I assumed he was selling them,” Antonio said laughingly, catching himself making a stereotype about his own people. “Then the Filipino guy overheard us and said, ‘Yeah, they are pitayas.’ He pointed to a white guy around the corner who was selling them. The white guy saw me and the Filipino guy eyeing him, approached us, and sold me some. Then some Mexican woman came up to me and asked me if I was selling them. I told her no, and she walked away.”

            “But then she came back to you guys again? Was that the same lady?”

            “Yeah. She started telling me how much she loves pitayas, and that she has one in her yard but it has no fruit. She told me she had been waiting for them to bloom. Richard, the Filipino guy, jumped in and told her that she had to grow them about fifteen inches apart so that they can grow fruit. In my mind, I was like, ‘How does this guy know what pitayas were. I thought only Latinos ate them.’ When I asked him how he knew how pitayas were grown, he said that they grow them in the Philippines. He said to me that five-star hotels there serve them in their fruit cocktails.”

            “Are those nopales?” An elderly Filipina immigrant woman interrupted us, referring to the stems in Antonio’s hand. Antonio, looking a little confused at the Filipina woman’s seamless use of the Spanish term for cactus, replied that they were not. Slightly disappointed, the woman hiked up her long dress about an inch or two and showed us her swollen ankles. “Oh, kasi [because] nopales are good for uric acid,” she said, pointing out to us her recent flare-up of gout, “I’m gonna go get some pozole.” She smiled goodbye and walked away.

            “How does she know that?” Antonio asked, somewhat puzzled, “That’s something my mom or my grandma would say! Maybe she heard it from one of the Latina ladies.” He seemed pretty content with his hypothesis.

I shrugged my shoulders. Even I had never heard of such a home remedy.

After spending a couple of hours at the carnival, Antonio and I were stuffed from making our second round with the food vendors and a few dollars short from trying our luck with some of the carnival games. Before we said our goodbyes, I asked Antonio whether he had a good time.

“You know, at first, I felt like an outsider because I’m not from the church or the neighborhood. But at the same time, I felt like I was in a familiar place because of the setting, the food, the people. The majority was Filipino, but there were pitayas, pozole. They were selling guavas. At some point, I saw people whose ethnic background was questionable. I wasn’t sure if they were Latinos or Filipinos.”