Chapter 6: A Fun Fun Story
So a few weeks later the girls in my classes are talking about a carnival that apparently is set up in San Felipe’s “Centro.” I didn’t know that a town with like 4000 people could even have a downtown, but they explained to me that pretty much every town, city and village in Mexico has a city center where the old Catholic church is located. Usually there is a little park and shops surrounding it too.
I didn’t quite gather what was going on, but I gathered that they had at least one car loaned to them and that I was invited. And apparently there was going to be “a huge fireworks display,” as far as I could figure out, at least from what their hand motions and sound effects described.
We arrive into town that night, the borrowed van full of friends, and descend upon the tiny town square packed with people. Lights, sounds, smells, it’s quite the scene. A lot of carnival rides. The first ride we encounter is the classic “spin till you puke” ride where you side in the seat and it goes up and down and rotates round and round on a flat platform. It looks like it was used in the US, broke down, and was sent to Mexico, “Land of No Laws” (nor lawsuits, apparently). It is making some horrible noises, being spun around on tires that are low and are having a hard time operating. No one seems to notice but me.
As I am giving Kike a push past the kiddie rides, I almost get drilled by one of the little cars going around on the tracks. There is absolutely no fence nor guard rail nor people nor anything for that matter separating me from jumping on the ride, or getting hit. And to make matters sweeter, people are crowding through pushing me in front of the oncoming kiddie train.
We make it through past the kiddie rides, and move our way towards the SkyTram or whatever it’s called, the standard “big ride” of every carnival. I check it out, and after it runs twice without killing anyone, I decide I can probably survive a go, even though it’s a debatable decision to get on the biggest ride first. Leti Alcalde – wheelchair Leti from the hacienda – tells me she has purchased me a ticket, and laughs hysterically. I, smiling, pick her out of her wheelchair and carry her up the stairs and towards the seats where we all are going to sit. It was a good thing there was no “you have to be so tall to get on this ride” signs because I don’t know how I would have held her up vertically next to the sign. It would have been awkward. Everyone is on a large bench together, like 25 of us or so in a row with a shoulder bar over each person. We sit there a minute before the ride starts which simply takes you really high into the air and drops you, rotating in a circle left to right and then vise versa. I was in the last seat on the very end, and upon being lifted up and reaching the top could see the whole fair below me. We then dropped to the right, and after a few spins around, I was quite certain the squeaking wheel we were on was due to snap off and roll down the main street that lay to my right. I thought about it mathematically and wondered how many times it had gone around already without having been greased since arriving here, and how many more it would last before breaking off. I assumed it was due, and that I am due anyway for something bad to happen (Another of my biggest fears is that somehow I am “due.” A feeling I have after nothing bad has happened for a long time. It’s a bizarre complex I have that continues to haunt me. I have never seen anything terrible in real life. I have never been punched nor physically assaulted nor anything like that, nor have I ever known anyone really close to me that has died, not at least since my great-grandmother died when I was 12. I fell backwards over a bike and pulled my leg across the gears, leaving me with 16 stitches, but that is the only real pain I have felt, and that was like eight or ten years ago. So it just feels like it’s a matter of time until something bad happens. Oh, and the saying “bad things come in threes” just makes my fears three times worse). Which wasn’t really a bad death, I figured, because I’ve lived a long full life. But since that was just a joke and not really how I felt, with no on around to tell it to I decided that I would actually rather continue living, and thus started to pray. It was kind of fun though because it was like when you were a little kid and went on rides and thought there was actually a chance that you could die and that was half the thrill. It was like that.
Now, if this wasn’t enough, I had noticed prior to getting on the ride that there were like 15 large wooden towers loaded with fireworks located about 50 yards away from my ride that were starting to be lit. That, I was to understand, was the “fireworks display.” I didn’t really pay attention to them until they lit a tower on fire, it started up, and one huge firework flew our way, exploded, and I literally had to duck to avoid a red ball of fire headed straight for my cabeza. About this I am not joking. Technically they were going everywhere, including right into the crowd, which concerned me but honestly the one headed right for me worried me much more. The ride lasted like 12 or 13 loops, which is a lot more than 4 or 5 you get in the US, and finally started to slow down. We got off and I checked to make sure all my body parts were still firmly attached. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought about kissing the ground until the girls said they wanted to again. I asked them if they had heard about people dying on these rides. I think I was the only one who had felt the cold breath of the reaper (or “Santa Muerte” I guess I should say, as long as I am in Mexico). I also think they thought I was joking.
The rest of the evening and night was not as nearly as scary, as I proceeded to stay off the Wheel o’ Gruesome-Unholy-Rolling-Down-Main-Street Death, as well as the Decapitation Coaster and the Insanity Unsanitary House.
I did spend a good amount of time dispatching Mexicans at foosball, only to have my arrogance repaid with a game of “soak the Gringo in shaving cream” which I was hopelessly outnumbered in, but was a good sport about. Good times had by all and my desire to boot small children carrying shaving cream cans was held under control.
Kike had a friend who was selling ceramics there at the fair. A good majority of the fair is small shops set out in the streets. Most of the streets are closed down, leaving just one letting traffic move in and out of the town. I noticed that people definitely live on streets that were closed off. I don’t know how they survive the week of the fair, but it must be not fun. Or maybe awesome fun all week long. They do get a good view from their balconies. While Kike chatted with his friend Pablo, I walked around with Lolita, Chelo, and Angeles looking at clothes, jewelry, cowboy attire, posters, pots and pans and dishes, tropical birds in cages, until we got to an open space where there were huge stacks of blankets. Plastic bags filled with maybe two or three blankets and two or three pillows each were stacked all over the place, and a man with a microphone perched on top. There was a pretty good crowd around, so we looked on. The man would tell one of his three helpers to grab a bag of blankets and pillows, and then he would auction them off, starting at 350 pesos and moving down. If someone really wanted one, they would buy it more expensive so someone else wouldn’t get it. Otherwise, mostly people waited until they fell to 200 and bought them. Then the three helpers would heave the bag to the winner. It was quite a frantic scene. The auctioneer would only drop below 200 like once every 20 bags. If no one got it at 200, most were thrown back onto the heap and another was chosen.
It looked like fun, so I looked for a bag that looked good and got my 200 pesos out and waited. I turned to Lolita and showed her the bag I wanted. About ten minutes later they finally got to it and started to auction it off. The auctioneer started off at 300 when I suddenly for no real reason yelled out “200!” and waved my 200 in the air. I have no idea why I did this except maybe because I didn’t want anyone else to get it for more. The girls with me started cracking up. The auctioneer stopped and looked at me. He was clearly a showman, so he was going to make fun of me at least a little. “Oh! American!” he said in Spanish. “No one is going to outbid you! Hey, give it to him. Don’t let anyone else have it.” Everyone was laughing but I got my bag and gave him the 200. I was laughing too. A lot of people started coming over to see the commotion. I can’t imagine they are packed with people every night, but I certainly helped their sales right then. I stuck around there for a while, just to watch. Sometimes the auctioneer would yell at me to hold up my blankets and would yell “the American won’t outbid you! Come on people! He already has his! Now who wants one?”
And there was a lot of crazy food that I got to try that was really tasty. I can’t describe it, other than it involved normal food with more sugar. That’s a lie, I can explain it: there was ears of corn on sticks, soaked in mayonnaise, covered in powdered cheese, and then sprinkled with chile powder. There were stands with friend bananas and pancakes, both covered in cream and jam, sprinkles, and peach halves. There was “festival bread” which is just round cakes of semi-sweet bread, some sort of bread, like… I don’t know… like something I can’t think of. And there were whole shops dedicated to candy. But candy like I have never seen. Lime peels filled with coconut, jars of creamy homemade caramel, blocks of different colored sweets that I guess were dried fruit, sugar and gelatin,
Yes, we did continue to dodge fireworks for the rest of the night, that is true. Like I said, they had towers of fireworks that would be lit from the bottom explode into light and flame. The crowds were not monitored at all, so they pushed all the way up to literally touching the wooden towers. I was maybe a few dozen yards back, and I got sprayed with sparks a good handful of times. Oh, they had these great inventions, which were basically metal framed rings of fireworks that were put onto the end of poles and lit. They would spin incredibly fast and then released shot up into the night sky. You could see them fly up into the sky, but when the fireworks finished burning out, the nearly invisible metal rings would plummet back down onto the crowd. They probably weighed about ten to twenty pounds, just from observing the force of them hitting the pavement. People would watch them and then scream as they came back down, everyone laughing as people dived left and right to avoid them. Dude.
You probably have heard about Mexican fairs where fireworks are exploding around you and you are covering your head trying to avoid them. Well, much like this story, those stories are mostly true.
I didn’t quite gather what was going on, but I gathered that they had at least one car loaned to them and that I was invited. And apparently there was going to be “a huge fireworks display,” as far as I could figure out, at least from what their hand motions and sound effects described.
We arrive into town that night, the borrowed van full of friends, and descend upon the tiny town square packed with people. Lights, sounds, smells, it’s quite the scene. A lot of carnival rides. The first ride we encounter is the classic “spin till you puke” ride where you side in the seat and it goes up and down and rotates round and round on a flat platform. It looks like it was used in the US, broke down, and was sent to Mexico, “Land of No Laws” (nor lawsuits, apparently). It is making some horrible noises, being spun around on tires that are low and are having a hard time operating. No one seems to notice but me.
As I am giving Kike a push past the kiddie rides, I almost get drilled by one of the little cars going around on the tracks. There is absolutely no fence nor guard rail nor people nor anything for that matter separating me from jumping on the ride, or getting hit. And to make matters sweeter, people are crowding through pushing me in front of the oncoming kiddie train.
We make it through past the kiddie rides, and move our way towards the SkyTram or whatever it’s called, the standard “big ride” of every carnival. I check it out, and after it runs twice without killing anyone, I decide I can probably survive a go, even though it’s a debatable decision to get on the biggest ride first. Leti Alcalde – wheelchair Leti from the hacienda – tells me she has purchased me a ticket, and laughs hysterically. I, smiling, pick her out of her wheelchair and carry her up the stairs and towards the seats where we all are going to sit. It was a good thing there was no “you have to be so tall to get on this ride” signs because I don’t know how I would have held her up vertically next to the sign. It would have been awkward. Everyone is on a large bench together, like 25 of us or so in a row with a shoulder bar over each person. We sit there a minute before the ride starts which simply takes you really high into the air and drops you, rotating in a circle left to right and then vise versa. I was in the last seat on the very end, and upon being lifted up and reaching the top could see the whole fair below me. We then dropped to the right, and after a few spins around, I was quite certain the squeaking wheel we were on was due to snap off and roll down the main street that lay to my right. I thought about it mathematically and wondered how many times it had gone around already without having been greased since arriving here, and how many more it would last before breaking off. I assumed it was due, and that I am due anyway for something bad to happen (Another of my biggest fears is that somehow I am “due.” A feeling I have after nothing bad has happened for a long time. It’s a bizarre complex I have that continues to haunt me. I have never seen anything terrible in real life. I have never been punched nor physically assaulted nor anything like that, nor have I ever known anyone really close to me that has died, not at least since my great-grandmother died when I was 12. I fell backwards over a bike and pulled my leg across the gears, leaving me with 16 stitches, but that is the only real pain I have felt, and that was like eight or ten years ago. So it just feels like it’s a matter of time until something bad happens. Oh, and the saying “bad things come in threes” just makes my fears three times worse). Which wasn’t really a bad death, I figured, because I’ve lived a long full life. But since that was just a joke and not really how I felt, with no on around to tell it to I decided that I would actually rather continue living, and thus started to pray. It was kind of fun though because it was like when you were a little kid and went on rides and thought there was actually a chance that you could die and that was half the thrill. It was like that.
Now, if this wasn’t enough, I had noticed prior to getting on the ride that there were like 15 large wooden towers loaded with fireworks located about 50 yards away from my ride that were starting to be lit. That, I was to understand, was the “fireworks display.” I didn’t really pay attention to them until they lit a tower on fire, it started up, and one huge firework flew our way, exploded, and I literally had to duck to avoid a red ball of fire headed straight for my cabeza. About this I am not joking. Technically they were going everywhere, including right into the crowd, which concerned me but honestly the one headed right for me worried me much more. The ride lasted like 12 or 13 loops, which is a lot more than 4 or 5 you get in the US, and finally started to slow down. We got off and I checked to make sure all my body parts were still firmly attached. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought about kissing the ground until the girls said they wanted to again. I asked them if they had heard about people dying on these rides. I think I was the only one who had felt the cold breath of the reaper (or “Santa Muerte” I guess I should say, as long as I am in Mexico). I also think they thought I was joking.
The rest of the evening and night was not as nearly as scary, as I proceeded to stay off the Wheel o’ Gruesome-Unholy-Rolling-Down-Main-Street Death, as well as the Decapitation Coaster and the Insanity Unsanitary House.
I did spend a good amount of time dispatching Mexicans at foosball, only to have my arrogance repaid with a game of “soak the Gringo in shaving cream” which I was hopelessly outnumbered in, but was a good sport about. Good times had by all and my desire to boot small children carrying shaving cream cans was held under control.
Kike had a friend who was selling ceramics there at the fair. A good majority of the fair is small shops set out in the streets. Most of the streets are closed down, leaving just one letting traffic move in and out of the town. I noticed that people definitely live on streets that were closed off. I don’t know how they survive the week of the fair, but it must be not fun. Or maybe awesome fun all week long. They do get a good view from their balconies. While Kike chatted with his friend Pablo, I walked around with Lolita, Chelo, and Angeles looking at clothes, jewelry, cowboy attire, posters, pots and pans and dishes, tropical birds in cages, until we got to an open space where there were huge stacks of blankets. Plastic bags filled with maybe two or three blankets and two or three pillows each were stacked all over the place, and a man with a microphone perched on top. There was a pretty good crowd around, so we looked on. The man would tell one of his three helpers to grab a bag of blankets and pillows, and then he would auction them off, starting at 350 pesos and moving down. If someone really wanted one, they would buy it more expensive so someone else wouldn’t get it. Otherwise, mostly people waited until they fell to 200 and bought them. Then the three helpers would heave the bag to the winner. It was quite a frantic scene. The auctioneer would only drop below 200 like once every 20 bags. If no one got it at 200, most were thrown back onto the heap and another was chosen.
It looked like fun, so I looked for a bag that looked good and got my 200 pesos out and waited. I turned to Lolita and showed her the bag I wanted. About ten minutes later they finally got to it and started to auction it off. The auctioneer started off at 300 when I suddenly for no real reason yelled out “200!” and waved my 200 in the air. I have no idea why I did this except maybe because I didn’t want anyone else to get it for more. The girls with me started cracking up. The auctioneer stopped and looked at me. He was clearly a showman, so he was going to make fun of me at least a little. “Oh! American!” he said in Spanish. “No one is going to outbid you! Hey, give it to him. Don’t let anyone else have it.” Everyone was laughing but I got my bag and gave him the 200. I was laughing too. A lot of people started coming over to see the commotion. I can’t imagine they are packed with people every night, but I certainly helped their sales right then. I stuck around there for a while, just to watch. Sometimes the auctioneer would yell at me to hold up my blankets and would yell “the American won’t outbid you! Come on people! He already has his! Now who wants one?”
And there was a lot of crazy food that I got to try that was really tasty. I can’t describe it, other than it involved normal food with more sugar. That’s a lie, I can explain it: there was ears of corn on sticks, soaked in mayonnaise, covered in powdered cheese, and then sprinkled with chile powder. There were stands with friend bananas and pancakes, both covered in cream and jam, sprinkles, and peach halves. There was “festival bread” which is just round cakes of semi-sweet bread, some sort of bread, like… I don’t know… like something I can’t think of. And there were whole shops dedicated to candy. But candy like I have never seen. Lime peels filled with coconut, jars of creamy homemade caramel, blocks of different colored sweets that I guess were dried fruit, sugar and gelatin,
Yes, we did continue to dodge fireworks for the rest of the night, that is true. Like I said, they had towers of fireworks that would be lit from the bottom explode into light and flame. The crowds were not monitored at all, so they pushed all the way up to literally touching the wooden towers. I was maybe a few dozen yards back, and I got sprayed with sparks a good handful of times. Oh, they had these great inventions, which were basically metal framed rings of fireworks that were put onto the end of poles and lit. They would spin incredibly fast and then released shot up into the night sky. You could see them fly up into the sky, but when the fireworks finished burning out, the nearly invisible metal rings would plummet back down onto the crowd. They probably weighed about ten to twenty pounds, just from observing the force of them hitting the pavement. People would watch them and then scream as they came back down, everyone laughing as people dived left and right to avoid them. Dude.
You probably have heard about Mexican fairs where fireworks are exploding around you and you are covering your head trying to avoid them. Well, much like this story, those stories are mostly true.
posted by Patrick McEvoy at 12:49 PM
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