I can't remember where I first heard that aloha-like yell.
My memory fingers a childhood favorite book: Amigo. The story of a circus palomino. I do recall the book teaching me the appropriate funeral rites for a dead parakeet.
But that universal carny call for assistance popped into my head Monday afternoon.
I noticed a carnival was setting up in the vacant lot behind the local school. Not one of your fancy Brazilian carnivals, mind you, with over-decorated floats and under-dressed women.
This was the type of carnival I remembered as a boy. The type of operation that would show up at the county fair.
Bottles to knock over with a baseball. Ring toss. Coin toss. Almost any way imaginable to toss pesos from rubes to carnies.
And the rides. All the way from tykes imagining they were motorcycle thugs to teens proving to their mates and girlfriends that macho is not merely a myth.
Up north we still have similar rides -- or vestiges of the same rides after they have been re-engineered in the hopes to limit trial lawyers to BMWs rather than Maseratis.
Not so in Mexico. The rides here are still fun because they feel dangerous. I saw one ride operator use a hammer to open the safety release bar. The entrapped teens simply laughed.
When I stumbled onto the carnival on Monday afternoon. they were still setting up. I was a bit surprised to see this island of frivolity in the midst of Lent in a small Catholic village.
I asked one of the workers why they were there -- in my north-of-the-border journalist quest for facts.
He looked at me quizzically, and responded: "We are here because we are here." A Zen master could not have summed it all up better.
I later discovered the carnival is in town to help us celebrate the birthday of San Patricio's patron saint -- Saint Patrick. And the festivities started on Tuesday night.
But that will be a post for tomorrow -- taking a peek at how saints are celebrated in my small fishing village by the sea.
Until then, I will leave you with this photograph:
My memory fingers a childhood favorite book: Amigo. The story of a circus palomino. I do recall the book teaching me the appropriate funeral rites for a dead parakeet.
But that universal carny call for assistance popped into my head Monday afternoon.
I noticed a carnival was setting up in the vacant lot behind the local school. Not one of your fancy Brazilian carnivals, mind you, with over-decorated floats and under-dressed women.
This was the type of carnival I remembered as a boy. The type of operation that would show up at the county fair.
Bottles to knock over with a baseball. Ring toss. Coin toss. Almost any way imaginable to toss pesos from rubes to carnies.
And the rides. All the way from tykes imagining they were motorcycle thugs to teens proving to their mates and girlfriends that macho is not merely a myth.
Up north we still have similar rides -- or vestiges of the same rides after they have been re-engineered in the hopes to limit trial lawyers to BMWs rather than Maseratis.
Not so in Mexico. The rides here are still fun because they feel dangerous. I saw one ride operator use a hammer to open the safety release bar. The entrapped teens simply laughed.
When I stumbled onto the carnival on Monday afternoon. they were still setting up. I was a bit surprised to see this island of frivolity in the midst of Lent in a small Catholic village.
I asked one of the workers why they were there -- in my north-of-the-border journalist quest for facts.
He looked at me quizzically, and responded: "We are here because we are here." A Zen master could not have summed it all up better.
I later discovered the carnival is in town to help us celebrate the birthday of San Patricio's patron saint -- Saint Patrick. And the festivities started on Tuesday night.
But that will be a post for tomorrow -- taking a peek at how saints are celebrated in my small fishing village by the sea.
Until then, I will leave you with this photograph:
