My car was only a few months away from being paid off. Then, while I was at home lying in bed feeling ill, someone driving past blasted into the rear wheel, damaging the axle beyond repair. Yes, it murdered his car. But because of the limits of coverage, my parked car is now dead also. I am doing the paperwork today to have it interred. And I notice, of course, that the paperwork says at the bottom, “State law makes falsifying information on this application a third-degree felony.” Oh, good. If I get any of the answers wrong, I go to prison. And worse, they could deny my claim and pay me nothing for the car. Why am I worried? Because when I asked the insurance company for help with verifying the information, they gave me a license plate number that doesn’t match the way my imperfect memory remembers it. If I put down the information they gave me, will they throw me in prison? I made him repeat it twice and verified that it was right according to their records. So, my memory could be faulty. But that won’t matter when the judge decides the death penalty for my error. Am I using hyperbole here for comic effect? Yes. But I live in Texas. I am going to worry anyway.
I am about to lay on you a story full of humor, lies, and distortion… but I wanted to warn you first. This is real-life story about someone near and dear to my heart. You can laugh all you want… but please don’t think ill of Mother Mendocino.
She was a Science Teacher. Appropriately enough she taught seventh grade Life Science. And she taught students about life and love in ways that no other teacher was ever able to do.
I met Endira Mendocino the very first year I taught in the little South Texas town of Cotulla. They hired me to teach eighth grade English. And from the first time I saw her until the very last time twenty years later, she always looked exactly the same, like a plump little Wish-nik Troll Doll with frizzy hair. The picture I drew from memory clearly looks more like Al Franken, the Senator from Minnesota than it really looks like her To draw her accurately from a photo would be more like an insult than a portrait.
Her great beauty was entirely on the inside. And I, of course, am not the only person who was ever made privy to this wonderful secret. She was a teacher who cared passionately about kids. She had been a Catholic nun before she became a teacher. And she brought the Bible teaching of the rod of discipline to her students. But not the rod of whacking. She was not one of those Catholic school nuns who whacked your knuckles with a wooden ruler for every perceived sin. Rather, she used the rod of discipline as it was meant to be used by the Bible writers who wrote about it. The rod was used to sight along straight lines for laying brick building foundations. It was used as a line of sight for making paths straight, not for whacking feet at every misstep. And this is how she taught students. She modeled good behaviors for them, how to speak respectfully to your elders, how to meet anger with calm and reason, how to think through a problem and sort out solutions to find the best one. She did as a matter of course on a daily basis things it took me years of trial and error to figure out how to do in a classroom.
Kids would do anything she ever asked of them. And they didn’t do it out of fear. Oh, she did embarrass them frequently. If a boy in her class became extra-wiggly and acted out at all, she would make him hold her hand for a few a minutes, and she would refer to him as her “boyfriend” when she reminded the class how you properly go about listening and learning. But those few minutes of red-faced humiliation imprinted on the wiggler’s young psyche that problems are best confronted not with anger and punishment, but with love.
She never married. She never had a romantic relationship that any of us ever knew about. But she definitely had family. We were all her family. Her students and fellow teachers all loved her and treated her like a loving mother, hence the nickname “Mother Mendocino”. And when her diabetes and kidney problems proved too much for the miracles of modern medicine and dialysis, she took an early retirement and quietly passed away. The whole town mourned her. But she is not gone. She lives in all of us. The lessons she taught were paid forward by all of us who knew her. And so I offer that little bit of her here and now to you.
My poor little pony has a broken leg… er… wheel. I was told by insurance to get a rental car to drive while it is getting fixed… or maybe shot in the head, because that’s what they do with ponies that have broken legs. They don’t want me driving it with a wobble-wheel that may fall off at any moment. Of course, if the insurance is paying for it, they expect you to go as cheaply as possible. That’s how I ended up driving this little white roller skate that somebody inflated with a bicycle pump. Truly, I could’ve designed a sturdier and better-looking car using the old Ritz cracker boxes I build castles from, and some chocolate donuts on sticks for wheels. The thing does NOT have a Rolls-Royce engine. When it starts, the engine makes a winding-up noise like, “brrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRAHP!” that after three minutes finally gives a little kick and shifts into second gear. The squirrel that runs in the exercise wheel that makes the engine go is surely both spastic and epileptic. It has seizures going around corners. I do not imagine myself driving anywhere in it faster than 35 miles per hour. In Dallas suburban traffic it is going to get me honked at a lot. Not just your ordinary “Go-faster-stupid!” honks, but real, LOUD honks of impending doom piling up behind me.
Here you see it grinning its toothless fat grandpa-grin at me from the parking lot at Braums’ Ice Cream, the first place it successfully took me after getting it from Enterprise Rental Co. It was obviously quite happy with itself. My kids observed, while looking at it for the first time, that it has a smiley face on it that reminds you of a Japanese manga chibi character with little license-plate-gray Hitler mustache. Let me see if I can enhance the effect so you can more clearly see what they meant;
I truly believe that I am going to have fun making fun of this goofy little car.
Yesterday I was in a car accident that I wasn’t even a participant in. Wait, is that the right way to say it? I was in a car wreck when I wasn’t in my car. No, that doesn’t sound right either. Driving skills in Texas were definitely on display yesterday as I lay ill in my bed and a passing Texas motorist unintentionally held a mini demolition derby with my car on the street.
As you can see from the un-funny picture Paffooney above, it was mainly the left hind leg of the old pony that took the hit. The other car hit the rear driver’s side wheel with enough force to flatten the tire, wreck the rim, and bend the end of the axle so that, with an emergency spare in place, I could still pick up my kids from school, though it was with a definite wibble-wobble added to the experience. It was an inconvenient accident for me. But it was worse for the other guy. His car bounced off mine and skidded down the street about 200 feet. It came to rest against the curb with a front wheel so bent that the steering wheel could no longer move it. It sat at a weird angle to the rest of the car.
The young guy driving was rather shaken up. He had trouble calling for the police to come and make an accident report because his hands were still shaking, yet he felt guilty enough that he wouldn’t let me make the call. I tried to be as calm and helpful as possible. I found out he was also originally from Iowa. He also moved to Texas for work after college. He could easily have been me thirty years ago. He said that he had just dropped a friend off in the neighborhood, and the friend had left a drink cup from 7-Eleven on the dash. When the cup fell, he made the mistake of trying to catch it, and drove directly into my car.
The timing of the accident was miserable. I was already feeling ill before it happened, and it caused me to have to stand outside to give and send information to his insurance, my insurance, the police officer, and AAA Automotive Assistance to make my car drive-able enough to get my kids from school during the Friday afternoon rush. The repairs are going to be extensive because of a bent axle. But I survived it. And it gave me something to post for today. So let me end with a reprise of my cartoon homage to Texas city driving.
I have been suffering through bad day after bad day recently. I had a fender bender. My favorite football team got plowed into the turf in the playoffs. I have been suffering a great deal from weather-induced arthritis pain, low blood sugar, and viral infections. And I even reached the download limit on my WordPress account, meaning I will have to pay more money to post new pictures.
But this blog is percolating along at 30 views per day or more. I am being read and exposed to the light more than I ever have in my whole writing life. That doesn’t earn me a penny, in fact, it costs me money, but it has to be a very good thing. I deal with pain and hardship through creativity. I create things to make it better.
When I was a kid, there was a little old German lady that lived in our little town. She had a tattoo on her forearm. She had been in a concentration camp in Poland in the 1940’s. But , living as an Iowan, she was the most cheerful and loving old lady I knew. She gave me chocolate bars for holding the door open for her at the Methodist church. She gave homemade cookies to all the kids constantly. She did not have any children of her own for very sad reasons that no one ever talked about. She loved it when children visited her at her little tar-paper-covered house that we nicknamed “the Gingerbread House”. I vividly remember being there one cold winter night after choir practice when she gave us gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate. She told us on that snowy winter evening, “Gingerbread makes everything better.”
I have to believe that philosophy is essentially correct. My stories are like gingerbread. If I cook them just right, they will have that good ginger taste that soothes all hurts and longings. So, I started putting together a story in honor of her. She is already a character in several of my stories. But I needed one where Grandma Gretel was the main character. And it has to be about baking gingerbread and telling stories. In fact, I think I will bake a little magic into it. The gingerbread men she bakes will actually come to life. And I will put together a theme about overcoming the darkness with a smile and wink and a recipe for gingerbread.
“Kaw-Liga”
KAW-LIGA, was a wooden Indian standing by the door
He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
He always wore his Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk
The maiden wore her beads and braids and hoped someday he’d talk
KAW-LIGA – A, too stubborn to ever show a sign
Because his heart was made of knotty pine.
[Chorus:]
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he never got a kiss
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he don’t know what he missed
Is it any wonder that his face is red
KAW-LIGA, that poor ol’ wooden head.
KAW-LIGA, was a lonely Indian never went nowhere
His heart was set on the Indian maiden with the coal black hair
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
Then one day a wealthy customer bought the Indian maid
And took her, oh, so far away, but ol’ KAW-LIGA stayed
KAW-LIGA – A, just stands there as lonely as can be
And wishes he was still an old pine tree.
The quirky movie I reviewed, Moonrise Kingdom, reconnected me with a song I loved as a child. It was on an old 45 record that belonged to my mother’s best friend from high school. When the Retleffs sold their farm and tore down their house and barn, they had a huge estate sale. My mother bought the old record player and all the collected records that Aunt Jenny still had. They were the same ones my mother and her friend Edna had listened to over and over. There were two records of singles about Indian love. Running Bear was about an Indian boy who fell in love with little White Dove. They lived on opposite sides of a river. Overcome with love, they both jump into the river, swim to the middle, lock lips, and both drown. Together forever. That song, it turns out, was written by the Big Bopper, and given to Johnny Preston to sing, and released the year after the Big Bopper died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens.
Kaw-liga, by Hank Williams, was a wooden Indian sitting in front of a cigar store. His love story is even worse. As you can see from the lyrics above, he never even gets the girl. Dang, Indian love must be heck!
But I have come to realize that these aren’t merely racist songs from a bygone era. They hold withing them a plea for something essential. They are a reminder that we need love to be alive.
When I was young and deeply depressed… though also insufferably creative and unable to control the powers of my danged big brain, I knew that I wanted love. There was one girl who went to school with me, lovely Alicia Stewart (I am not brave enough to use her real name), that filled my dreams. We were classmates, and alphabetical seating charts routinely put us near each other. She had a hypnotic sparkle in her eyes whenever she laughed at my jokes. She was so sweet to me… sweet to everyone… that she probably caused my diabetes. I longed to carry her books or hold her hand. I cherished every time she spoke to me, and collected the memories like stamps in a stamp album. But like the stupid cigar store Indian, I never spoke up for myself. I never told her how I felt. I was endlessly like Charlie Brown with the Little Red-Haired Girl. Sometimes you have to screw up your courage and leap into the river, even if it means your undoing. Because love is worth it. Love is necessary. And it comes to everybody in one way or another over time. I look at pictures of her grandchildren posted on Facebook now, and wonder what might have been, if only… if only I had jumped in that stupid river. I did find love. And I probably would’ve drowned had I done it back then. Life has a way of working things out eventually. But there has to be some reason that in the 50’s, when I was born, they just kept singing about Indian love.
Not everyone pictured in this post is actually a family member by marriage, but my wife has a big family and everyone who is even remotely related to a Filipino family… or even imagines that they are… is family.
I am about as much of a white-guy WASP-type as you can find in Middle America, having grown up in Iowa and teaching for my entire career in Texas. But I know a thing or two… or three about other cultures. I taught in South Texas for 23 years with students who were over 85% Spanish-speaking. And then, in 1995, I married into the Pinoy culture of the Philippine Islands.
Me and my Filipino-American familia… circa 2003.
There are some things I have learned about this other culture that you should probably be aware of.
#1. The United States is being invaded and colonized by the Philippines. They are coming here in waves, getting jobs in education and medicine that not enough of home-grown America are willing to take up. My wife came here with a placement company as a teacher. Three of her group of Filipino teachers landed in our little Cotulla school district. When she got here, she was met by her cousin and her cousin’s family. There was a Filipina woman and her young son in the Valley that also took an interest in helping her get settled in Texas. All of these people… and all of their friends and relatives are still a part of our lives. My wife’s sister and her family lived in California where dozens of cousins also lived. They and my wife’s parents have since moved to Texas, along with two other sisters and their families. You get the idea. They are taking over.
Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.
#2. As you can see, Filipinos love to take pictures. Above is a picture from class where my niece goes to school back in Floridablanca in the Philippines. People complain about pictures of food on Facebook. My Filipino family puts the Food Network to shame. Sometimes I can’t tell if they are eating another exotic Filipino dish with rice and meat or they’ve been putting firecrackers into fish and exploding them. And the fish eyes are a delicacy. Eeuw! My sisters in Iowa won’t even let me talk about the food at Filipino gatherings. I have to be extremely careful of what I share on Facebook.
#3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.
Well, those are only about three things that you should probably know about Filipinos and Pinoy culture. I haven’t even gotten into the thing about Matrilineal social orders or the evils of Karaoke addiction… but enough is enough for one day. I have no idea how much trouble I am now in for revealing cultural secrets. It could be a long cold night in the dog house.
In college I took classes in oral reading and acting because I was nutty about drama and play-writing, even though I was much too terrified of being put on a public stage to ever try out for a part. But in Oral Reading 101 I was given the gift of a professor who actually was the head of the ISU Drama Department. One of the things he made us do was a soliloquy from a Shakespeare play. I was assigned the opening soliloquy from Richard the Third.
Good God! Is that man ever a villain and a monster! He’s more sinister and evil than Snidely Whiplash or Dick Dastardly… and certainly no less cartoonish. Here is the best I can still do to recreate my old college performance of “The Winter of Our Discontent” soliloquy.
To pull off this assignment (On which I received an A grade from a professor known for imperious F-giving) I had to do a lot of research on King Richard III to be able to walk around in his skin for three whole minutes. I had to learn about him from books and articles and drama critiques. I spent a couple of weeks in the library (There was no internet or Google in 1978). I learned that he was a complex man involved in the deeply troubled time of the War of the Roses. He was from the house of York, the House of the White Rose. His elder brother, Edward, had been victorious in both battle and royal intrigue, and, with Richard’s help had secured the throne of England that had been wrested from the hands of Richard II to begin the struggle between House Lancaster (the Red Rose) and House York… both of which had blood-relationship claims to the throne. Once in the hands of Richard’s brother Edward IV, the crown did not really rest peacefully on Yorkish heads. Edward became ill and died in 1483. The crown was to then go to twelve-year-old Edward V who was placed under the care of Uncle Richard’s regency. At the time of his coronation, the legitimacy of Edward IV’s marriage was declared null and void, making the boy no longer eligible to be king. Richard seized the title. Young Edward and his younger brother were taken to the Tower of London and they were never seen publicly again. According to Shakespeare, Richard did, in fact, have them killed. But, the crown did not stay on Richard’s head for longer than two years. In 1485 Henry Tudor came back to England from France. Richard was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field and died in battle there.
I do actually understand Richard in ways that are difficult to admit. I know what it feels like to be convinced you are unworthy by factors beyond your control. Richard was a hunchback, plagued with severe scoliosis of the spine. He lived his life in pain and was ridiculed for his deformity in a time where it was believed such things were a punishment from God for sins of the parents, or even sins the child himself was born with. I can relate. I was always so far above the other kids in my class at school that I was treated like a Martian, unloved and unlovable because I could not speak a language they really understood. And on top of that, I was secretly the victim of a sexual assault, a condition that I feared made me a monster. I could so easily have become a monster. I could’ve set my mind to it in the same way Richard did, because vengeance for his differences consumed him utterly. Thankfully, I did not choose a path of evil. Drawing and telling stories proved to be the pick and shovel I used to dig myself out of my own pit of despair.
Richard III’s long-forgotten grave was rediscovered in 2013, and a DNA match with relatives proved the skeleton with scoliosis was him in 2014.
The real Richard III may not have been the monster Shakespeare portrayed him as, either. He was demonized after his defeat and death by the Tudors to strengthen their shaky claim to the throne. There exists some evidence that he was a progressive king and a friend to his people, but horribly betrayed by some of his own followers, and certainly made the scapegoat by succeeding generations.
A recreation of what Richard III looked like based on the skull found and portraits from the time period.
There is also some evidence that Shakespeare wrote the play as a political diatribe against the hunchback in the royal court of his day. Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury was also a hunchback with scoliosis. And by his sometimes sinister-seeming machinations, he rose to power as Secretary of State for both Elizabeth I, and after her, James I. He had a part to play in making James the King after Elizabeth’s long reign, probably an instrumental part. He also uncovered the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes and friends, and rumors persisted that he had more to do with it than merely revealing and foiling it. Nothing was ever proven against him. Though Elizabeth called him “my pygmy” and James referred to him as “my little beagle”, he held power throughout his lifetime and foiled the work of his many enemies against him. In fact, it is the similarities between Shakespeare’s Richard III and Robert Cecil that first made me begin to believe that Shakespeare was actually someone other than the actor who owned the Globe Theater and never spelled his own name the same way twice. Knowing about Cecil surely needed to be the act of an insider in the royal court. I balked at first when it was suggested to me that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Francis Bacon… and I continued to doubt until I learned more about the Earl of Oxford, Edward deVere.
So what is the point of this soliloquy about the soliloquy of Richard III? Well, the point is that at one time I had to be him for a short while. I had to understand who he was (at least the character that Shakespeare created him to be) and think as he thought. That is what a soliloquy truly is. Sharing from the character’s mind to my mind… and back again if I am to perform him… or even write him in some future fiction.
Last night I watched again Part I of Ken Burns’ Mark Twain. I think it reminds me of who I am as a writer. No, I am not being all big-head arrogant and full of myself. I devoured certain writers as a youth, consumed them whole. Charles Dickens was my first passion, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien, and then Mark Twain. Of all of them, Samuel Clemens is the most like me. He was from the Midwest, born and raised in Missouri along the Mississippi River. I am from the Midwest, born and raised in Iowa along the Iowa River. He endured hardship and tragedy as a youth, losing his little brother in a riverboat accident, and he dealt with it by humor. I endured a sexual assault from an older boy, and dealt with it by… well, you get the picture. We are alike, him and I. We both draw upon the place we grew up, the people we have known, and the events of our youth to create stories.
It is a pretty big responsibility to follow in his footsteps, and I will probably never live to see the success and the wealth that came to him. But I have a responsibility to the people I knew and the time that gave rise to me to tell their story. I need to build a network of stories that resonate the truth of existence that I have been witness to. A big responsibility… and I probably will not live up to it. But I have to try.
Being a writer is somewhat like being cursed. The words burn inside, needing to get out, needing to be heard. I have stories that need to be told, and they will be told, even if only to file away in the closet again. Like Mark Twain, I am good at feeling sorry for myself. And the Mickey part of me, the writer part of me, is just like Mark Twain, a writer persona, and not the real man himself. I am simply the container for something that has to exist and has to tell stories. It is not a bad thing to be. But the more I get to know it, the more I would not wish the destiny on others.
Forgive how sad and bunglingly boorish this post is. But sometimes there are thoughts I simply have to think. And as a writer, I am bound to write down the silly things that I think.
There tends to be a good reason behind certain expressions. Let me take a moment to explain it to you in the vaguest sort of way meant to protect the innocent, the privacy of the sufferer, and my privacy, and yet still get at that little old devil who is making my life a living hell.
The problem stems from factors beyond my control, and the mental health of a family member who is not me, but I am responsible for paying for, because I can clearly see what the problem is (as can doctors and licensed practitioners) while other members of my family (mainly for religious reasons) can’t see. And, of course, you can imagine who the insurance company, who is supposed to pay for at least part of it, wants to believe. I am the one who sat through the day in the ER two years ago, giving the best support and care I could while footing the bill. (The truth is, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a complicated time in the ER because they don’t accept blood transfusions, and they worry about the practice of Psychiatry leading to some kind of evil mind control.) In the ER it was determined for the sake of safety and protection of the patient, we needed to be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Of course, the insurance gets to tell you where and what doctors you can work with, so we were sent to University Behavioral Health Hospital in Denton, the one facility that my family has determined CANNOT perform any more services for my family on pain of religious condemnation and angry black stares that ripple through time from then to now. A weeks’ worth of time in UBH, determined by UBH to maximize profits, led to a bill of over a thousand dollars payable by me. That, added to my own medical bills (from six incurable diseases) and the bill from the ER that the insurance pays less than half of because of deductibles, added up to a debt that maxed out my credit cards and brought me to the brink of bankruptcy. (A thing I narrowly avoided by engaging a lawyer for debt-reduction services). I was forced to retire from teaching at that point because the time away from my job for the family member’s illness, plus the work missed from my own illnesses, was reducing my income to the point that I might’ve owed the school money at the end of every working month otherwise. I was fortunate to have enough years in service to have a good pension.
Now, of course you know that mental health conditions aren’t the kind of thing that goes away by taking a pill… or even a hundred different pills. It requires constant monitoring, prescribing, and proper therapy. UBH will not even release a patient unless you can prove that you have set up appointments with both a psychiatrist and a therapist. We found excellent ones of each. But, of course, along comes the insurance company to have their say. (This insurance company shall remain nameless… but it rhymes with FAetna… and that is not a capitalization error, no matter what the spell-checker says.) We lost the services of one of the best adolescent psychiatrists in North Texas because he refuses to take the crappy insurance. I don’t blame him. I blame him less now that I know so many more of the devilish details than I did then. So, I tried to replace the good doctor. I called the insurance provider for a list of doctors we could use. I was given only two names. The first doctor, a well-respected lady psychiatrist, let us make an appointment. When I was filling out the required paperwork in the office on the day of the visit, we were informed that due to a technicality, the only way we could see that doctor would be to pay 100% 0f the bill. The receptionist graciously let us end the appointment without charging us the late-cancellation fee. We went to the other doctor, one that had unpleasant memories of my family from UBH, and were rejected by the doctor. So… no psychiatrist anywhere in the State would treat my family ever again thanks to the crappy insurance. (I tried to think of another adjective besides “crappy” to use here, but couldn’t think of any I could use that would not melt my keyboard.)
Now, recently, we have lost our only other professional help. We had been seeing the excellent therapist weekly for over two years. Previous insurance had no problem paying for the preventive services he provided. I got by with a simple co-pay every week. But when we had to transition to crappy FAetna, a stealth problem occurred. Apparently there was a form that needed to be filled out to transfer the payment obligation from one provider to the next. The form had an expiration date on it that absolved the crappy insurance from any payments at all once it was passed. They, of course, did not tell the poor therapist about the existence of this critical document until long afterthe expiration date. All claims during that time were recently nullified and payments denied. We actually owe the doctor doing the therapy well over a thousand dollars. But he knows we can’t afford it, and he feels bad that it was caused by an error that was technically his. We are still trying to dipsy-doodle through the nightmare health-care system to find needed services. I have had my fill. I don’t try to call Satan’s member-services department for the crappy insurance any more. They won’t tell me the truth, and they won’t do anything helpful… only things that are harmful.
If I were to go to the main offices of FAetna Crappy Insurance Corporation, I would fully expect the front doors to be guarded by a massive three-headed dog-thingy. The receptionists would all be red-skinned succubi with fangs and horns. You would have to descend in an elevator to the Pit of Hell to see any of their superiors… You know, like Beelzebub, Asmodeus, and Lucifer. Apparently all the premiums we pay to health insurance companies entitle us only to arguments with intractable employees who don’t even know what the word “approved” means. So, the Devil is indeed using the details to rule in Hell… and he is doing a Helluvah job.
#3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.
Catch a Falling Star 