The grilled meat line was huge, so I went to go get some fried dough from a booth, and there taped to the back eave of the tent was a sign reading -
REMEMBERING
[one first and last name] & [another first and name]
- and the 2nd name was my old landlady from when I first moved to the city, who is of the church's ethnic group and had been fighting cancer for a while and who I hadn't seen all this summer, and so who I assumed was either sick again or had even passed away.
I asked someone at the booth, and the customer behind me said that she had passed away months ago, and that she always helped out at the fried dough booth.
Later, I googled her and found out that she died in December, and was part of the church's Marian Society.
That night on the way home from the beach, I stopped by the festival again to get some grilled meat, if the line was shorter.
It was like ten people, and the person ahead of me said that no-one had been in line like 5 minutes before.
As I was waiting, this (early 30s) (Balkan) grill man in a white sweatband and an MGD 64 shirt torn on both sides stopped turning meats with tongs in order to ask someone behind me in a sports jersey and on a smartphone if he knew the score of the game, and when the guy was like, "Three - three", the grill man was like, "Here," and he took a skewer of chicken off the grill and handed it to him to eat while in line.
After I finally got my order and turned to go, I saw a younger couple, the man (white) and the girl (black), and she seemed a bit skittish, and all of a sudden I suddenly realized that every single other person at the festival was (white) and it must be really weird and intimidating for her.
And that's not even including the fact that it's Catholic (assuming that the [black] girl was something else), and the neighborhood as a whole is known to be historically racist.
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