The Catskill Chronicle

By Mary Hall

So, we have to talk about Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday. It’s such a fat New Orleans topic that I almost felt as though I shouldn’t write about it, but, dear reader, that would be supremely disrespectful.

The festivities always start two or three weeks before Mardi Gras, and the first parade is the Krewe de Vieux which this year occurred on Saturday, Jan. 30. That’s a relatively informal and very funny parade with all kinds of witticisms about the current political and cultural situation. Much to my dismay, I’ve never seen it. However, the following weeks are filled with all kinds of massive parades with huge floats and lots of “throws”, the beads and shoes and bags and shirts and dolls that get thrown to the adoring mob. People on the ground next to the floats hold up their arms and try wildly to make eye contact with the people on the float, calling, “Throw me something, oh please!” (At St. Augustine’s Church where I’ve been in attendance recently, the priest has been saying, “Throw me something, Jesus.”) The parades have names like Oshun, Pygmalion, Druids, Thor, Babylon, Chaos, Muses. In New Orleans proper alone there are about two dozen scheduled parades, all with huge floats pulled by trucks and lots of marching bands and officials and assorted celebrities. People line the streets for hours before with their setups – lawn chairs, picnic tables, bars, and ladders with seats on them so that one can climb up and see over the heads of those in front. The industry that all of this spawns – the float building, truck acquisition, bead manufacture, etc. – is worthy of a book all on its own.

Last year we went to several of these, often escorted by our niece R., she who calls herself the concierge. This year, being almost local ourselves, we were more on our own and we didn’t get to parades except on the day itself. The other big difference this year was The Saints. The big soul smacking euphoria over the Saints was the practice run for Mardi Gras that these other parades usually supply. At least for us, we didn’t need anymore.

Here’s our Mardi Gras.

First of all, it’s the birthday of my sister-in-law, C, the nurse, who is married to my brother P, the banker. They are staying with us, and we are joined at 8 am that morning by our niece, R and her friends, all of whom live here at least some of the time. We have to get out early to walk over to F’s house where the St. Anne parade assembles. F has coffee and doughnuts for us and already at 8:45, the street is starting to fill up with musicians and people in costume. There are people dressed as alligators and crawfish, as skeletons and corpses, as political and mythological people. There are groups of people who together make a political joke; there’s a group dressed as WW II marines who stop and adopt iconic poses as in raising the flag at Iwo Jima. My favorite is a guy dressed in glitter and white face, carrying mylar banners. He is equipped with a pair of very techie looking stilts that that allow him to make all sorts of balletic moves. From a distance you can see his headdress and banners bouncing up and down high above the crowd. Someone gives each of us several ropes of fairly elaborate beads, instructing us that we can each keep one for ourselves but that we have to give the rest away. Someone hands me a white envelope, heavy, as though it contained a metal weight. I open it with a little trepidation. Accepting anonymous packages from strangers is a little risky these days, I think, as visions of smuggled bombs come to mind. Never mind – there in my hand is a beautiful, hand crafted,, glass medallion embossed with a fleur de lies, which as all of you will know by now, is the symbol of the The Saints and of New Orleans. It hangs on a lavender shoe lace and I put it around my neck. It’s a Mardi Gras gift and I’m filled with the spirit for the rest of the day.

At St. Anne’s, there’s a Brazilian band, there’s all kinds of brass instruments, groups are assembling, people have beers and to-go cups of mimosas and bloody marys, and it’s time to move. We walk on down the parade route for a few blocks and come to another gathering of folks in costume and out. The two parades will meet and spend all day marching around the Bywater, the Marigny and the French Quarter. We go to the window of the bar on the corner and order bloody marys in to-go cups. Here they are made with a hefty dose of Worcestershire sauce, green olives, pickled green beans, and a shot of olive juice. Sometimes they have pickled okra or asparagus. They are perfect for walking along in a parade at 10:30 in the morning.

There’s a lot of walking involved in Mardi Gras because you can’t drive or take a taxi or street-car since all the streets are crammed with revelers and paraders. So after a marching with the St. Anne parade for a bit more, we go home for a bio break and then walk over to Zulu. This is our one scheduled parade of the whole season, the only one we go to with big floats and marching bands from all over and mounted policemen and so forth. It’s also maybe the only parade that you will ever see with African Americans in blackface. That’s the Zulu tradition. By now we’ve lost our niece R., the wonderful concierge, and there are hundreds and hundreds of people on the street. We neglect to hold on to one another or make any kind of plan about where we might meet if we lose each other, and, of course, we get separated. Floats are slowly moving by, bands are blaring, families are picnicking. Though cell phones are wonderful locating devices, it’s impossibly noisy and we can’t here them ringing. I wish that I were a texter, like R, who can find her friends in the middle of any kind of French Quarter raucousness. Sigh,.. I raise my arms in the obligatory gesture toward the floats, acquire a few throws, and move on through to a quieter spot. Finally I’m able to talk to my brother and eventually we all get together again and make our way into the Quarter for lunch, more bloody marys and, best of all, chairs. We’ve been walking about Mardi Gras for over six hours.

That night we’re planning to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday at Demonico’s, one of the city’s many elegant, sophisticated restaurants, a recently opened example of why New Orleans is a major food city. It’s in a newly and beautifully refurbished hotel, perfect for C’s birthday. But, it’s a mile and a half from our house and we cannot torment her by making her walk all the way there and back on her birthday. If we take the car, we’ll never get a parking place again… it’s an absolute no-no. Can we get a cab? Lot’s of phone lines that are busy and finally we’re able to order one, but will it show up? We go out on the street, ready to capture anything that we can find. A miracle occurs – a cab shows up and asks if we’ve called for him. We are elated. My brother gets in the front seat and asks if he can hold that driver’s gear that he has had to move over. “You want to sit in the front,” the driver says, “that will cost you double.” I’m in the back and I feel I’m the mom here in Nola. I can’t let this happen. “What do you mean,” I ask. “How much is that.” “Fifty dollars,” he says, with a tiny little smile. We realize he’s joking and we all pile in, grateful that he has arrived, happy that he is taking us to our dinner. This is Z. We spend a long and uproarious time with him because roads are impassable and because he is determined to overturn all taxi driver stereotypes. He’s a computer engineer, a nerd with attitude, who makes fun of everything that he can including himself. He tells us his story and then teases us for not listening; he yells at people in the street who amble out in front on him and then tells us that he is prejudiced; he wants us to love New Orleans and then tells us what’s wrong with it. He’s our guy; we tell him that he should be a cab driver in Manhattan; we all have his number in our phones now and when he leaves us at the hotel, we know that we’ll see him again.

After a night of bourbon old-fashions, charcuterie plates, fried cauliflower, braised goat meat, chocolate panna cotta birthday cake and all kinds of other delectables, we wend our way home in a cab other than Z’s since he didn’t answer his phone. We threw ourselves down convinced that we had just enjoyed a perfect Mardi Gras. My phone rings. “Mary, it’s Z. I am so sorry I missed your call. Call me again.” A perfect ending to the day.

My friend tells me that Mardi Gras is an ancient cultural tradition. Early peoples would make sure that the sun was actually returning after the solstice and then they would eat all the food, drink all the fermented beverages, have all the sex they could, and then hibernate until the spring arrived.

Are we ready for 40 days of penance? Stay tuned.