Street Party

"Throw me sumthing Mista'"

Story and Photos by Kathleen Walls

One ot the many Mardi Gras floats

Growing up in New Orleans, Mardi Gras ranked second only to Christmas as my favorite holiday. As a young child, with my parents, I was fascinated by the colorful costumes and gaudily decorated floats. The rousing music of the marching bands and noise of sirens filled my ears with magic.   Those days, flambeau carriers danced along besides the floats. Dressed in a white hooded costume, they bounced and often stooped to retrieve a trinket in their paths but they always kept their flaming torches held high.  

This Southern Belle is no Scarlet O'Hara

When I reached my early teens, my best friend, Jessie, and I tried to attend all of the parades. In those long gone days, it was relatively safe for two young girls to roam the parade routes and even walk to and from the parades to our upper 9^th ward homes. We saw the parade first on St. Charles and then raced down Magazine to Canal where we saw it again. Then as it snaked its slow way around Canal, we rushed down Royal St. to see it again and follow it to its destination, the auditorium (now Louis Armstrong Auditorium). There we were not admitted to the ball held inside and laden with out beads and other trinkets, we made our way home, still filled with the spectacle we had seen. The next night we did it all over again. On weekends, there were usually day parades as well. When there were more than one at the same time, we agonized over which ones we would have to miss. No general ever strategized more than we did to see the best ones and as many of them as humanly possible. Oh, for the stamina of my teen years. We kept going through the big day but by Ash Wednesday, we both usually had colds and begged to stay home form school. No such luck. Both of our parents agreed, if we could go to parades for two weeks straight, we could attend school the first day of Lent.  

Jerry, me and MayLin on Bourbon Street

This year for the first time in about 35 years, I went back to New Orleans for a brief taste of Mardi Gras. I visited my brother, Jerry, and his wife, MaeLin. They usually confined their Mardi Gras to the parades in Metairie where they live but in my honor, we did the day up right going into New Orleans for Fat Tuesday. As in my teen years, we began above Canal St. and worked down into the French Quarter.

The weather was great, a bit windy but not too hot or cool. We saw most of the Zulu Parade and drifted around Bourbon Street to watch the maskers unmask certain normally private body parts to entice balcony denizens to throw them some beads.  Then again on Bourbon Street not many body parts are private anytime of year. We met some friends of Jerry and MayLin who invited us to join them on their hotel balcony just a few feet off Bourbon. By that time, my feet were very appreciative of the offer as it meant sitting down and taking my shoes off while I watched the revelers from above. 

They give a whole new meaning to "Painted Ladies."

We missed King Rex's, (John Koerner III, the CEO of Barq's Root Beer) toastto Mayor Ray Nagin. Rex quibbled Nagin saying, that he knew the mayor was concerned about what he might say but he only had one comment "Pure vanilla," a good natured jab about Nagin's better forgotten comment about New Orleans being "A chocolate city."

When Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again," he was only half right. For those few magic days, New Orleans still felt like home and Mardi Gras was still that glistening holiday of my youth. However, two things have changed: the crowds are mellower and more good-natured than in days of yore and the beads are more lavishly thrown.

In spite of those of the media who focus on the fights and disturbances that occur at any huge gathering of people, in all of the locations we lingered, people were more gentle and less belligerent. We only saw two mild occasions of people losing their tempers a bit and both were just verbal.

A "fairy" offers a "bribe' for beads from the balcony.

Two "gladiators" toast Mardi Gras

Actually, I remember as a youngster, people actually fighting over the throws where as here, most of the time, when two people had their hands on a throw, one usually relinquished it easily. Often the "catcher" then gifted the second party or a nearby child with the beads. The other thing that amazed me was the number of beads left to languish on the streets. As a kid, the streets might have been filled with litter after Mardi Gras but nary a pair of beads or a doubloon resided there. All of these were snatched up by eager hands the second they hit the ground.

My one suggestion for keeping the streets cleaner would be for the city or other group to place Port-a-Potties around the Quarter instead of expecting visitors to pay for the use of a rest room or encouraging heavier drinking by having a drink minimum to use bar facilities. That is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, the more you drink, the more you will need to – well, you get the picture.

In spite of this one minor problem, Mardi Gras is still the greatest street party in the entire USA.