The problem with a blog is that the only editor you have is yourself. So you can repeat yourself or retell a story and not know it. But today I was thinking about Mardi Gras. Since that is a mostly childhood memory, maybe I'll repeat myself, and maybe not.
I was pretty lucky- my father had a business on St Charles Ave right on the parade route. The parade went UP St Charles to uptown and back down St Charles to downtown- it was just a matter of crossing the neutral ground. The neutral ground is unique to NOLA- other people have different names for the area of grass divider between two sides of a street. But in NOLA, it is the neutral ground. So to see the parade twice, all I had to do was cross the neutal ground. My father loved Mardi Gras and my mother didn't. Our entire family benefitted from a safe place to park their car, a clean bathroom and plenty of food and drink at ground level on the parade route. And despite the fact that NOLA has always been dangerous, my parents (and other parents) gave free reign- it was okay to run out into the crowds and return dirty and sometimes mildly injured if you brought back shiny beads. If we kids saw someone we knew, well- all the better excuse to run up the block to say hi to their family. The assumption back then was basically that no one wanted someone else's kid- for almost any reason. The assumption was that you would come back. I'm sure there was wholesale panic if you disappeared forever, but I never knew of a kid that did.
Every year was another costume- usually a witch because it recycled Halloween. But one year I was in a Japanese satin kimono type top with black satin pants- it remains my favorite costume ever. I was so sad when I outgrew it. I have a picture. I should post it sometime.
My father had lived in NOLA since he graduated from high school at the age of 16. He first worked as a street car conductor and loved it. But he had years and years of Mardi Gras tales. My personal favorite was when he witnessed a man being killed at Lee Circle- a crowd was watching a fight and the aggressor pulled out an ICE PICK (imagine my vivid imagination on that item!) and stabbed another man in the heart. That permanently put a little dark shadow on the festivities for me.
I was always told to "be careful"- but in a city with ice pick murderers, well, it was so overwhelming that we all just ignored it. How can you "be careful" in a city where people kill one another? There is no careful- so you might as well just live. And we all did.
My last Mardi Gras was when I was 22. I'd graduated from college and was dating a great guy who had moved to NOLA after college. He wanted the adventure and he got it. I got hit in the eye by a flying elbow, and it split the skin over my eye which bled and made me appear to have been badly beaten. But I REALLY had to go to the bathroom after 2 or 3 hurricanes, and people couldn't send me to the front of the line quick enough. I'd had enough booze not to hurt much, but I did sort of play it up. Girls will definitely move away from someone with blood all over their face. I'm a smart girl and I had a bandaid in my purse- so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. But that was really my last Mardi Gras. NOLA was turning ugly then- the crime rate had begun to soar and friends of mine had armed guards at their uptown parties. People fled the city.
But when I was little- the flambeaux and the beads and the costumes and being up at night- well, it was just magical. I hope the magic has returned. I truly do. I just don't have the guts to try it. My Mardi Gras memories are too sweet.
