MARDI GRAS QUEEN
I came to New Orleans on a
Banana boat
To see if it’s true
What my cousin wrote:
He wrote to me
About the Mardi Gras
And all the pretty ladies
That he saw. MOREMARDI GRAS SCROOGE
Many native New Orleanians, and even transplanted veterans of more than three carnival seasons, have become jaded by the fortnight of festivities culminating on Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday and the 40 boring days of Lent. Though it had been explained to me as a child that carnival had been invented because of Lent, so that everyone could indulge those vices he has to forego for 40 days, I sometimes wondered if the ash smeared by local clergymen across the foreheads of recent libertines didn’t merely verify that they were “burnt out” from the excesses of the past two weeks and needed a month and a half to recuperate. MOREKREWE OF PLATEFACES
Mardi Gras had been getting bigger and more expensive every year, the floats and costumes of the organized krewes more and more lavish. If something hadn’t been done soon, the average reveler would have been confined forever to the role of spectator. It just didn’t seem fair. MOREMARDI GRAS MENTALITY
It’s Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, in Cajun country to the west, in Mobile to the east and across the Gulf Coast, and even as far north as St. Louis. As tractors tow papier-maché and crepe-covered floats down oak-lined St. Charles Avenue to Canal Street in the Crescent City, parade-goers of all ages shout their traditional plea to the trinket-laden riders: “Throw me something, Mister!” MORE
