Jour cinq...Vendredi gras

            I don't think there's any way to describe how wonderful it is to sit by the rolling Mississippi River at eleven o'clock in the morning, wearing sandals on my feet in the middle of February, surrounded by a group of amazing friends while eating spicy eggs creole and listening to a live jazz band. Good morning NOLA, it's nice to see you again. I've been to quite a few cities in the United States now, and I'd have to say, every day that I spend in New Orleans, I fall deeper and deeper in love with this place. I may never leave.

            Wandering around Bourbon Street Friday morning I picked up the sound of a marching band and noticed a crowd gathered just down the block from me. What's going on here? I didn't think there would be any parades this early in the morning, and certainly not going through the middle of the French Quarter. But I was wrong. It was a parade. Not with floats and masked adults, but a parade of elementary school children coming from a few blocks away and making their way through the Quarter. The smaller children cast beads to the crowds standing along the sidewalks while the older children played their second hand instruments, the best they could with what they had. It was the cutest thing I had seen here. One little girl saw me bouncing to the music of the band and smiling like a fool as I took pictures and she tossed me a strand of beads. When I caught them she beamed a bright smile at me and waved. I think that was the best catch I made all week. I walked with the parade for a while, not wanting it to end so soon. I loved seeing the children having so much fun and their excitement was contagious. I couldn't help but wish I had this growing up. How great was it that every year on Fat Friday these kids got to look forward to parading down the street while playing music and throw beads at people. You just can't feel sad when you see a child smiling and laughing. It doesn't matter whether it's your own child or a stranger's. It's just the most innocent thing you will see on this earth.

            When it started to seem a little creepy that I kept following the parade, I decided it was time to walk in the other direction and head back towards the hotel. On the way, I happened to come across a zydeco band stationed just off the sidewalk that I had apparently missed because they stopped playing when the parade was making their way past. I really wasn't familiar with the word zydeco. Until I got to New Orleans it was the first time I had come across the term. I just always assumed jazz was jazz. Though there may be different styles of the genre, in the end, a tomato was a tomato, so I thought. However, zydeco really did need a slot all its own because it was a completely different sort of music style. It had the elements of jazz, but it was actually Creole folk music that evolved in southwest Louisiana to include Cajun influences with blues and R&B. Typical instruments involved in the style included French fiddles, Irish fiddles, German accordions, banjos, drums, guitar, bass guitar and washboards. There's just no way to confuse this sound with anything else out there. And I have loved and listened to this style of music, which was as old as America itself, for years and never even knew it was zydeco. I'm so silly.  

             The band had already started playing before I reached them and I was instantly sucked into their performance. How could I walk away? They were a perfectly rehearsed troupe that didn't feel like they were rehearsed. They were just so apt with their instruments and in tune to one another that even if one member strayed from the others, owing to a sudden surge of inspiration, the others were just as quick to follow and accompany that culprit all the way home. All I could do was stand against the brick of the building across the stree and watch them with the other spectators, trying to blend in with the crowd. Watching them bang on the drums, strum their base, guitar banjo and washboard I wished I knew how to play something so I could join the band. They looked like they were having the time of their lives playing their beat up instruments in dusty street clothes and fedoras. I could have stayed there all day listening to them, but I noticed that time was passing me by and I had to get back to the others.

            At The Corner Oyster Bar and Grill, I ate my first po' boy sandwich ever. Of all the seafood I've ever had, raw oysters would probably be situated at the bottom of my list, buy fry anything and it suddenly becomes ten times better. Slap that fried goodness between some French bread, top it with lettuce, tomato, coleslaw and a spicy remoulade, and you have yourself a most delicious sandwich this side of New Orleans. Yum. Back in the twenties, this sandwich came to be known through two brothers by the name of Bennie and Clovis Martin, both retired streetcar conductors who opened a coffee stand and restaurant in the French Market in 1922. A few years later, during the Carmen's Union Strike of 1929, they started using the ends of the French loaves that they would normally throw to waste to make sandwiches for the poor streetcar workers that were out of work. Feeling their frustration, having once been streetcar workers themselves, they promised the generous donation of a free sandwich to any hungry union worker as a contribution to their cause. According to Bennie Martin, whenever one of the brother's saw a union worker coming their way, they would say, "Here comes another poor boy." Then the union worker would come into the restaurant, tell one of the brothers working behind the counter that they were with the union, and they would walk away with a delicious sandwich to keep them going through the strike. The term associated with the sandwich eventually just stuck and they named it after the people they were for, the "poor boys." And because of the brothers' continued generosity during the entire length of the strike it proved to be a wise business decision that earned them fame and hundreds of new customers for years to come. And there you have it...today's po' boy sandwiches brought to you by the makers of the New Orleans' Martin brothers.

            With the sun poking its rays through a wide break in the clouds, the five of us walked out of The Corner Oyster Bar and Grill and head over towards the Mississippi River so we could soak up that vitamin D that was so hard to find back in the city and enjoy the few hours we had before the parades ran down St. Charles and Canal Street again. Shortly after we sat ourselves on the rocks by the river, feeling the warm rays over our pale skins, Nick came strolling over to us, after spending most of the day with his new "friend." I don't know how Nick does it.... actually, I do know, he's a handsome guy with an amazing personality. However, even with that being said, Nick was here for less than five days and not only did he find himself in a romantic relationship in two days, but he also found himself a place to stay when he wanted it and has also been offered a job. The night before, while the rest of us were snagging beads from the clutches of seven-year-olds, Nick was out with his date at a New York style pizzeria and the owner offered him free drinks all night if he could help out as bartender since he had experience doing it in, of all places, New York City. If Nick, who has been considering it, decided he wanted to move to New Orleans, it would be as easy as saying "I'll do it." and he could just pack up his car, drive down and he would be all set to go. Some people have all the luck.

            Earlier in the week, the girls and I decided to buy outfits for this Fat Friday's parades. Vendredi Gras was when thing really get out of control here and we now had the outfits fit just for that kind of occasion. However, in my purple, green and yellow jester tights, multi-colored tutu, pink mask and blinking neon pink wig that made my head look like the 80's version of Medusa's head...I looked ridiculous. What in the world was I wearing? On the mannequin in the store, it looked like a lot of fun. Actually seeing it on my body, however, made me look like a demented clown. I needed a drink if I'm going out in public looking like this.

            When we hit Bourbon Street, that's when I decided to get myself one of those hand grenades everyone had been walking around with all week. This frozen green drink was as sweet as drinking bar syrup from a straw, but it was strong, maybe too strong for me. Halfway down the street en-route to the parades I came across a hairy man standing about six foot three wearing large black rimmed glasses and a tiny blue and white cheerleader's uniform. Not a male cheerleader's uniform, mind you, a female cheerleader's uniform. I thought he was hilarious in the much too tiny skirt for his much too large body and apparently he thought my outfit was just as funny because when he spotted me in my blinking pink wig and tutu, he walked right up to me, with a very determined look on his face, and asked if he could get a picture with me. Of course I said yes because I wanted one too. After two flashes of the cameras he asked if he could then get a kiss for one of the massive beads he had around his neck. I just wanted a picture with the guy and could have cared less about getting anymore beads, but I have a hard time saying no to people so I said I would do it. My intention was only to plant a kiss on his cheek, or, worse case scenario, a peck on the lips. But when he put these massive heart shaped beads around my neck, I was trapped by this lasso and suddenly, all I saw next was his lips part and the cheerleader practically bent me backwards with a full out kiss. When I came back up for air that's when I realized I had lost my pink weave! When I looked down it was sitting in a puddle full of who knows what and I had no choice but to abandon the sad mess. That's what I get for drinking a hand grenade and saying yes to everything when my head tells me another thing. A little restraint might be nice Marcy. The city may be called The Big Easy, but you forget that you're not.

            The amount of people on the parade route must have been double the size on Friday compared to Wednesday, so when we finally made our way through Bourbon Street to Canal, we were behind quite a few people, praying the krewe throwing beads on this floats had some good pitchers looking for a challenge. Just as we had found a safe spot to stand, the parade was coming around the corner and we were at the ready. The Krewe d'Etat with their twenty-one floats and four hundred and fifteen male riders was probably the best Mardi Gras parade I had seen so far. Its signature satirical theme had us anticipating the next float just to see what politician or current affair they were going to spoof on next. Many of the floats reminded me of the political caricatures that appear in high profile newspapers only in a live, medieval style. That had to be a heap of work to keep updating every year, but it certainly showed in the artwork. It appeared that its krewe did have good pitching arms after all, and threw far and wide. Though, they also liked to chuck the beads at people, not to them. Sometimes they would get too lazy to even open the bulky bags that the beads came in and would just throw, or rather, hurl, the four-pound bundles into the crowd instead. One-second you might notice a sea of people stretching out to grab something from the krewe on the floats, then the next minute, you would see everyone suddenly duck and cover their heads so they wouldn't get knocked out cold by a bag of beads and you knew a bag was about to come down like a hand grenade. One poor woman standing beside me was not paying attention when this was about to happen and before I could warn her of an incoming bag of blue and purple beads coming her way, it whacked her in the head and she nearly fell on top of me. Had the poor woman been wearing a weave like I was earlier, that thing would have cleared right over me. That had to hurt.

"Wow, are you okay?" I asked her.

"What the hell!"

I picking up the bag of beads that landed by her feet and handed it to her, "At least you got yourself some beads."

            The scene on Bourbon Street after we left the parade route was insane. I had seen snippets of something like this in movies portraying Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but that was an environment controlled by producers, production crew and a director trying to give an audience a toned down version of what Mardi Gras might be like. This, however, was something out of the last days the earth. There was a complete sense of caution to the wind. There were boobs flashing everywhere and thousands of people stood sardined under balconies squeezing down the narrow street trying to get from one end to the other while trying to grab beads or avert from being whipped in the face with them. Drunk, happy people were stumbling and dancing on the sidewalks or just watching with interest. It was chaos, but it was strangely harmonious at the same time. No one was shoving, fighting or crying in corners. Either it was because everyone was drunk, high, or just too excited to see so many boobs–or all of the above, I don't know, but no one seemed to care that they were turning purple trying to squeeze through the crowd or lost feeling in their toes. If this was New York, it would have been a mosh pit of blood and guts and all it would have taken to start it was one cross look at the wrong person and the party would have been over. Pressing through the mass of people, more concerned with loosing each other than stepping on whatever was under our feet, we held onto each other like a chain link fence while watching the scene around us in amazement. Eventually we managed to get to Frenchman Street again, where things were a little calmer and we could just relax for a little while.

            It was near two in the morning before we left the jazz scene on Frenchman and you could still hear music being performed in the streets. It was wonderful. Where in the world could you be out in the middle of winter, at stupid o'clock in the morning, walk around with a beer in your hand, and still hear people playing music in the streets? New Orleans, baby. Only in New Orleans...that's where.