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Mardi Gras Day Eleven 2.26.98
The Orpheus parade on Monday evening featured Tommy Tune, Forest Whitaker, and, as it does every year, Harry Connick Jr., this year looking particularly bored. One of the women (maybe his wife, recognizing my NY Mets cap) threw me a nice pair of beads though. None of the celebrities
actually perform, they just stand up on the lead floats and wave. One year, however, Junior's dad, the New Orleans District Attorney, Harry Connick, sang some pretty swell Sinatra-type crap.
Jacque Lewis (aka, alligator boy) and Shelton Jackson came with Mandy and I. Instead of parking on the Garden District side of St. Charles, I found myself in the neighborhood on the other side of St. Charles, at Third and Dryades, which is one of the many N.O. killing zones. I don't know if its extraordinarily dangerous now but '94 and '95 news reports
made this corner one to remember. Remember to stay away from, that is.
"You can park there if you want," the man said after Mandy rolled down her window in response to his tapping, "but I can't guarantee your car will be all right. Now for five bucks you can park in this yard over here and I'll be right here watching it till the parade's over." Mandy became impatient with the huckstering and started walking up Third to St. Charles. I asked Shelton his opinion and when he shrugged I asked
him if he would cough up some money. He gave me his last two dollars and we pulled into the man's yard, behind the only other car, a Ford Bronco. "Don't let me get blocked in here, Ok?" He assured me no such thingwould happen, and it didn't.
Jacque and Shelton disappeared as soon as we got to the front lines but shortly Jacque reappeared and, despite Shelton's wishes to the contrary, stayed with us throughout the whole parade. Shelton would go away for awhile and then show up with two or three unopened (and intercepted) bags
of beads. But he didn't stray as far as he usually would, and
occasionally we would look up to see him lifting some other family's small child up on his shoulder for the passing floats.
Orpheus is one of the moneyed parades and some of the floats were truly a marvelous sight to behold as we gazed up from our playing field on the St. Charles neutral ground.
At no time did we see Jacque boot up pure cane sugar but his energy becomes so frantic at times that one does wonder. Jacque is impressively creative and imaginative and can hit you with a wry comeback that's enough to make you jealous, wishing you could be so clever. And then
he's an eleven-year-old boy again and we're having a knife fight with miniature plastic swords while a passing group of gang bangers exhales pot smoke into the air we breathe. And a rubber band becomes a device of torture and I taunt, "hey Jacque, look at this. You know what I use to
do with these when I was a kid?" And he's off and running, darting behind a light pole which doesn't hide him but does offer good deflection possibilities from dangerous projectiles, rubber, and otherwise. Clever alligator home boy.