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Mardi Gras Day Seven 2.21.98
Day six got eaten or pissed on. Computer magic. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed. I think day six was about three teenage girls (Heather, Julia, and KK) being told to get on the "fucking" ground by over zealous New Orleans policemen (with guns drawn) who considered the girls' flight as possible culpability in a crime that had occurred in the Iberville Projects as they were walking home from the parade. Translation: they
saw a boy with a gun being chased by cops so they ran. Cops let them go. Could have slapped them around a little for being curfew violators, but didn't.
We got Evelyn situated in a metal folding chair on the St. Charles neutral ground Thursday night for the Babylon parade. With the red plaid blanket wrapped around her legs and the blue bandanna covering her head, and the plastic straw of the 32 ounce beer filled go bottle clenched between her teeth, she did look a bit like aunt Jemima's evil step-sister, which may be why people were covertly staring at her this night. Or it could be because of her enthusiastic directions to the passing drill team squads.
"Come on now girls, smile, that's right, let me see that smile, you know you wanna smile, there you go, you got a pretty smile, you." And when the bands started playing and the young scantily dressed girls began to shimmy towards sensuality:
"There you go now baby, shake what you got, ooh yeah, looking good like that, ya'll keep a straight line now girls, there you go, that's very good."
Evelyn has been suffering from some as yet undiagnosed medical problems so the wobbly legged stagger was not completely beer induced as I took her by the arm up Phillip street into the Garden District so she could pee in a dark corner of someone's grass driveway.
Mandy was catching beads and cups and keeping an eye on the fat couple (from Ohio?) who were constantly popping peanuts into their mouths but never seemed to restock their hands from any mother lode peanut source.
After the parade passed we decided to race ahead and catch it again.
At the corner of Camp and Canal I was realizing a great navigational mistake as Evelyn ranted on about something.
"Evelyn, I have to concentrate here so I'm going to ask you to shut up," I said.
And the world was suddenly silent.
Across Canal I'm into the French Quarter and I take a left on St. Louis. When the three cars in front of me stopped at Bourbon street begin to inch forward, easing their way through the throngs of revelers, I stay bumper to bumper, and sigh relief as I begin moving again at normal speed up St. Louis. After circling the blocks several times I find a spot on
Rampart that only a Festiva would fit into (using both front and rear bumpers several times, at that) and we walk over to Basin, near Iberville. Before that, I was standing behind the car working my zipper as Evelyn peed on the curb and Mandy into a cup in the back seat, and a cop cruising the other side of Rampart, stopped, and shining his spotlight on me, yelled out, "put it back in your pants." I nodded. I didn't need to pee anyway, I was just checking the equipment.
A cop on Basin very politely tells Evelyn that she needs to move her chair a little ways back from the street. This is near the end of the parade route, in a neighborhood that photographs from the turn of the century show as being completely lined with elaborate two and three story whore houses. They all gone now, though.
It would seem that other than Mandy and I and the cop and the float riders, few white people see this part of the parade route as a viable area to catch beads and live to tell about it. But it's all good. The krewe members were unloading their beads and trinkets with reckless abandon as they prepared to disembark from their floats and have their ball at the Performing Arts Center in Armstrong Park.
We walked back to the car with light heads and heavily laden bags of treasure.