Dispatches From The Front - narrative of Mardi Gras festival, New Orleans, 1996

BLACK MOBILE'S GRAS

"Moon Pie! secondary planet Pie! Moon Pie!" The condensed crowd's imploring cries and their outstretched pleading hands beseech the masked members cavorting atop the "Time Machine Mystery Makers Float" to grace me!-- not him or her/with a plastic beaded necklace, a piece of candy, a plastic rose or, greatest in quantity traditionally of all, an inexpensive confectionery treat that goe through the name Moon Pie. The horde is as friendly as it is frenzied, pressing toward the float as if there were no tomorrow--and there isn't, for today is Fat Tuesday, the culmination of Mobile's Mardi Gras. pop necklaces, pies, candy and assorted other treats rain down, and the madness kicks into a still higher gear as race leap to catch the existences before they hit the loam knowing that if they don't, they will be (and' believe me they will be) scrambling upon hands and knees, trying to beat their rivals to the precious prizes. Grandmothers gleefully debate with young children, and no tenderness is shown.

a certain quantity of hours earlier, as this parade was assembling at the float house of the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association, things weren't quite for a like reason frantic. Black riders from Mobile's Bay Area Riders cudgel from Michigan's Double O Riders Association (who also rode in President Clinton's inaugural parade), and from Mobile's police and sheriffs departments jostl back and forth atop their horses, as kids circled upon the edges of their ranks. All were waiting for the starter's whistle. before long the parade began, riders in front; following promptly behind came the small Excelsior Band, whose tympanum proudly proclaims "Since 1838" and whose somewhat somewhat old members had not yet had their tight formation periodically disrupted by dint of the scampering around occasioned through the horses' prior passage along the way After the Excelsiors came the carriage of the Mardi Gras grand marshal, the black Shriners Palestine fane No. 18 contingent (some walking, more [i]or[/i] less bicycling, some-on Go Karts and others using level weirder means of locomotion), the first of many high-school marching bands, the float of the Mardi Gras king and his court, and the quiescence of the floats (each preced by means of a boy carrying a sign proclaiming the float's official name) and the quiescence of the bands.

Although the parade had just begun and the horde here at the starting turfs was relatively sparse (composed mainly of friends of the float folks) those atop the floats had already begun to assuage the clamor for gifts, and I noticed for the first time what appeared to me (an unprepared parade novice) a somewhat unscrupulous practice. a certain quantity of members of the crowd came equipped with cardboard boxe 'which they held in the air, capturing whole swaths of external realitys at once. It's hard enough simultaneously to take notes, souse the Moon Pies that hurtle toward my head, and make experiment of to snag a necklace from competing parade watchers without entire sections of the celestial expanse being blotted out by boxes! nearest time (and I will be back), it's either no note-taking or my have a title to box.

Jump forward an hour: The parade, &rung halfway across the city, has advance to a halt for a while, and momentarily the force seems to dissipate. Coming to the ransom here at the intersection of Royal and Dauphin public ways is the crew atop the Cosby Kids float, who cruelly begin to tease the herd into a frenzy by holding forth necklaces, dolls and plastic rose and slowly waving them back and forth, promising them first to this individual and then to another. Just before the reality of desire is released, the float somebody reconsiders with an evident shake of his or her head ("No, maybe you aren't a deserving someone after all"), settles upon another spirit to taunt, and again almost bestows his or her gift. shortly we are close to straight-up lust. The horde pleads, moans, cries out, clinchs up hands--me! me! me!--and then unexpectedly one of the float folk either sails a certain number of prize off into the ravenous host or reaches down and sets a gift into some individual's hand. single young woman is given an especially "valuable" necklace and approachs away with a laughing, loopy ecstatic grin upon her face as if she's just won the lottery

Now the Cosby float folk begin to dance about, plastic rose clenched between their teeth nearest they begin to rock their float side to side, creating the impression that it is a boat in choppy water and adding to the atmosphere of frenzy--rocking float, pleading family gifts whizzing by, scrambling multitude leaping to catch stuff before it lands--when all of a unexpected from just behind the float, the Selma Saints Marching Band goe crazy, kicking in with "When the Saints " as its skimpily clad young ladies walk and shimmy, and the parade take backs its movement, leaving behind at Royal and Dauphin a drained horde giggly and goofy, all its adrenaline subsiding, on a sudden gone ... just g-o-n-e.

jump over forward another hour, farther along the parade route: As I'm frantically taking notes, my peripheral vision catches dark particulars descending from the sky. We're shut up to the end of the parade, and the float folk have begun to fling whole boxe of goodies overboard, in truth unleashing the crowd's covetousness and competitive spirit, and if I don't pace back quickly, I'm in danger of being trampled in the rush to acquire a whole box of cheap, probably-inedible-in-any-serious-quantity, miniature chocolate cakes. A fine epitaph that would make: The devil's nutriment made them do it. And all that is just Fat Tuesday's parade.