Favorite Unexpected Cultural Find: Cajun Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras starts early in Eunice. The floats begin lining up at 6 am and by the time the parade rolls, often under the uncertain clouds of late winter, the line of trucks, horses and trailers stretches for several miles. It is a spectacle in the Roman sense. In order to ride, you must be in costume, these costumes usually consist of hospital scrubs tasseled and draped with wild, exuberant fringes made from yards of yellow, purple and green fabric. Chicken patterns are acceptable, or LSU themes or the leftover tatters of paisley bandanas, burlap or coffee sacks. Camouflage and every design better suited to a bawdy-house or hunting camp than a public street are on full display. It is a festival of wavering, oddly-clad clowns, two-stepping to Cajun fiddles and Zydeco washboards.
We all go a little mad sometimes. What the Hatter said to Alice is doubly true for the riders in a Mardi Gras parade. What better time to do it than the day before Catholics the world over give up something dear, echoing a wandering Jesus, alone in the wilderness; forty days of privation ushered in by forty hours of pagan revels. It just makes sense. It is a glorious tradition, participation in which feels like some ancient human rite, adjusted and molded over the eons, but still a primal nod to the two sides of man. Feast and famine, birth and death, absolute, wild-assed drunken buffoonery followed by a month and a half of being judge-sober.
The parade stops often in that great, flat, grand prairie of south Louisiana; crawfish ponds, hemmed by berms and levees stretch to the horizon in every direction. The stalks of long grass and flag lilies reach up, electric green, in the ditches. Silhouetted against the bright sky, figures stand on their horses’ saddles and execute perfect back flips, landing with an enormous eruption of muddy water in the carefully tended ponds. Beers flows, whiskey bottles are passed and the music plays on. All of us, lurid in our costumed shambles.
For a people that choose to dress up like jesters and chase chickens in the mud on a perfectly good Tuesday and in a state that gives them an official vacation during which to do this, all things are possible. And, there is a good chance that something amazing is taking place.
More about this year’s celebration in Eunice at eunice-la.com.
Frank McMains is a Baton Rouge-based writer and photographer who focuses on food, travel and cultural peculiarity.. McMains has contributed work to various publications ranging from the Los Angeles Times to the web 2.0 dynamic news platform Now Public. He blogs at lemonsandbeans.com.
Other nominees were:
Laotian New Year in Broussard Louisiana Mound Builder’s Trail Pointe aux Chenes and the Houma Nation Western Shore of the Pontchartrain