A Few Pre-Mardi Gras Notes
General observation: Writers often sit down at a keyboard and come up with thoughts that had never occurred to them before. Their own words surprise them. Mardi Gras does that to people; it brings to the surface the weird and creative in whoever understands it.
Note 1: Saturday night, on the way back into the French Quarter after the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus parade, we walked past Sydney’s on Decatur and I noticed I no longer seemed to be in the company of my next of kin, the most pleasant and lovely Lisa. I panicked a little. Not that heart-stopping panic when you think you have forgotten your phone, but more like when you worry you may have wandered off without your family.
Anyway, I looked back and felt Lisa tug at my shirt. I have known this woman for 30 years but here was something new. My nearly teetotaling wife was telling me we needed to stop at a liquor store. Why? She had spotted a display of Old New Orleans rum, distilled somewhere up Frenchmen Street, and there, sure enough, with a red label, was a bottle of her poison of choice, the Cajun Spice version. At home, she reminded me, we were almost out of rum. ALMOST OUT! And it’s hard to find this stuff outside the New Orleans city limits.
This is what Mardi Gras does to people – it brings out the pirate in them. I remember buying our current bottle of rum at a Rouse’s market during a crawfish boil hosted by friends on South Carrollton Avenue. Jazz clarinetist Doreen Ketchens and her band provided the entertainment. That was years ago. As guests arrived, I walked to the nearby store, returned, opened the bottle and placed it ceremoniously onto the table where Lisa and a gang of women were deep into conspiracy and innuendo while waiting for crawfish. No one touched the bottle. After the party, I took it home with me, which may not be the best form, but I kept my full, $40.00 bottle of rum just the same.
Lisa is the only person in the house who drinks the stuff. She sips it with Diet Coke at the rate of maybe two ounces per year. If she drank any less alcohol you would have to say she never drinks at all. Nevertheless, we were now ALMOST OUT OF RUM!
Note 2: Speaking of Sydney’s liquor store. Anywhere else in America, if you jump into some stranger’s conversation, because you have something useful to add, they look at you like, “Um, OK, creep.” Not necessarily so in the Quarter, where a good story is worth adding to if you’ve got the right stuff and are sufficiently sober to tell it.
So, we were in line, waiting to pay for rum. And here’s the deal with Sydney’s; it’s a great little store. They have a large selection in a small space. At the counter, they are not fast. I think their card reader is attached to the dial-up modem I used with my Macintosh IIx in 1994. They will give every visitor’s conversation full attention, and will patiently wait out the fervent rantings of a destitute local who leans through the doorway to share news of how much they want for rents around there. Customers wait their turn, patiently or not. What’s the hurry? Where have they to go that’s better than here?
While we stood in line, the conversation between the cashier and the guy ahead of us was about birds and how they sometimes get into the store and become a pain to evict. The customer offered that at least it wasn’t a bat. Well, I used to work in and explore caves so I needed, of course, to defend the poor, misunderstood bat, who is widely feared and disparaged unfairly. Somehow, the talk turned to the scar behind my left eye that two eye doctors, 20 years apart, discovered and identified as a relatively rare bat-related disease. Interest in this was ramping up and they looked into my eye. People around us tried to pronounce the medical term histoplasmosis, and they were coming up with some pretty good potential names when, finally, it was noticed that we wanted to buy a bottle of rum.
Note 3: Lisa and I have this thing – every year, we have to go to Beads By the Dozen (BBD) after Krewe of Muses bead distribution every year no matter what. Then, we use that trip as an excuse to go to Jefferson Variety because, hey, it’s just down the road. I suspect we would visit the fabulous Jeff Variety even if it were located far away, on an island in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. Never mind that by that far into Carnival season we are always well stocked with Mardi Gras items for Lisa to throw from her Muses float and her Muses beads alone barely fit into our SUV.
When we walk into BBD each year, the only thing we know for sure is that we really don’t need any more beads. But, we want to look at everything in the store except maybe the Irish and Christmas beads and so we do. We split up, as we each have our own bead-shopping speeds and aisle route strategies. Then begins this little thing we never talk about in which we each sneak bags of beads into our purple or green cart while the other is not looking. When we check out, the girl at the counter tells us our total is approximately the cost of a full set of shocks and struts for Lisa’s car, which we are ruining by hauling grosses of beads up and down Interstate 10 and across the Twin Spans over Lake Pontchartrain.
Note 4: Speaking of I-10. We drove home yesterday after Muses bead distribution with the rear bumper hanging closer to the pavement than it did on the way to New Orleans. The thing is, Lisa has to take all of this Muses stuff home, unbox it, sort and label it just so, then reload it into the car along with non-Muses treasures she has accumulated. Then, we have to haul it all back to New Orleans and hoist it onto a float, to be thrown to strangers for free the next night, the whole time feeling this is not frivolous or a financial burden but in fact a most pleasurable privilege.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.