French Quarter the day before the New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl
Mardi Gras 2010 Report
Author’s note: This was written for a group of about a hundred of my friends who travel to New Orleans nearly every year for Mardi Gras and have been doing so for a long time. They are people from all over America and a few from abroad who came here individually or as couples, fell in love with the city and generally “got” what this storied bend in the river is all about. They first met as a group on an internet Mardi Gras forum, began to gather in person when they were in the city, and now some are so close they attend each other’s weddings and funerals. Mostly, they get together in the French Quarter and on the parade routes as often as possible to be together and not just enjoy but contribute to the delights of the Carnival season.
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This report has been a long time coming.
In past years, by this far into the New Orleans Carnival season I would have checked on the city and reported how she was doing. I would have tried to help you see and feel the cultural sea change that takes place here at this time every year, beginning, officially at least, on Twelfth Night, so you could come into town with the existential tide instead of dropping onto the beach with your luggage like so many Mardi Gras commandos.
Some of you have expressed recently that you are not feeling Mardi Gras quite as you should and have asked for inspiration. I should have come to your rescue; it is my self-professed job and I have let you down. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. I sense you resent that this Mardi Gras season seems to be all about the Saints and not about the parades, parties and food. Maybe you think this Mardi Gras won’t be that great; too much Who Dat and not enough Woo Hoo.
This year, so far, I haven’t known quite what to tell you. I’ve been too caught up. After all, the Saints are going to the Super Bowl, right in the middle of Mardi Gras. Anywhere else it might all be too much, but New Orleans has survived too much many times and this time, for once, I think we are ready, at least physically. Spiritually, this is big. It’s way bigger than getting a Friday morning downstairs table at Galatoire’s. This is defeating the British at Chalmette.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about writing something about this Mardi Gras. The story seems easy enough, if more complicated than usual. Mardi Gras 2010 is coming. We just elected a new mayor to replace Ray Nagin. Purple, green and gold banners are going up on balconies and hotel flagpoles. Caravans of trucks are bringing in fresh shrimp and oysters and Leidenheimer’s is baking miles of French loaves and pistolets. You can’t get down Bourbon Street during the day for all the deliverymen hustling beer kegs and booze bottles from trucks to saloons. You can’t get down other streets for all the parading krewes moving their floats from dens to Uptown staging areas. But who cares about all that? The Saints are going to the Super Bowl and their fans here are losing what’s left of their minds.
To see the big picture of this thing and try to understand might require climbing a water tower, or if we had a mountain you could climb that and maybe peer over an overhanging rock. From such places the truth can sometimes be seen, but lately I have not found a way up. So, in lieu of an epiphany of what this upcoming Super Bowl might do to our Mardi Gras, I fell back on a strategy that has served me well – I don’t chase meaning in New Orleans, for it is a ghost that fades as you approach. The spirit of this place will come to you when you least expect it, when you are not grasping at it, when and if you are ready.
Two weekends ago, when the Saints won the NFC Championship game as Garrett Hartley kicked his instantly famous 40-yard field goal in overtime against the Vikings, would have been a good time to file a report. But after that game I was emotionally drained. This Saints’ NFL season had been a killer. Hope, longing and faith had come to collect their fees. It was time to rest and heal. Figuring out what the Super Bowl would mean to the city, to Mardi Gras, and to all of you, would have to wait. Besides, I had to get ready to travel to Houston on business. I would be there for a week.
As I drove west on I-10, I wanted to be back in New Orleans, where the Who Dat Nation was basking and boasting in glorious relief and pride. Two days later, on I-59 in Houston’s dreaded morning rush-hour traffic, as I was wondering what lane I should be in, the essence of our Mardi Gras/Super Bowl season came to me at 60 mph.
While trying to read the highway signs, I heard someone honking like crazy. To my left was an old, small car driven by an attractive young woman. She was looking at me and laying on the horn. I assumed she didn’t know me and had to assume she probably hadn’t decided to pick that particular moment to flirt with an old fat guy, which was possible, I guess (no, it wasn’t, at all) so I thought she must have wanted into my lane. I slowed down, gave her plenty of room and noticed she had Texas plates, but she didn’t move over. She rolled down her passenger-side window.
Curious, I positioned my vehicle beside hers and rolled down my window. Grinning, she pumped her fist and screamed Who Dat, Who Dat, Who DAAAAT, loud enough to be heard over the rush of the wind. Thrilled, I returned the greeting, and with the wind she was gone.
I realized then that my first assumption about her was wrong. We did know each other. We were, in fact, related. She had to have been a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who, like so many others, came to Houston for refuge from the storm and never made it back home. Who else but a New Orleans native would be passionate enough about home and team to risk her life pouring out love to a stranger on a busy interstate highway. She had seen the white fleur de lis sticker in the rear window of my truck, and my Louisiana plates. The Saints’ making it to the Super Bowl has united fans as never before. For now, the Who Dat Nation knows only two colors – black and gold. The woman on the highway was letting me know she was my sister. I was not alone in this unfamiliar place.
Upon my return from exile in Houston, I devised a plan. The next day, Saturday, I would visit the Quarter, which I knew would be packed with Who Dats, and there, just one day before the Super Bowl, I would find the truth about Mardi Gras 2010. I would bring my next-door neighbor and his 14-year-old son with me. They bleed black and gold but had never ventured from their home in Slidell to spend any quality time together in the French Quarter, just 20 miles away. A lot of Northshore people are like that. Generations of families tell each other the city is all about violence and corruption and should be avoided except for Saints games and the occasional boat show.
Driving down to the French Quarter with my buddy and his son, I was little afraid of the truth. What would I do if I found Mardi Gras 2010 really was just an afterthought this year? What would I tell you if I learned that this year no one cared about Mardi Gras and all they cared about was football? How could I break it to you if the magic just wasn’t happening as it always had before? Would you come here and feel cheated in those $400 hotel rooms?
My neighbors and I were not helping to ease your concerns. We clamped two Saints flags atop my truck. We wore our Saints jerseys and caps. We cranked Saints tailgating music out the windows. We carried Saints beads to throw. We didn’t carry a purple, green and gold anything, yet here it was the weekend before the big Mardi Gras weekend. We had already been to parades and had our fill of king cake.
Well, all I can say is that the scene we walked into in the Quarter was beyond my ability to capture well in words. I will pluck off a few grapes for you.
For one thing, I have found easier parking near the French Quarter on Fat Tuesdays than I found the day before the big game. Everyone was down there.
As we waded in, 44 years of love, longing and faith washed like seafoam about our feet in pearlescent purple, green, black and gold. Love and pride. Pandemonium and ecstasy. Parasols, bald heads, long hair, floppy hats and do-rags. NFL gear and feather boas. Kids and grandmas. Hotties, frat boys and nuns. Locals and tourists. Beads, many in Saints colors, were everywhere. A second line snaked toward us. We jumped in behind a brass band blaring “The Second Line” mixed with the Ying Yang Twins. A Saints flag fluttered in the up-thrust hand of the Joan of Arc statue. Some of these people have been waiting for this time to come since the first Saints game, Sept. 17, 1967, when they sat in Tulane Stadium with their parents and watched John Gilliam return the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown.
We had beer, raw oysters and root beer. We took the 14-year-old on his first visit to Bourbon Street (that we know about). Dad enjoyed watching his kid take that neon rite of passage.
The Mystic Krewe of Shangri La was starting their French Quarter carriage parade and stroll, a long and joyous walk. They had with them the St. Augustine Marching 100 band, which brought tears to my eyes as it had when I caught sight of them playing in the first, unlikely Mardi Gras after Katrina. That parade, in the rubble of disaster, seemed a miracle. And here they were again, blasting the news we thought we would never hear. I got some beads from Shangri La walkers and was handed a Happy Valentines pencil. Everywhere were hugs and kisses and music and dancing.
Folks, have no fear of this year’s football fever in New Orleans. It’s not much of a stretch to predict that next week will bring the greatest Mardi Celebration this city has ever seen. Regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s game, the genie is out of the bottle. A curse has been broken. There is so much magic here you can reach out and touch it. Dream and reality are one.
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.