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Riding
Iris
by Mary Grace Rankin Riding in a Mardi Gras Parade is quite an experience, one you NEVER forget! I rode in Iris, a women’s parade, the Saturday before Mardi Gras for a number of years. It is a great day for a parade. There are many visitors in town by that time. It is always most festive, with big friendly crowds on the Napoleon and St. Charles Avenue route. The weather, when I rode, was always beautiful, cool and clear, bright and sunny. People, especially families with children, begin to stake out their claim to a piece of the neutral ground* early on the morning of the parade. Some even spend the previous night guarding their “spot.” They bring food, drinks, and all sorts of things to make themselves more comfortable for the duration. Almost all of them have a ladder with a wooden bench seat bolted to the top for the little children to sit in. Some bring old sofas, chairs, rugs, and tents with some sort of portable potty inside. It can be a big production going to a parade! Now you must remember this is strictly a woman’s organization. If I were a man, by now I would be half-sloshed with vodka, bourbon, or whatever. Well, actually, I did go across the street and have a little “shot of vodka” toast with my neighbor. What a way to start a day! Only way to start a “ride”! I won’t bore you with the costume fittings, the purchasing and packing of the beads, the placing of all the loot on the float early in the morning by the husbands and children, the gathering of the Krewe at the Hilton, the ride to Claiborne Avenue in buses where you finally get to board the float. Those floats are high up off the ground. A number of them are double-deckers. I was probably in my mid-forties at the time I did this crazy thing. To get up on a float you have to climb a tall wooden ladder propped up against the side of it. You make the climb in full costume with a mask on your face. I remembered the hilarious story of my slightly intoxicated brother falling off of one such ladder. With this in mind I hung on tightly and was most careful where I put my feet. After climbing up onto the float I stood amidst mounds of large bags and boxes of beads, the “throws” as they are called, thousands of dollars worth of stuff. Little paths wound through the piles. In some places it was just a foothold. My husband directed me to “my spot.” My first priority, after finding “my spot,” was to locate and check out the “restroom.” If I were lucky, I would be stationed in the near vicinity of it. Can you picture yourself with a full bladder, trying to make your way to the restroom from a far distant part of a moving float, through all the commotion, the bags, the boxes, women riders throwing their junk into the crowd, trying not to trip and fall down?! To top it all off, when you get there the facility is nothing but a large paint bucket with a toilet seat somehow attached to it in a little shed-like thing. If your luck is running good, you might even find toilet paper in there! I’d call this a true Mardi Gras luxury! My dear husband had hammered nails, huge nails, the biggest nails I had ever seen, into the wooden frame on the inside of the float. He had kindly hung numerous “long beads and pearls” on the nails. They were now easily accessible to grab and throw to the crowds. You can’t imagine what a panic you are in when you see a friend, the float is moving along, and you can’t seem to get anything out of the bags to throw to them! These well-placed nails, however, proved to be a mixed blessing. When I returned home exhausted and exhilarated from my first “ride,” I removed my costume to find a purple stomach! Every time I had bumped into those nails they damaged my skin. Every poke left a bruise. Hundreds of bruises added up to a purple stomach! OK, so I’m in my spot. I know my beads. I know where “the can” is. I’m attached to my post by a safety belt. I’m all psyched and ready to go! It’s ten o’clock, time to roll. The bands are playing. The floats are moving forward. We were instructed not to throw until we made the turn. We could hardly wait! We could see the floats ahead of us throwing beads like crazy. The crowd was going wild! It was our turn to round the corner at Claiborne and Napoleon! Here we go! We’re off! What a sight! You would not believe the crowd! Thousands of upheld hands reaching out to us, thousands of voices screaming, hollering, pleading with us to throw something to them! What a rush! What a thrill to be WANTED by so many! As we made the turn we could see the colorful floats lumbering along ahead of us as far as the eye could see. They traveled under a canopy of live oaks. The maskers were tossing their “throws” to a never-ending, very thick crowd of people. That sight will remain with me forever. Sometimes in life we feel like screaming and hollering but it is just not quite appropriate to do so. We just “suck it up” and go on. But at parades it is most appropriate to scream and holler. It’s expected. How else do you think you can get the attention of the riders? So go on, scream and holler! Let it all out! Why do you want those silly beads anyway, you might ask? Well, it is not for the beads themselves, it’s the fact that you have been noticed for whatever reason, singled out. If that is not the case, if you don’t know a masker, if you haven’t made some sort of contact with one of them, it means you were better at catching the beads than anyone around you. You are a winner! It’s that old competitive thing. It’s partially about ego and power. You can’t help yourself. The spirit of the day, the voice of the crowd moves you to get involved. Some people out there at the parades don’t get involved. It could be age. You know you’re past your prime when you go to a parade and settle for enjoying just being there, watching the beautiful floats glide by, you sway a little to the sound of the music, and you visit with your family and friends. Sometimes, with the lamest of excuses, you stay home and watch it on TV. Even for the elderly, and the old at heart, the bands marching along with the floats sometimes made it hard to stand still. When I heard them I just wanted to dance! But there was no room to dance. And there was no time to dance. You had to stay busy. There was the constant demand of the crowd for beads. Beads, beads, beads, and more beads! If we didn’t throw to them fast enough, they’d jump up and snatch beads from us. A few would throw stuff at us, anything they could find on the ground. One of the great joys of riding in a parade is throwing beads to family and friends and, also, to people, who no one seems to be interested in throwing to. They are easy to spot. They sort of hang back. They are not waving their arms, screaming or hollering. They act like they don’t care. You make eye contact with them and throw to them. It is amazing to see them come alive and get into the spirit of the day. Now there are big smiles and waves. Sometimes even kisses of thanks are thrown back to the maskers. Wonderful. Everyone feels happy and that is a good thing. After traveling for a number of hours past some of the most beautiful houses in New Orleans, we reached the business district. The street narrowed. We traveled through canyons of stone. The pounding beat of the drums took over here. The sound reverberating off of the buildings reminded me of the legions marching triumphantly into Rome. Here, too, the crowds were frantically calling out for beads. Then, all of a sudden, we were in the wide-open space of Canal Street with thousands of parade goers anxious to catch our beads. The people called to us. The beads flew through the air. Some of us were out of throws. All we had to throw were kisses. I don’t think they were interested in our kisses. We were lucky they didn’t throw their beer cans at us! We always carried with us, and hung up in full view, things to tempt the crowd, to keep them excited, some special “throws.” I always got a kick out of the young men calling up to us, professing how BEAUTIFUL we were, how they LOVED us, all to try to get us to throw them that special something. So much bull was dished out. It was so thick you could wade through it! One year I had a rubber chicken that tormented people all along the route. Everyone wanted my chicken. They begged. They pleaded. At the end of the parade, down by the Hilton, just before we were about to climb off of the float, a handsome young man in a Naval uniform started begging for my chicken. I told him sorry, no. I wanted a kiss for my chicken. He said he’d give me a kiss for it. But, I said, “I want to kiss a man, not a boy.” to which he replied, “I’m all man, Lady!” He got my chicken. *Editors’ Note: “Neutral ground” is what New Orleanians call the grassy median dividing opposing lanes of traffic. See http://www.bartleby.com/61/35/N0073575.html for a thorough discussion of this term. |
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