In Louisiana: a Mad, Mad Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, the commencement of Lent, which means 40 days of penitence, blurred bibulously by last week in preponderantly Roman Catholic Louisiana, where the excesses were so fulsome, the wassail so all embracing, that the effect upon a paragrapher who participated was the loss of the ability to construct a straight sentence, or so it feels.

One more time: the story is told that a Cajun was brought to trial for slaughtering 100 egrets, the snow-white fowl that are protected under Louisiana law. The judge, dumb struck by the senselessness of it all, demanded, "What did you do with them?"

"I ate them," the defendant said.

The judge then wondered whether his own culinary scholarship fell short of the mark. "What do they taste like?"

"Almost as good as owl."

Hit the reset button and start again: in Mamou, in Evangeline Parish, in Louisiana's Cajun country, they celebrated Mardi Gras last week on horseback, on the dance floor and belly up in the ditches. The celebration lacked the formality and the aristocracy, whatever that is, of the carnival in New Orleans, but it may have surpassed the Crescent City in madness (you may have the hang of it here).

Mamou is a dog-eared old town, with a not-quite-finished look about it, as though its builders knocked off a week or two early. It is a low town, with one main street full of bars, set in farming country where people raise soybeans one year, rice the next, winter rye the next, and then begin the cycle again. Over the years nothing much changes in Mamou. The boys in this culture are expected to mature into good providers and two-fisted drinkers, and the girls are expected to marry and swap obsequiousness for fidelity and adulation. The blacks are expected to know their place. (The night before Mardi Gras six or seven blacks fought it out with a throng of whites in the middle of town, and as the fists and beer cans flew, the police, including some black officers, had a rough time containing things. Nonetheless, when it was over, no guns had been drawn, no arrests had been made and nobody said a word about it. To go to Mamou, then, is not to seek modernity. And nobody said quaint ever had to be pretty.) Mardi Gras in Mamou is for white boys a rite of passage, and there is something very primal and sexual about it. A boy of 16 is allowed to join in if he is accompanied by an adult; a boy of 17 can come on his own. For an $8 entry fee, he is assured of up to $250 in bail bonding against crimes he might commit. He is required to be at the American Legion post at 7 a.m. with his horse, to be in costume and to wear a mask. One of the twelve rules he must obey is that he "shall not possess nor consume any beverage except as dispensed from the liquor wagon." All day he will ride through the country collecting chickens, rice and vegetables for a gumbo the womenfolk will cook back in town. The column will be halted frequently for beer and boiled eggs. A Cajun band on a wagon, relying heavily on fiddle, washboard, squeeze-box, guitar and triangle, will serenade him on the 15-mile ride. He will be accompanied by two "floats," unadorned flatbed trailers bearing 40 or so supportive drunks. Half a dozen adult men, charged with maintaining order, will remain sober. By noon the horses will be lathered, and many of the riders will be out of their minds.