Mardi Gras is a Legal Holiday in Louisiana

With great memories of Dan Willis (August 11, 1954 - May 30, 2011)

Store Sign in Downtown Eunice

Outside of Louisiana, it’s hard to grasp what Mardi Gras means, in-state.  For me, as a child from another place, Mardi Gras just meant a pancake dinner in a church fellowship hall.  A few dollars for a few pancakes swirled over with synthetic syrup.  Then busily, we went about Lent, repentant. 

I imagined, then, that in New Orleans, people paraded on Mardi Gras day but would have never guessed that the Fat Tuesday festivities were actually the culmination of weeks of parades.  And that all day, every day parading began the weekend before Mardi Gras.  Or that everyone, from kindergarteners to university students had several days off from school.  Or that people decorated their houses with beads and wreaths and colored lights.  Or that Mardi Gras was actually a legal holiday on the scale of Christmas or Thanksgiving.

I was reminded of all of this during last week’s episode of Treme, set during Mardi Gras season.  As friends and I ohhed and ahhed over the king cake that one New York transplant received from a friend in New Orleans, Helana (who makes an excellent King Cake, herself) said, “You know, the rest of the country is probably really confused by this entire episode.”

Which seemed possible, though it summed up a lot, and I appreciated that David Simon hadn’t explained everything—just let you glimpse and guess: the neon green, gold, and purple gooey goodness of king cake, the grandeur of the Mardi Gras Indians, the lengths people go to for trophy throws, like Zulu’s coconuts or Muses’ shoes, the way Bourbon Street shuts down at the stroke of midnight like a dirty version of Cinderella, and how there’s an entirely different tradition in the country, in towns like Basile, Iota, Eunice, and Mamou.

Mamou is where I spent last Mardi Gras day, with my friend Leah and her father, Dan Willis. 

I think we should do the country Mardi Gras this year, she’d said, and I responded a little non-commitally, much like the DJ on the show.  

The Courir de Mardi Gras . . . I loved the idea of following a caravan of men dressed in hand-sewn costumes riding on horseback from house to house as they begged for the ingredients of a communal gumbo to be cooked at the end of the day when the riders galloped back into town, but it seemed to raise an obvious problem, one also evoked on the show: being in Mamou on Mardi Gras meant not being in New Orleans.

It’s worth it, she said simply.  The DJ on the show wasn’t convinced to go, but I was. 

Lundi Gras 2011: Dan, Leah, and I arrive in Grand Mamou in time for an outdoor dance near the famed Fred’s Lounge.  

First, we sampled barbeque sandwiches and boudin and crawfish nachos. 

Boudin: Pork Sausage with Rice Inside

“I think we should taste everything,” Dan said.

“Your Dad makes an excellent point,” I seconded.

So, we food-stand hopped.

Then we scrawled something a little rowdy in the guest book for the time capsule.  Something some member of the historical society probably whited out later.

Finally, we wandered into the field of hundreds of locals bobbing to the zydeco beats of a live band blaring out over the trampled grass.

Leah’s father pulled us into a huddle in the middle of the swaying dancers, some of whom had balanced cans of beer on their heads as they moved to the music, and spoke real low:


 Look, girls.  Our job is to liven these people up.  We bring the fun wherever we go, got it? We bring the fun.  He said it like the future depended on it.  Like we had better not mess this up, damnit.

So, we each took one of his hands, looped through each others’ limbs as we spun and leapt and rolled into his arms then unfurled like party streamers, weaving together then untangling against the starry sky in Big Mamou. 

Girls, I think our work is done here, he said after half an hour. . . . But those people over there look a little bored. C’mon.  

We moved through another patch of dancers.   And another.  Shimmied.  Shaked.  Got jovial.  Got joyous.   Brought the fun until he declared our work done.

My Dad’s ready to party, Leah had warned me when she picked me up.  Hope you can keep up.

The next morning, we woke up before six and made our way to the site of the prior night’s gathering, wondering if some people had never left.  Men having Bud Light for breakfast danced on horses and sung the Mardi Gras song until it was time to gather for a secret meeting, (which I envisioned as a slightly larger version of our huddle) before meandering down the highway.

Pre-Ride Meeting, Right Before the Door Closed

 Granted, with the horses and hoods, the preponderance of white men and the closed discussions, it can briefly feel like you stumbled into a group of Klansmen.  But the tradition dates back to the medieval fête de la quémande, when rural communities pooled their resources in the harshest period of winter.  The hoods or capuchons, mock the elaborate hairstyles of women nobility and the garb of religious figures like the pope.  It’s actually illegal to wear a hooded costume or head covering in Louisiana except for on the expected occasions and for religious purposes, seemingly because of the association of facial coverings with Klan activities. 

In the Morning, Pre-Courir

At each house on the route, the capitaine, the only uncostumed member of the caravan, spoke to the owner and asked for permission to approach.  Neighbors contributed ingredients . . . rice, vegetables, chickens . . . the latter gets tossed into the air while twenty or so men scramble through the mud to catch them. Then, everyone sings the Mardi Gras song and dances for a few minutes before moving to the next house.

Post-Chicken Chase

Throughout the day, Dan received a steady stream of phone calls from work.  He’d listen for a few minutes, punctuate the pauses with “Mmm-hmm.” and “I see,” then say, abruptly, “Well, Mardi Gras is a legal holiday in Louisiana.”

I loved the way he said it.  Definitively.  As if he were sternly informing his client that they might both be flirting with misdemeanor charges for discussing work in such untimely circumstances.  As if they both had better hang up immediately in case the line was tapped and someone heard them talking shop when they ought to be bringing the fun.

 Then he’d laugh and say, I can’t even tell you where I am right now.  All I know is I’m riding down this dusty road in the outskirts of Mamou in a line of about 25 cars watching a bunch of coonasses chase chickens. 

Coonass is a word originally used as a slur against Cajuns that has been affectionately appropriated by many Cajuns, themselves.  Several of my students claim to use it fairly regularly in their families; others categorically don’t use it.  Like any reworked word, what’s signified depends on who’s saying it and how.  Here, it was used with great affection and identification.

We didn’t stay for the gumbo.  We wanted to catch the return of the riders in Eunice, a nearby town that allows women and children to participate in the courir.  Our work in Mamou was done.

And that’s how I remember Dan Willis.  In his leather jacket in a field in Grand Mamou.  Surveying the scene after he’d dizzied us with his dance moves.  All of us laughing as he congratulated us on a job well done.  Trusting that the fun would stay right where we’d put it even after we'd left. 

Boots and Saddles

King Cake and Babies

“If Madame S. ever tries to feed you something, check first to make sure there’s not an infant inside.”  

-a line from Simon’s letter to the following year’s French class after my first year of teaching

The first time I made a King Cake, I used a box mix from New Orleans that my sister sent me with a little post-it exclaiming, “For your class!”  


"Oh GOODY,"  I thought,  until I opened it and realized this was not the three-step, two-ingredient, twenty-minute investment I’d learned to expect from boxed deserts.  

For one thing, it included a little packet of YEAST.  “Where,” I wondered, “is the logic in a product that assumes you lack the time to mix together sugar and flour but that you’d be happy to loiter around the kitchen for three hours while your dough rises twice?”  But Louisiana has its own logic, I’m learning, the first tenet of which is that nothing, not even a box mix of cake, can be rushed. 

So what is a King Cake?  They’re consumed all over Europe in various permutations, but I’ll focus on the Louisiana kind.  A Pelican State King Cake is a donut-shaped pastry, usually filled with cinnamon, cream cheese and fruit, or praline and topped with glaze and glittery sprinkles in the green, gold, and purple shades of Mardi Gras.  King Cakes are historically associated with Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, which falls on January 6^th and is, according to Catholic tradition, the day that the three wise men (or three kings) first saw Jesus.   In Louisiana, you can find them as early as New Year’s and consume them until Lent begins and its time to fast all of that frosting out of your system.

Each cake comes with a shiny gold crown and a miniature plastic baby (said to represent Christ).  Sometimes a string of beads rattles in the box alongside the other favors.  In New Orleans, the baker hides the baby, but in the more choking-hazard conscious city of Baton Rouge, where I live, the baby sits atop the cake, or (when placed by a more irreverent baker) finds himself face-down in glaze.  The person who has the baby in his or her piece of cake claims the crown along with the responsibility for providing the next cake.

Back in North Carolina, circa 2004 . . . After reading the directions, I was beginning to wonder if it would have been easier to make the kind of King Cake I’d had in France, with phyllo dough and frangipane, instead of trying to concoct an O-shaped cinnamon roll with tri-color toppings. 

Luckily, Kathryn helped me.  Kathryn was the seven year-old who adopted me that year.  After school, she’d wait by the window until she saw my red car pull into the low-rent apartments where we both lived.  Then, she’d run out, barefoot in every weather, long red tangled hair flying behind her, shouting “Tahwah, Tahwah!!”  She’d throw her tiny arms around my waist and say as she stared up at me, “What do you want to do today?”  She looked and sounded so much like my own sister had at that age.  

“Do you want to help me make a cake for my class?”  She bobbed her head yes.  “Good.”

I was rifling through the cabinets for a bowl for the dry ingredients, when Kathryn called me out.  Again. 

This sort of thing happened all the time.  I’d be going about my life as a twenty-five-year-old trailed by a very small sidekick when Kathryn would point out my corruptive influence.  The first time it happened was the day I moved in.  After making several trips up the stairs with Kathryn and her friend Rachel cheerily carrying child-sized armfuls of books and CDs, I noticed that I’d made at least one trip up without them. 

“Kathryn?  Rachel?”

I found them standing transfixed before a large Matisse print I’d carried up a few minutes before and propped against the wall: La Joie de Vivre.  It’s a tangerine and cotton candy colored landscape of nudes lounging, sunning themselves, and swirling through what looks like a grown-up game of ring around the rosie.   Other figures play the flute, nap, kiss, and stroll. 

Kathryn sighed gravely, disappointed to learn that she’d be sharing a residence with the kind of pervert who had the gall to display such pornographic material in her home.

“Looks to me like they’re BUTT NAKED!” 

"Yeah," echoed Rachel solemnly, “Just running around in their yard BUTT naked.” 

I didn’t like the puritanical tone of their art assessment but wasn’t sure how to respond knowing they’d probably parrot back to their parents any Our Bodies, Ourselves “no shame in naked” style explanation I might offer.

“Well, they’re probably hot from all that dancing and flute playing.”

“Where ARE they?” questioned Rachel who clearly doubted that such loose-moraled frolicking could take place in any yard she knew of.

I shrugged. “France?”

They both seemed relieved. 

This time, Kathryn was concerned about what she glimpsed in my cabinets.  “Those are wine cups, aren’t they,” Kathryn accused pointing up to the turquoise and lime green plastic goblets on the top shelf.

“Wine GLASSES,” I mentally corrected her, then realized she was exactly right.  Wine glasses were, by definition, made of a material that didn’t bounce when dropped on the kitchen floor.  So, not only was she reproaching me for all the villainy that drinking connoted in a seven-year-old’s mind, but also pointing out that I consumed adult beverages from a container one step up from a sippy cup.

Unwilling to suffer the judgment of a second grader or to lie about whether I did or did not have a bottle of wine befitting the quality of said wine cups in the refrigerator at that very moment, I responded: “Wine’s not the only thing you can put in them.”

“Ohhhh!!!” Kathryn shrieked. 

Maybe the alcohol didn't bother Kathryn.  Maybe it was more that seeing the wine cups called her attention to the fact that we weren’t the same age.  That at some point, perhaps after her bedtime, I led another life in which my non-elementary school friends and I sat around sipping forbidden substances out of wine cups and conversing about mortgages and books above her reading level.

“Can we put chocolate milk in them?” 

“Absolutely.”

“What else!?”

I paused, allowing her to imagine the possibilities.

“Pudding.”

She clapped.

After that, every time Kathryn ate anything at my house, she wanted it out of the wine cups.  And now that she knew about King Cakes, she requested a prize inside.  She’d close her eyes while I hid trinkets and jewelry castoffs in goblets of popcorn or underneath scoops of Neapolitan.

One day, her mother asked me to babysit, while she visited her own mother in the hospital.  “The ICU had limited visiting hours, just half an hour, really” she said, “and this is the only day I can get a ride.”

So, Kathryn and I settled in to watch an animated version of Frosty the Snowman we’d checked out from the library.  “I don’t know if we’ll have time to finish it before your mom gets back.”

“It’s okay,” said Kathryn, “I’ve already seen it a bunch.” 

I woke up with a start and saw the time blinking on the VCR: 1:30 A.M.  Kathryn was asleep on the other couch.  Where the hell was her mom?  She’d left for the hospital before dinnertime.  I checked my phone.  Nothing.  Walked downstairs and tapped tentatively on their apartment door.  No answer.   Searched for a note on my door. 

When I found no sign of communication, I went back inside, locked the door, turned off the TV, and draped a blanket over Kathryn.  Maybe we’d been sleeping when her mom came by.  Still . . . Oh well, nothing more to do now.

The next morning, Kathryn and I made pancakes, walked downtown, and browsed at the library.  I kept thinking, “What if her mom doesn’t come back?”  Uncharacteristically, Kathryn didn’t ask any questions, which made me wonder if something like this had happened before. 

I realized I didn’t even have a phone number for her mother.  Could I adopt Kathryn?  Did she have any other relatives?  I could probably make a bedroom for her in the den.  All of the hard stuff, diapers and toilet training and learning to walk and talk had been taken care of.  Besides, she bypassed most of my past roommates in maturity.

“That your baby?” someone asked as Kathryn pored over the Amelia Bedelia collection in the children’s section. 

“I’m just watching her for her mom.” 

“You two look alike.”

After having a milkshake and hamburger for lunch, we walked back up to the apartments.  Kathryn’s mother waited at the top of the hill.  “Baby!” she screamed.  Kathryn took off running, “Mama, Mama!” 

“I missed you, baby.  Mama got locked out of the house.”  Her eyes never met mine.  “Got locked out of the house and couldn’t get back in till now.”

“Well,” I said, relieved and a little sad, “I think your baby missed you, too.”