Mardi Gras Should Be a National Holiday

One of the things I miss most about Louisiana besides my family is Mardi Gras. We haven’t been back to a single one of them since we moved away from there because the kids always had school on that day. 

So I have a proposal here. How about we drop Christmas and just have Mardi Gras instead? It’s got the bright colors of gold, purple, and green (that’s an immediate improvement over the red/green motif) and there are parades, costumes, and best of all, revelry.

There is no party like Mardi Gras in Louisiana. Some places around here have tried to start one, but it just doesn’t have the right flavors. It’s like going to see that little Eiffel Tower in Vegas and trying to get the feel of Paris out of that. Can’t be done.

Oh well. Anyway…

Y’all have a happy Mardi Gras.

Parade Finale

I saved two of my favorite photos of the parade for last. I don’t know why there wasn’t a photo of the Yambilee King and Queen, but they were usually on the last float.

I like this one because it tells a little story of how the Cajuns got to Louisiana. Also, the people on the float are dressed in traditional Acadian costumes.

Can you guess which one of these gowns is my favorite in the below photo? Extra candy if you guess the right one.

Can you also guess why the horsemen/women come at the very end?

Here is a shot of some of the floats lined up before the parade.

I hope you enjoyed the show and caught lots of candy. If you missed the other four parts, you can find them at these links:

I Love A Parade

Then Come the Floats

Living Color 

Are You Ready for Some More Parade?

I’d like to thank my mom for allowing me to show these photos. Okay, I didn’t ask, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.

I have used all but two of the photos she had and am wondering how many there would be if my parents had had digital cameras back then…

I Interrupt the Parade

To show you this graphic of the biggest hurricane I’ve ever seen, Ike.

 

I stole that graphic from CNN. 

We’re still going to finish the parade a little later, that post is all ready to go, as the title of my blog reads, you know… yeah. 

You can’t really know anything about what’s happening by watching the news. They don’t really know much and by the time we get some daylight, few people there will have power, phone lines will be down, and real news will just sort of trickle in along with a shit load of rumors. 

So far, I have not heard any bad news regarding any of my family or friends.

I feel really bad for all the people from New Orleans who moved to the Houston area after Katrina.

Are You Ready for Some More Parade?

Okay, let’s go. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have missed this, this, and that.

Again, since so much of our culture is music related, we have lots of floats with musical themes.

Even the elderly musicians get to ride and perform on a float. The sign the Boy Scout is holding reads “Acadian Music.” You always hear that at any festival you go to in Louisiana. You can’t see the accordian in the above band, but I promise you, it’s there. So is the fiddle. And maybe a washboard.

I like the way you can see the other floats that are coming if you looked down the road in this photo. I also like the pretty gowns these visiting queens are wearing. And the tiaras.

But this one… The ballerina outfit with the cape so fits into my dreamworld.

Tomorrow will be the grand finale as I am running out of photos.

Living Color

First some music from the Yamettes.

On a musical themed float. Music is a big part of our heritage. And look, it’s not just girls who get to ride in parades down here. 

I am almost positive that is my dad in the lower right corner of the above photo.

This was taken during the Vietnam War days. Notice the soldier beside the float.

You might be wondering how these things move around. Let’s back up.

Check out the old tractor. 

To give you an idea of how much restoration I did on the above photo, it was torn and very fragile. I puzzled and taped the photo together before scanning. Here is how it looked after scanning:

Not all the photos are in bad shape, just a few. I actually enjoy doing this, it’s relaxing.

More fun stuff tomorrow, and if you missed the the first and second parts of the parade, it’s not too late. Here are the links:

The beginning: I Love a Parade

Part Two: Then Come the Floats

Then Come The Floats

After the clowns with shopping carts selling balloons and cotton candy, the police on motorcycles, the scouts, a marching band come the cars carrying visiting royalty and other important people of the town,  such as the mayor.

They always ride in convertibles, but if it is a sports car, so much the better. 

What makes this part a hit with the crowd is they always throw candy. Free stuff, Yay! I’ve been in parades where I’ve had to sit in a car and trust me, if you do not have a sack of bubble gum or Sweetarts to throw, the only people who will give you any attention are the little old ladies who clap for everyone.

 

Floats. Love ‘em. The one above is a beach scene. The girl in the gown would most likely be a visiting queen from another festival such as the Crawfish Festival. Visiting royalty are spread out over the rest of the floats. 

The above is so badly damaged (a Polaroid), I almost didn’t put it up here, but I like the queen waving with her gloved arm. And that clown riding the unicycle beside the float just rocks. 

And wow, look at those seahorses.

If you missed the beginning of the parade, you have to go see it, that’s where the crazy cars are.

Come back tomorrow, I’ll have some floats in color.

I Love A Parade!

So let’s have one. Cajun style. Vintage.

During the 60s and 70s my parents took a lot of photos of the Yambilee parade in South Louisiana. (Our city was the yam capital of the world.) Festivals are a big deal in these parts, at least they used to be.

For the next week or two I’ll put some up on the blog. Parades are like stories. They have a theme, they build and climax, they have props, costumes, pretty girls and talent.

They usually start out slow, you can hear the sirens and funny cars coming.

That’s probably to make sure the spectators are out of the street so they don’t get run over by the tractors and floats.

And then the Scouts,

Followed by the local high school bands.

Okay, that is all I have for today. I’m actually scanning and restoring them as we go. Make sure you come back tomorrow. There’s some really cool stuff in the pipeline and I throw candy.

Message in a (plastic) Bottle

I was talking to my mom on the phone earlier and told her to send me a message in a bottle. Looking at the hurricane tracking chart, the eye of Gustav goes over her house and pretty much ends not too far from mine.

We don’t get hurricanes this far from the coast, just some rain and winds, nothing to worry about. My mom lives far enough from the coast that if it does go there, it is a much weaker storm, not even a hurricane, but a tropical storm. The city is built on a hill, so they don’t even really have problems with flooding. The high winds do knock down trees and power lines. She was without power for at least a week after Hurricane Ivan a few years back.

All this hurricane watching makes me twitchy. I’ve never seen a hurricane path like this one; it appears to cover the entire state of Louisiana. Usually if one goes there, they catch a little piece of it, share the storm with other states. The angle of this one looks as if it will catch every bit of coastline in that state.

The place that is probably getting the shit kicked out of it right now is this place

Down Bayou Lafourche, Louisiana.

And this one

at Grand Isle, Louisiana.

Remember that bird video I posted last month?

Same thing, catching hell right now.

And there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

Big Boids

If you want to see something really freaky, check out my video of the birds we saw on Queen Bess Island (near Grand Isle, Louisiana).

I think there were more than usual going to the island because a storm was approaching. The video is a little shaky as I was shooting while the boat was moving. We got in and out really fast because of the storm.

It seemed as if we had boated into Land of the Lost. Birds were flying just a couple of feet from us. Pelicans are the state bird of Louisiana.

Bobbie Faye Is Back

Anybody like free stuff? How about signed copies of books? Yeah? 

My Cajun friend Toni McGee Causey announced today a new contest to roll out her latest book, Bobbie Faye’s (kinda sorta, not exactly) Family Jewels, due out this month.

In her blog post Random Things I Do Not Understand, Toni says:

And starting today, every Sunday until my book release, end of this month, as in May 27th, I’ll be giving away two signed copies of both books – Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day and book 2 – Bobbie Faye’s (kinda, sorta, not exactly) Family Jewels – to one of the commenters  (US/Canada), 18 years old and up. (Hey, there is cursing and murder and mayhem and sex, almost all at the same time. I am not getting in trouble here.) So post anything you do not understand in the comments and next Sunday, I’ll announce a winner… each Sunday for four weeks.
 

I haven’t read this one yet, but the first one was absolutely hilarious and chock full of Cajun mayhem and adventure.

I just love the cover. And Toni, of course. But that’s not why I recommend her novels. And I swear it is not to brag that I have a friend with a couple of published novels. 

No, Toni is a Cajun and she writes about the culture as only an authentic cajun could. Reading her stuff is like signing up for a laugh fest. I promise.

Now go click on that link and leave a comment there.  Let me know if you win. Good luck, everyone.

Stuff Cajun People Like

Okay, to make up for sending you all to that other site, I discovered this:
 
StuffCajunPeopleLike

That guy knows what he’s talking about. He grew up not too far from where I did. Go see, go see.

That site makes me laugh.

That site makes me hungry.

That site makes me talk funny.

That site makes me homesick.

At least I’m going to another crawfish boil tomorrow.

Traiteur

When I was about four, my grandparents down Bayou Lafourche took me to a traiteur to “treat” a wart I had on my finger. It’s not that I’d complained about it, they just busted me trying to bite it off.

The traiteur had a wooden shack that was half on land and half over the bayou. He also knitted fishnets. I don’t know which one he did the most. So, I go in this old place and the man takes a string and does this “flossing” motion around my wart. Said some prayers in French. The string was green and to this day I have an aversion to green minty floss because it reminds me of warts.

The next day I was disappointed. The wart was still there. And the next, and the next, and the next. Then one day when I was no longer thinking about it, the wart was gone.

I never did think the traiteur’s thing worked. If something was to work, it had to be a bit more instant.

Years later, when I was about twelve, I read something about studies about warts, how if you believe they will go away, they will.

I thought I must not have believed it would go away. I didn’t like being tricked by my own mind or my belief system.

No wonder science appealed to me.

More years later the traiteur stuff came into play. As a nurse in Louisiana I had countless patients with strings tied around their ankles, many tiny knots tied into them. I had to dig through puffy and swollen ankles to get to these strings… The thing is, this particular treatment was to ward off swelling.

Those same patients had no trouble with the Lasix injections (for swelling), but try to get the circulation cutting string off them?

Forget that.

You don’t mess with people’s beliefs.

Rail

Rail

Originally uploaded by cinemagypsy

Just wanted to share one of my favorite photos I took of the railroad track behind my mom’s house while there in March.

I like the way the sky and its reflection on the rail look like a warped hourglass.

Happy Easter

Here’s a photo from my visit to Louisiana last week. It’s already spring and the azaleas are in bloom.

Memorial Day…

It was a little scary driving my mom home this Memorial Day weekend. I’m wondering if there is some sort of curse on us with all that is going on, you know. While there I drove out to the cemetery to clean my father’s grave. I don’t know if it is tradition to clean graves for Memorial Day, for me, it was just coincidence. Just time for Mom to go back and since I was in town and knew it needed to be cleaned, I had to get that done.

While driving out there, on the highway shoulder was a man dragging this huge wooden cross and about 30 people following him. I don’t know who these people are or why they do it, but they are really begging to have an accident.

I wondered if these people are suffering. Or recruiting. It seemed a bit blasphemous. Strange. Especially on that day.

Anyway. The cemetery is in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. It is behind St. Charles Catholic Church which was built in the late 1800′s.

It is not the town where we grew up, just a nearby town. In my town the graveyard was full and there was no more room for any new graves, so we had to find another place. My husband’s family being in the funeral business suggested this place, it is where their family members are, so they must know something, right?

It is a gated community. No worries about grave vandalism as with the cemetery my dad was in (we moved him recently).

There are moss covered treed pathways. A peaceful place.

And see, they do bury people above ground in Louisiana. Some of them. They do this because the water table is high in South Louisiana. Dig a hole, you hit water quickly.

That is the older part of the cemetery.

My family is in the new section. It looks pretty empty, but most of these plots are sold. The owners just haven’t died yet. It is too soon.

Way way too soon. Candace and Shane are on the right with the taller headstone (two in one vault), my dad in the middle, and Lorne (Pumpkin) in the yet unmarked grave. All four of them should still be alive. Should.

I don’t write this stuff for sympathy, in case you are wondering. I don’t like that, sympathy. Or pity. I pack light, remember?

I do pity those who abuse alcohol or drugs. And those who live with them. It is a miserable existence. I am blessed I do not have this disease.

The reason I am writing this is because three of these deaths were related to alcohol or substance abuse. (Some would count Candace, too, although she did not have drugs or alcohol in her blood, she was partying most of the night before her accident).

You use, you lose. All of it. And the people who love you also lose. Because once you check into this place, you are not coming back.