Mardi Gras gaining ground

We flee town on a Saturday morning, Mardi Gras dropping behind us at more than a mile a minute. We are heading to where we came from, to The Land that Didn't Know Mardi Gras.

Growing up in central Louisiana, CENLA to the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, Mardi Gras meant nothing to us.

Oh, a few people, families with money or a sense of adventure or both, went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. But to the rest of us, Mardi Gras might as easily have been on the moon as in the Crescent City.

The day after Mardi Gras, the Alexandria Daily Town Talk might run a photograph of Rex rolling through downtown New Orleans. The picture seemed as exotic to me as the one taken in Rio that appeared in an Associated Press photo on an inside page of the Town Talk.

We didn't go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We didn't observe Carnival in Alexandria, unless it was the one near the North Traffic Circle with the Ferris wheel and the tattooed woman.  We didn't get out of school, either. We slogged away at grammar, math and geography as though Fat Tuesday were any other day of the year which, of course, to us it was.

In north Louisiana of the 1950s, the World Series was a lot bigger than Mardi Gras.  First, they let us bring radios to L.S. Rugg Grammar School to listen to a few innings of the Series in the afternoon if we'd been good and done all our work.

I think we were about as good as we ever were, which is to say not very. And I think we'd probably done about as much school work as we usually did.  We always got to listen to a few innings of the World Series. And, later, when televisions became small enough to carry, we watched a few innings.

No, behavior and work ethic had nothing to do with our electronic participation in the World Series. We watched or listened to the Series whether we wanted to or not because our teachers needed the break.

I realize the World Series and Mardi Gras happen in different months and that the only similarity is the uniform of the Houston Astros.  I am saying that there was nothing in my north Louisiana childhood to compare to Mardi Gras.

It's funny. I grew up ignorant of Mardi Gras. My south Louisiana son and daughter accept it as their due.  My son bought a house in Lafayette that just happens to be on a Mardi Gras parade route. Coincidence?  When my daughter was in college in Texas, she and some friends showed up at our house one Mardi Gras. Odd, I thought, that a Texas school would let its students free to travel to Mardi Gras.  Of course, the school had no idea that some of its students were AWOL, that they'd been called across hundreds of miles to the madness of Mardi Gras.  Even I fell under the spell, rising early enough to make breakfast for the revelers before they left for New Orleans. My daughter is certain it was the only time I ever made breakfast at our house.

So, driving north a few days before Mardi Gras, I know we'll miss Spanish Town Mardi Gras and the parties friends are throwing. On the other hand, a quiet farmhouse beckons.  Not that driving north means an escape from Mardi Gras. Forsooth! My hometown has a Mardi Gras parade, now. Thousands of people throng the streets of Alexandria begging for beads.  My mother wouldn't know the place.

Shreveport and Monroe - we're practically in Arkansas, mind you - have Mardi Gras parades. For all I know - and I don't want to know - Little Rock has a Mardi Gras parade.  What's next? Mardi Gras in Tennessee? Davy Crockett Day in Baton Rouge?

After two days of solitude north of Ruston, some Mardi Gras news trickles in - from New Orleans, little towns in south Louisiana, big towns in north Louisiana, Austin and Seattle.  There are reports of hooliganism from Shreveport. City officials in Austin and Seattle are dismayed by Mardi Gras rowdiness and wonder why they ever thought Mardi Gras was a good idea in the first place.  This just in: Knoxville, Tenn., has a Mardi Gras celebration, probably held for the last time this year, to raise money for a food bank.  Keep those Davy Crockett coonskin caps handy, festival-goers.