Ducks Mahal

Oh, about 237 years ago, on this day, I was a wee young lad and dressed up in costume (usually a cowboy outfit) and headed with family to a reserved spot on St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans to watch the Mardi Gras parades.  Oh, the fond memories.

Each year the tradition was people who paid a handsome fare to join a carnival krewe rode the floats and threw Mardi Gras beads and trinkets and plastic doubloons to us peasant types on the street and we would catch said beads and doubloons and yell, “Throw me something Mr.” and they would throw beads and doubloons and trinkets and we’d collect it as treasure (us poor peasant types that is) and we’d place it in Scweggman’s supermarket shopping bags and store it – somewhere.

Each year “The Family”, which consisted of 237 uncles, aunts and cousins, gathered on St. Charles early in the morning, usually on a cold day, like today, and made preparations to catch stuff.  Each year the crowds grew larger and larger (peasants have a real knack for procreating) making it harder and harder to catch said beads and junk so we peasant types got smarter and smarter and built elaborate devices like ladders with seats bolted to the top so the people who rode the floats could see us better.  Whatever we missed catching high atop the ladder, the lower rung peasant types would grovel on the ground over and step on each other’s fingers where the larger peasants would smash the tops of smaller knuckles making them bloody and would pry said junk from grubbing little hands and push little peasants face first into the pavement.

Each year this would make my dad mad who after three beers by 9:00 a.m. would beat the ever loving crap out of any peasant who came close to pushing his dear little wee ones into the street or into the nasty wet gutter while fighting over worthless junk.  Thus we dubbed him Sir Hard Harry.  But that didn’t stop us from returning, oh no, each year we appeared like rats only a little more prepared.  One year my Uncle Bobby got a pickup truck and built a platform on the pickup bed high atop a pipe rack as to place as many of the 237 relative peasants high into the air, altogether avoiding the trinket grubbing great unwashed below.  That is until Uncle Bobby got so drunk one year, which was not unusual for any of the adult relative peasant types, and made a bad mistake and fell off the platform of the pickup and landed on his head.  Then they had to call in the ambulance but he was so fortune as to land on his head lest he would have injured himself badly.  We didn’t have the truck curbside the following year; my aunt forbid it in recognition of the fallen.

Each year, the family gathered early all bunched up in blankets in the cold weather to claim that spot on the street; actually it wasn’t so reserved after awhile and we’d have to claim it in mass, sipping hot coffee, and the aunts would feed us little peasant donuts and sugary substances that eventually got us little peasants all jacked up and feeling crappy by midmorning from the sugar rebound.  Then for lunch we would partake on peasant sandwiches, consisting of two slices of white bread, exactly one slice of bologna and two inches of mayonnaises carefully wrapped in wax paper.  Peasants like wax paper.  The wax paper always seemed to make the sandwich better somehow.  After lunch, high on Andhow’syourbush beer, one aunt would eventually say something off color to another aunt about her wee little peasant and then a big family cold war erupted between the two aunts until the next Mardi Gras.

Each year, the non-relative relative violence got more and more intense between the general population peasants until the grubbing larger peasants pushed little peasants under the wheels of floats while other peasants finally afforded guns and robbed as many peasants at gun point and ran off before the cops arrived, which was usually never.  That’s not why I stopped going to Mardi Gras.  The reason I stopped going to Mardi Gras is I moved to California.  Guess what, several family peasant types followed me.  Peasants are good for following other peasants when they’re not looking.

The End.

And have a nice day even if your horoscope sucks.