Mardi Gras and Flying Pancakes

There’s a memory that pops up on Facebook once a year on February 22. It’s a post from my bestest buddies in the world and it reads “15th Anniversary of Flying Pancakes.” Attached are two pictures taken on an old, cruddy, disposable 35mm film camera. The picture's dark, fuzzy and a little out of focus. It shows a crowd of kids, babies really, unrecognizable now with their skinny bodies and smooth skin and full heads of dark hair. Jess is there, front and center, smiling. John’s in the back and it’s odd now to see him with short hair and just the start of a beard. Sara’s still there, smiling. I’m on the end in battered pearl snaps over a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert t-shirt, ball cap, a scraggly, fresh out of the Army and don’t have to shave anymore beard on my face. I’m visibly drunk, flipping off the camera, with five pounds of Mardi Gras beads hanging around my neck. We were midway through what, despite having been born and raised in Louisiana, was my first ever true Mardi Gras and that photograph was taken at the very moment that the party truly got started.

Somewhere, someone who’s never been to Louisiana is reading this and scratching their head. “How do you live twenty five years in Louisiana without going to Mardi Gras?” Well, imaginary reader, I’m glad you asked.

You see, I’m from North Louisiana. More precisely Shreveport. It would take thousands of words to describe the complexity of Louisiana culture and describe how the state has several sub-regions each with their own traditions and cultures, but it mostly boils down to this: Louisiana was settled top down by English protestants and bottom up by French and Spanish Catholics with a whole shit ton of enslaved people mixed in. My spouse is from Southeast Louisiana. She was raised Catholic and has a Spanish last name. Her grandmother grew up speaking French and her mother has an accent that was best described by comedian Sean Patton as “a sedated fire fighter from Brooklyn.” My wife’s accent is a tad milder. She only sounds like she’s from the Bronx when she’s been drinking or she’s pissed off. Me, I was born closer to Dallas than New Orleans and my accent sounds more Nacogdoches than Opelousas. (We now raise our child in Massachusetts so their accent is all fucked up. They say shit like “It’s wicked cold today y’all.”) I was raised a non-drinking, non-dancing Southern Baptist and we absolutely did not celebrate the heathen, bacchanal that is Mardi Gras.

My home town of Shreveport has always hated New Orleans. The two cities are six hours apart by car and light years apart in culture and style. To Shreveport, New Orleans is a corrupt place where both the rich snobs along St Charles and the criminal thugs in the former Desire housing projects steal everything they can lay their hands on. There’s organized crime and disorganized crime and even the police are on the take. Worse yet, they always have their hand out for our tax dollars. For most of North Louisiana, New Orleans is a menace. At best it’s a tourist trap that sucks in dollars and spits out cocktails and jazz tunes. At worst it’s a Sodom and Gomorrah. The Simpsons took a lot of shit for describing New Orleans as “the home of pirates, drunks and whores” but that bit could’ve been written by someone from Shreveport.

It didn’t help that in 1978, when I was barely four months old, the New Orleans Police Department went on strike during Mardi Gras and my dad deployed to New Orleans with the National Guard to provide crowd control. He didn’t talk much about that deployment. In fact I know more about what happened to him in Saudi Arabia and Northern Iraq in 1991 than what happened on Bourbon Street in 1978, but dad hated Mardi Gras. He never went, at least not in New Orleans and even when he was transferred to Jackson Barracks he refused to live in the city, choosing instead to commute two hours a day until he retired.

I was a born and raised New Orleans hater so for the majority of my life Mardi Gras was, at best, a non-issue. There were no parades or holidays in Shreveport. We didn’t even see it on the news. My eighth grade Louisiana history class took a field trip to Jefferson Parish to catch a suburban parade but it got rained out and we went to Lakeside Mall instead. Even when we moved to St Tammany Parish and started attending the small local parades in Bogalusa and Covington, we avoided New Orleans like the plague. When someone came to visit we’d drive to Audubon Zoo or the Aquarium, otherwise we stayed North of Lake Ponchatrain. My first time unsupervised in the city overnight was the day I shipped out for Basic Training.

But by 2005 things had changed.

I’m ahead of myself here. I have a time line for this series I’m trying to write about New Orleans but I have to break it a bit because I screwed up the timing and I want to publish this on Mardi Gras day. So I find myself once again in a position where I have to ask you to trust me. I’m going to explain how we got here. I’m going to tell you about “Craig” and New Years 1999 and wandering the French Quarter and Uptown. I’ll get around to telling you about Charles and Jake and John and THE Apartment in Metairie, Mid City bars and how I got them free drinks when we went to shows at The House of Blues and Tipitinas. I’ll tell you about Fat Patty the sex doll and Grand Isle and our pitch for “Lost in New Orleans” which would’ve been “The Hangover” before “The Hangover” was even conceived and it would’ve had a better soundtrack. But for now, to get this done in time, I have to yadda yadda past a lot of stuff.

So here’s a brief history:

I got hurt in 2001. I had my last surgery in 2003. The Army canceled my convalescent leave and I went to Fort Johnson (at the time still named for the traitor Polk) and worked as a supernumerary sergeant assigned to a medical company while they conducted my medical board. In April 2004 I was medically retired from the Army. I enrolled in college and moved out of my parents house into a small, efficiency apartment just across the railroad tracks from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. I took a job at Walgreens to pay the bills while I went through the VA disability process. Life was pretty good. I had a little money and a lot of time. My buddy Steve was home from the Coast Guard and we saw each other on campus. Ryan was in Hammond at the same time and we’d spend time drinking Margaritas at La Carreta’s before stumbling across the railroad tracks to The Brown Door. Charles and John and Jess were still in New Orleans, and we’d go to shows when Cross Canadian Ragweed and Pat Green came to town.

My VA disability money kicked in around November 2004 and I didn’t need my bullshit Walgreens job anymore but I promised them I’d work through the holiday season so they weren’t short. In return they promised me if I worked Thanksgiving Day I could have Christmas Eve off. Turns out that was a lie. I worked Thanksgiving and they scheduled me for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so I walked at the end of my shift. Only time I’ve ever quit a job without notice. I spent New Years Eve with the girl who became my wife. We watched the fireworks over the river from a friend’s dorm room balcony at UNO and I spent New Years Day hungover at her grandparents. Then she got on a plane and went back to school and I drove back to Hammond and threw out my razor.

By the time carnival rolled around I was 24, in a relationship but kinda, sorta, not really tied down. I had money but no job, and a week off from class, so when Charles and Jess said “Come down for Mardi Gras” I made up my mind that I was going to do it for real. I was going to do Marid Gras “right.”

So I packed up my Jeep Cherokee and headed South with the windows rolled down and the stereo playing country music. I headed down I-55 over Manchac pass and through the swamps, then East on I-10, over the Bonnet Carre Spillway with the refineries by the river belching flame to the right and Lake Ponchatrain stretching endlessly toward the horizon on the left. Coming down I-10 from the West, the city seems to appear out of nowhere. One minute there’s marsh grass and cypress trees and a bald eagle’s nest then you cross a canal and it’s like being teleported into a different world. Suddenly there’s Kenner. Louis Armstrong Airport is right there. You drive through the heart of Jefferson Parish's suburban sprawl. Past the Veterans Boulevard exit, then Clearview, then Causeway, until you cross into Orleans Parish.

Charles had a little place on Carrollton, a few blocks toward the lake from the old Rock n Bowl. I don’t remember if I exited I-10 at Metairie Rd/Canal St and made my way through the cemeteries to Carrollton. This was before the time of in car GPS and I’m not that bright so I probably took the Carrollton exit and fought my way through traffic and several U-turns to get there, then circled the block for a bit until I could find semi-legal street parking. Charles’ apartment was the kind of place you can only find and people will only tolerate in a city like New Orleans. It was a small first floor apartment with street parking only, a cluttered, overgrown front yard surrounded by a wrought iron gate all in the shadow of a massive Spanish moss clad live oak. There were hardwood floors and built in bookshelves, a far too small galley kitchen, two tiny, cluttered, bedrooms and a single bathroom. That small space would house and feed up to a dozen people in the coming days.

The first thing we did when I got there was load back up in my Jeep and drive back into Metairie, to the newly opened Raising Canes on Clearview where we bought a family platter of fried chicken strips, a couple of loaves worth of Texas Toast and a half gallon of Cane’s sauce. This fried chicken, boiled crawfish, and pancakes would feed us all for the next five days. It would also, somehow, be the last time I was ever capable of enjoying Cane’s fried chicken without having intense gastrointestinal distress. On the drive back to the apartment we bought beer and booze and that is my last clear memory for the next week.

We played Grand Theft Auto San Andreas in Charles’ living room. We went Uptown for parades on the St Charles routes but I don’t remember which ones. Saturday morning we woke up early and walked from the apartment to a spot Charles and Jess knew on Canal. A distant family friend had a garage with a bathroom nearby. Charles, John and I, held our spot on the neutral ground (median for those of you, like me, who were raised outside of New Orleans). We spent all day sitting in the grass, drinking beer and shooting the shit while the old folks boiled crawfish in the nearby garage. Jess and the other girls showed up sometime later with a wagon load of chairs and snacks and gallons of the kind of rum punch that goes down dangerously smooth.

Endymion rolled at dark, but I don’t remember the details. I don’t think you can. The world was soft and out of focus and then it was full of noise and light and music and cheers, a happy, indescribable chaos that washes over you like a warm wave. At some point we took those two pictures and you can see us all there, young, drunk, smiling and happy in the night time fog. When it was over, and the last float had passed and the music had faded we packed up and made the long walk home, finishing off the last of the rum punch as we went.

Did we go to parades on Sunday? I don’t know. Maybe. I was hungover but it was the kind of warm, fuzzy, hangover that doesn’t lend itself well to regrets. It was the kind of hangover that you remember fondly. I know I went out again on Monday night. I linked up with my buddy Craig and I want to say Steve was there but I’m not sure. He should’ve been. We wandered the French Quarter, down Bourbon, all the way down to the Marigny, then back looking for someone Craig knew because we were always searching for someone Craig knew. Somehow at some point, we headed uptown. We found Ryan in the neutral ground of St Charles Avenue with a half dozen frat buddies and several cases of beer. I don’t know where we slept that night. The next morning, Mardi Gras day, Craig and I saw Zulu and Rex uptown. We stayed on St Charles until the truck parades began to roll, then we said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways. I don’t remember the drive back across the swamps, I-10 to I-55 to my efficiency apartment beside the railroad tracks in Hammond. By then, Mardi Gras was over and I had class on Wednesday, so it was back to school and back to work.

I don’t remember flying pancakes.

I know it happened, because Charles and Jess both say it did and I've got twenty years of social media "memories" mentioning it. I can vaguely remember morning light through the windows and mattresses on the hardwood floor and Army poncho liners on a battered old couch. I can almost see Jess and Charles crammed in that tiny galley kitchen of that little Carrollton apartment, cooking pancakes and tossing them across the room like frisbees to anyone who asked for seconds. We had to be hungover. The pancakes had to be good. I have no doubt they existed and I was there but I just can’t remember. All I can remember is…well…the truth is I don’t quite have the words to describe what I remember. I was 24, fresh out of the Army, as recovered from my injuries as I’d ever be. I was home. I was with my friends. I was drunk and wild. I had no responsibilities and just enough money. The world was as warm and soft as it had ever been and it felt like things could only get better from there. I was hopeful and happy and free.

You can see it in the picture. You can see it in that scraggly beard and the too long hair that would never pass on an Army post. You can see it in my drunken smile. You can see it on our baby faces and our too thin bodies.

But the world is a hard place.

Even we ignored it at the time but the country was still at war. I still bore the scars. Mark was just back. Charles would go. Ray would go. Craig would go.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August and none of us had time for Mardi Gras in 2006. Charles and John lost everything they owned. Then the National Guard put Charles and Ray on active duty. We spent the next year cutting trees and learning how to deal with things like insurance companies and FEMA.

I dropped out of college and joined the Sheriff’s Office. I spent Mardi Gras 2007 and 2008 either standing on a street corner or in a patrol car and I learned a little about why my dad hated the carnival season. At the same time, we all got married. I moved to Austin. Charles and Jess moved to Massachusetts. Ryan and Steve moved to Houston. Craig moved to DC. We drifted apart. We came back together. We tried to stay in touch in the way that adults with jobs and mortgages and responsibilities do.

In 2016 my wife and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to move back to New Orleans for one year and in 2017 we once again had a chance to do Mardi Gras “right.” Even sober it still comes to me like a slide show, just glimpses, little snippets of memory. We marched in the walking Krewe Chewbachus. I dressed as a “vet bro” ex-stormtrooper and handed out homemade para cord bracelets in Star Wars related colors. My kid could barely walk and didn’t talk but danced their little butt off to the marching bands. Our freezer went out and a year's worth of wild caught speckled trout fillets were going to go bad so we had a fish fry at a friends house a block off of the Uptown parade routes and there was so much left over food that we started handing out plates to any tourist that walked by and said “that smells good.” We sat in the same spot on Canal street for Endymion. Charles and I still sat around drinking beer and shooting the shit all day as we held down the spot, but John couldn’t make it.

Mardi Gras day we went to the French Quarter. We drove over to Algiers and took the ferry across the Mississippi to avoid CBD traffic. Charles and Jess were dressed as cows so we dressed our kid up as a cowboy. Afterwards we had hamburgers somewhere back uptown, closer to our apartment, either at Lee’s or a Bud’s Broiler. The air conditioning at our place was dead and we had the windows open and our neighbors had a massive, but hilarious domestic dispute, the kind of New Orleans domestic where no one gets more than their weave and their feelings hurt and no one calls the cops and no one is bothered except for the new transplants from Missouri.

Charles and I took another picture during Endymion but in the age of digital photography it’s just too clear and crisp. You can see how much weight we’ve put on, the tired lines around our eyes and the white in our beards. My ball cap and his pork pie hat don’t hide our bald heads. We’re trying hard for the vibe from 2005 but it’s just not there. We’re taxpayers. We’re grown ups. We have mortgages. We’re not those kids anymore.

I wish we could be, just for a little while.

I wish I could get back there. Not to New Orleans, though I miss the city every day. Not back to 2005 either, though some days I find myself engaged in the old man’s fantasy of “what if I could do it all again knowing what I know now.” No, I want to get back to that feeling of freedom. I want to find that carefree optimism again. I want to remember what it felt like not to have any responsibilities, obligations, or demands. I want to wander the streets, drunk and aimless and covered in plastic beads looking for someone or someplace but not worrying about where I’m going to sleep or what I’m going to eat. Just for a little while I want to be that dirt bag kid again, with a scraggly beard and old worn out clothes, $20 cash in my pocket, beer on my breath and tobacco in my teeth and not having to worry about a fucking thing til Wednesday morning.

And I realize now, writing this, that’s the point. That’s what Mardi Gras is about. It’s about that feeling of hope and optimism and joy. It’s about giving yourself a time and a space to be that rowdy kid again, if only for a little while. It’s about taking just a minute off from the hard work and chaos and tragedy of the world to enjoy silly, simple, stupid pleasures like a rum punch hangover and flinging pancakes around the living room like frisbees.

I don’t know if this essay works, but I say that every time. What I do know is I appreciate y’all and I thank y’all for reading and I hope you take a little joy from this and if I could I’d love to be able to hand you all a beer and a plate of wild caught, fresh fried, speckled sea trout. Instead, like always, you’ll have to settle for some music.
Happy Mardi Gras.