Walkin’ To New Orleans: Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras in Mamou (Photos by Art Meripol)

Well, here we are.  Mardi Gras, for all intents and purposes, is New Orleans.  The parades, the beads, the coins, the crowds, the costumes, the bare breasts … ahem, that’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Many places celebrate Mardi Gras around the country – and of course they celebrate “Carnival” in other parts of the world.

My favorite Mardi Gras is the old-timey party they throw in Mamou, Louisiana, a small town in “northern” Cajun country (north of where Interstate 10 crosses the town of Crowley).  They have the traditional Mardi Gras celebration, consisting of a big dance on the Monday before Ash Wednesday, then a “courir de Mardi Gras” the next day.  That’s a sort-of procession where men (traditional) dress up in wild-ass costumes and ride horses (mostly) around to farms in the area, gathering food items for a big community gumbo that night.

My Uncle Harold (Champagne, from near St. Martinville) told me about it once, and I mentioned it to my Port Arthur News partner and ace photographer Art Meripol.  So, very early one morning in 1980, we were in the car headed east with the vague idea that there was some kind of Mardi Gras thing in Mamou.