"Are you leaving us for New Beriland?" R. asks as I pull my belongings out of Doug's apartment. R. occupies the adjoining apartment and spends most nights at the Blue Moon behind his soundboard.
"Well...an actual bed, my own bathroom, and privacy during the week while J. is away working," I smile.
"I totally get it," he laments through his thick Cajun french dialect.
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“I know Doug is your friend, but now you have another one here in Louisiana,” J. tells me as he removes the baked chicken from his oven.
Beads, now cleaned up along the parade routes of Lafayette, come to rest within the historical symbolism of country hospitality and real wealth. J. hands me a dinner plate with some chicken, sweet potatoes and coleslaw. I don’t ask for anything, but these gifts come to me. The spare room, the feast, the connection.
Along the back side of J.’s property, the brown, muddy Bayou Teche caresses the cypress knees rising up along the bayou’s banks. Morning sunlight conducts the bird aria ringing high in the branches frothing with moss. For now, the accordions and fiddles are resting, and Mardi Gras comes to a resting place.
With mixed Mardi Gras memories, my friend C. reminisces through e-mail about her time in the beaded streets of Lafayette a couple of years ago.
Within her e-mail memories, she includes a link to a documentary about the pros and cons of the the party beads thrown en masse during parades. Chinese workers toiling long days for little money...and the market that keeps then employed. Trashed beads, however, end up in the sewer systems of the cities and in the dumps of the countryside.
https://vimeo.com/87231218
My friend Doug tells me that Louisiana is often referred to as "Trashiana". I want to think that rituals will change with awareness. Maybe all those beads still in tact could be re-bagged for future parades? Maybe the idea of "wealth" could turn towards actual food rather than plastic trinkets?
Maybe the real transcendence into "other" could be the experience of the actual humility that struggling people go through every day just to exist? Instead of dressing in costume for a Courir de Mardi Gras, those "begging" could stand in line at a Food Pantry, or stay in a homeless shelter? Maybe those who haven't lost everything in a hurricane can donate directly to those who have...to see what it takes to really beg?
Maybe our government officials need to understand this too? But, unless one is at the bottom, the "begging" might be gratuitous. I've stood in line for food from time to time when low on funds. I'm lucky...I have a great community Food Pantry available: staples donated by the local food coop and seasonal veggies brought over by local organic gardeners. Other pantries have less nutritious food.
I would stand in line, humility dripping from us all, and take my number, sit and wait for my turn, and then fill my two bags with goods. No questions asked. When I recommended the Pantry to another friend in need, she shook her head and replied, "Oh, no, I don't think I could. What if someone I know sees me?"
Eventually she was desperate enough to put down her possible shame. Humility? Yes. Transcendence into "other"? I don't think we can play at this. We can only understand when we are really in need. Throwing of beads as a symbol?
Taking LA 329 south out of New Iberia, Doug’s Canadian friend JB, now my friend too, and I, drive onto the salt dome. Evaporation from brine springs have produced salt on Avery Island since 1791, and inspired salt mining here until Union Forces destroyed the works in 1863.
JB and I stand at the back counter of the Tobasco factory store and dip our pretzels into Green Jalapeño Sauce and Habanero Pepper Sauce. While JB dabs the Scorpion sauce-laden pretzel onto her tongue, I scoop some Raspberry Chipotle ice cream into my mouth.
JB rushes past me for some pepper sauce infused coke samples and downs several in a row.
“Are you okay?” I ask. Sorry now that I challenged her, as an astrological Scorpio, to try the Scorpion Pepper sauce, I ask the counter clerk for some water.
“How long will the burning last?” JB croaks at the clerk.
“About 20 minutes,” she is told.
With panic in her eyes, JB looks at her watch, and we leave the counter to distract her from her focus on the heat—shelves of Tobasco brand oven mitts, chocolate, key rings, mugs.
Tobasco facts:
- More than 700,000 bottles of Tobasco are made on Avery Island in one day.
- Tobasco sauce is sold in more than 185 countries around the world
- Each bottle has 720 drops of heat infused spice.
- McIlhenny has been producing Tobasco on Avery Island for about 150 years.
- Tobasco sauce is rated at 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville heat units
- The company, after five generations, is still family owned.
- The sauces are made from three basic ingredients: Tobasco peppers mashed in white oak barrels, a small amount of salt, and high quality vinegar.
The scorpion heat finally abating, JB and I purchase some small sample bottles of several different sauces, and some gift key rings for her friends back in New Brunswick, Canada.
“Oh my God!” She exhales as we leave the store. “They’re not kidding that the Scorpion sauce is the hottest they’ve ever made!”
Jungle Gardens
McIlhenny, with labored wealth, fanned out salt dome gardens from his plantation home on the island. Rosy camellias and purplish azaleas spring bloom on the branches of wintering trees coming alive again. Snowy Egrets nest on the raised platforms of Bird City where the McIlhenny family supports the continued regeneration of local aviary species being killed off for fashion plumes on hats. Spanish Moss floats off Live Oak branches and bamboo walls off the boundary of the Buddha shrine.
Once Café des Amis closed its doors in Breaux Bridge just outside of Lafayette, Buck and Johnny’s restaurant picked up the Saturday morning dance ritual. 8 a.m. and there is already a long line of people waiting for B & J’s to open its doors for breakfast. Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco Roadrunners finish up their sound check. As breakfast eaters munch on boudin and eggs, grits smothered in etouffee, and beignets, I take a seat on the benches along the dance floor wall near the band. Recognizable dancers arrive as I try to shake off my sleepy glaze.
Leroy, Creole decked with wide brimmed cowboy hat and dark green long sleeved shirt, picks up his accordion and his band members file in behind him. I stand to show my readiness for dancing, and accept the hand of one partner after the other until I need a break and sit again on the bench.
“You got the moves on, girl!”
Her chocolate fingers land on my thigh, and I turn to look directly into her dark eyes. Somewhat ageless and timeless, I see the young girl within the aging lines decorating her face. Black hair woven with gray strands neatly frames her cheeks below her bright red lace headband.
“Where you learn to dance like dat?” She asks.
“Vermont,” I respond and she rolls back along the back of the bench in disbelief.
“But…,” I continue, “...this beat is in my blood!” The twinkle in her eyes tells me that she knows.
L. extends his hand without a word or a look, and I follow him into the middle of the concrete floor once belonging to the automotive garage that occupied this corner of the block prior to the days of this restaurant.
The concrete vibrates from the bass line and Leroy’s riffs pierce through the crowd of dancers. L.’s short black curls drip out from under his baseball cap, and his bony fingers wrap around my back to twist my torso into a turn, but grabs my shoulder for a stop and torque into the opposite direction.
I first danced with him in the Fall of 2016 at Warehouse 535 in Lafayette. M. (from Australia), A. (from San Antonio), and I had hoofed over to see Jeffrey Broussard and his band. As we pulled chairs up to one of the long tables, I scouted the floor for dancers I would deem worthy as partners.
I saw L. dance, and as he headed back to his seat across the room, I headed over to catch his eye.
“Can you dance?” He had asked me, snark holding up the wall around him.
“Yes, I’ve danced for a lot of years.”
After my carnival ride of beat and bounce, I asked him how I had done.
While a sweet smile filled out his face under his dark brown eyes, snark now gone, he told me, “it’s a start!”
“You’ve improved,” he now tells me. And I remind him that everyone has an individual style and it takes a few dances to figure it out. He nods and invites me to lunch.
“I like your energy,” he says and I know I’ve made yet another new friend here where the spice in my veins runs hot along the Teche, and alligators lay beneath the bayou’s muck with only their eyes protruding above the surface.