My friend Jim (a fellow MGB enthusiast) and I decided yesterday that we
could not lay a claim to being true Southern Gentlemen until we attended
a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. Jim showed up at my apartment at 6.
The parade started at 6:30, but we still had a 2 hour drive. We quickly
decided to "press on regardless".
About 5 miles down the road, Jim turns down the radio and says, "I'm
driving with a suspended liscense. Do you want to turn back now?" (He
had failed to pay a ticket he didn't felll he deserved) I laughed, told
Jim that he was going to jail if we got pulled over, and we decided to
press on. Jim told me that should he get arrested, I was to call his
family and ensure them that no alcohol, drugs, or fornicating were
involved. Just send money.
Our plan was to stay long enough to say we had been there, get back in
the truck, and jet towards Mississippi.
We got to the Murder Capital of the World and immediately felt
ill-at-ease. We were out of our element. Homeless people, beggars, and
freaks abounded everywhere. Jim postulated that perhaps we had fulfilled
our requirements and now was a good time to turn back, before we
collected a souveneir bullet hole.
We stayed, however, and watched the entire parade. The city of New
Orleans is always a magical place, but the Mardi Gras parades add another
level of enchantment. The parade ended, and we made our way back to the
truck.
The sheer wall of people at the famed Bourbon Street caused our egress to
cease. There, up on the balconies, were hundreds of young, nubile,
tittilating (no pun intended) women. For the princely sum of a string of
cheap plastic beads, the girls would raise their shirts and bare all.
After viewing the spectacle for many minutes, I stopped and looked at the
other voyeurs around me. There was an intersting mix of men and women of
every ethnic variety encouraging a particularly attractive blonde-haired
girl to remove her shirt. Among the frenzied yelling, Jim and I decided
it was time to go home.
On the way out of the Big Easy, Jim and I realized that we had not
participated in any of the wretched excess that is the essence of Mardi
Gras. We stopped at a store on the way out and gorged ourselves on a
King Cake. True to our collegiate heritage, we sat on the back of the
truck and ate our cake tail-gate style.
Although not an experience I expect to repeat soon, I can now rest in the
fact that my Southern Heritage requirements are met.
Thomas James Pokrefke, III
1970 MGB
thomas_pokrefke@juno.com
http://ocean.st.usm.edu/~pokrefke
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