Mardi Gras Cajun-style
January 24, 2007
In rural Louisiana they celebrate with great gusto, just not much glitz
In rural Louisiana I travelled on a low-riding flat-bed trailer in the Mardi Gras parade, not a glittering float like those in New Orleans’s parades. The only local ornaments on the floats in Eunice were the beads and masks hung on the tractors and the portable toilets carried on trailers.
Cajun country holds a different kind of parade, the Courir de Mardi Gras, aka the Chicken Run. It commemorates the poor old days when food was scarce. In those days, horsemen scrounged chicken, sausage, rice and onion from farmers to cook a big celebratory gumbo.
The house-to-house scavenge evolved into a procession on the roads which now includes people on foot and on trailers as well as horseback riders. Nobody begs for onion and rice any more; sausage, boudin blanc, is handed out free. There’s still a chicken; a rooster is released halfway along the route to run for its life across wet fields to escape enthusiastic paraders.
Who joins the chase? > “Only children and drunk thirtysomethings,” growled Deirdre, the cynical fiftysomething owner of my trailer. Gesturing with the obligatory beer can and cigarette occupying her hands, she described “disoriented riders who fall into the ditch after six beers,” then she put down someone who complained that the parade had grown so big, you had no chance to get anywhere near the chicken. “I told him, where else can you spend a day in the sun, with as much beer as you want, to get drunk with 1,200 of your closest friends?”
In fact, last year more than 1,400 people, more than the population of Eunice, signed up to ride or walk in the 11.2-km-long column.
And it took the whole day to cover the circuit around Eunice. Farm families would put out chairs to watch and wave for beads. Unlike in New Orleans, nobody had to bare anything for the trinkets.
I wished I could have bared something; I got hot in the traditional neck-to-ankle guise. Like the chicken chase, the clothing recalls a time when people had no money for fancy costumes. They would cut old clothes into ribbons, frills and fringes, then sew them on to old shirts and pants. The costume is completed by the capuchon, a wizard’s conical hat, and a face mask, again of recycled material, in this case old window screen trimmed and punched into shape, then painted. The wearer has clear peripheral view, essential when on horseback or chasing a chicken, but can’t be recognized more than a metre away.
Not all the riders wore masks. The two capitaines and marshals in charge of the parade wanted to be recognized, not only by their fluttering green and purple shiny satin capes.
Young women wore beautiful smiles and tossed their hair. Many were out-of-towners who didn’t have local costumes in the trunk or in the attic; they came from neighbouring states (mostly Texas) for the ride: Eunice’s equestrian Mardi Gras is unique.
The parade was an informal hoot. At occasional stops, people strolled up to the trailer carrying musicians and held an impromptu dance party. Teenagers rode on the fenders of a fat-wheeled police ATV. As we passed rice paddies and irrigation ditches, young men threw each other in the water. Increasingly, more and more broke away to relieve themselves behind the bushes.
Several trailers carried tubfuls of ice and cans of chilled beer. When I trotted up and asked for two, the local beauty held out four: “No half-measure here, mardigras. Just give it away if it’s too much.” Mardigras is how the paraders greeted each other. “Hey, mardigras,” followed up with, “Gimme a cigarette, mardigras” or “Have a beer, mardigras?”
The American melting pot has not been hot enough to melt the French in southern Louisiana. And the anglos tried. The writing on a schoolhouse blackboard recalls the rule: “I will not speak French in class.” The Stars and Stripes now hangs above the blackboard, next to the Acadian flag with a gold star and white fleurs-de-lys.
The schoolhouse was in Vermilionville, Lafayette’s museum village of 18- and 19th-century settlers’ houses and costumed re-enactors. I reflexively thanked the weaving lady in French. “Bienvenu, cher, au revoir,” she nodded without surprise. Family names, which many other immigrants anglicized to fit in, survived here. Highway-side billboards advertise businesses run by Arsenaults and Broussards; the Lafayette tourist office’s manager and a New Brunswick tourism minister share the name Breaux. Almost 700,000 Americans declare themselves Cajun.
Near the end of the day, a tired young marcher took a rest on our trailer. Paul had trouble stopping talking, took breaks only to have a swig of his beer. He told me that he was 20, studied Italian because he wanted to be an architect and needed to go to Italy to look at the buildings. Then he was going to learn French because he was embarrassed that he did not speak his people’s language.
“Mister George,” he went on, “you think I’m drunk. Yes, I’m drunk. But this parade is not about getting drunk. It’s important that we do it every year because it’s Cajun tradition, it’s part of our culture. And without our culture we’re nothing. D’you agree?”
The Courir de Mardi Gras. The next chicken chase is on Fat Tuesday, Feb. 20. The Eunice Mardi Gras Association reserves 10 trailers for visitors, who should wear a costume - anything improvised - and a mask. Arrive early for a seat; registration starts at 6 a.m. at the National Guard Armory. Registration costs $30 and includes the ride, beer or soft drinks, boudin for lunch and gumbo at the end.
More information, accommodation. Call 1-877-948-8004 or 1-337-948-8004, or e-mail assistantcajuntravel.com. The tourist office will direct you to accommodations. Other handy websites are: www.cajuntravel.com, www.lafayettetravel.com.
