Rouses_January-February-2018

the Mardi Gras issue

Throws by Wayne Curtis

W hen I went to my first major Mardi Gras parade a few months after moving here, my initial thought was, whoa , what’s up with all these people getting so excited about cheap plastic beads? Their lives must be sad and lonely. My second thought, several moments later, was, I WANT SOME BEADS RIGHT NOW THROW THEM TO ME RIGHT NOW. Overall, it served as a good illustration of how contagious and irrational mobs and manias can be. Catching “throws” is a large part of the New Orleans parade experience. It started in 1870. Ever since, faux royalty riding on floats have tossed trinkets to the commoners — fake doubloons, necklaces of cheap glass beads, that sort of thing. Over the decades, throws evolved in nature and swelled in

volume. Now, whole fleets of cargo ships steam in from China to feed the Mardi Gras maw. I’ve never ridden on a large float in a large parade, but I imagine that riders essentially see what a mother bird sees upon returning to a nest full of fledglings: beaks agape, siblings scrambling atop one other, uncontrollable shrieking and trembling. From half a block away, floats look as if they’re shedding, with beads and other throws sailing off in every direction.Visitors from out of town learn to always keep their hands up when a float passes by. Sometimes this learning process involves facial welts. Another thing I learned from the Mardi Gras parades: Nothing in the known universe devalues as swiftly as Mardi Gras beads. The arc of their value is precise and terminal. When you first spot a set of beads

in the hand of a float rider, they are worth quite a bit — say, the equivalent of a nicely grilled hamburger. Once they’re lobbed high in the air, when everybody strains for them and hands stretch higher — the value briefly goes into the black tulip phase. You would trade your favorite aunt for this set of beads. Then the beads — miraculously! — land in your hands. You wave or point back at the thrower in acknowledgment and thanks (tradition and common courtesy call for this), then you slip them around your neck. Whereupon they are suddenly worth a small box of lawn clippings. This sudden collapse in value is of little concern, however, as there’s another float full of extremely valuable beads approaching. So you put your hands up and start waving and screaming again.

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2018