St. Joseph's Day in New Orleans

St. Joseph's Altar at Brocato's
Originally uploaded by rwaldron

After a nice dinner at SLICE with Allison and Addie, we drove back into Central City. We parked on Washington at Barrone,and upon opening the car door, I immediately heard drums. As we walked away from St. Charles Ave, I must admit I got a little scared. I wasn't exactly scared for my life or safety, but kind of scared simply that I might be invading someone else's culture without an invitation. Then I saw waht looked like a pair of dorky white college kids walking in the opposite direction. This set me back at ease. As we took a right turn onto Dryades, the drums got markedly louder, I sotted the crowd, I heard the rumble of the large crowd, and then I saw the feathers peaking out from above the crowd.

As we got close I tried to ascertain what was going on. What I was able to tell was that there were about fifteen Mardi Gras Indians surrounded by a crowd of a couple of hundred people not masking. As we watched what appeared to be to chiefs in each others faces I inquired to a young lady if she knew which tibes these were. She replied that she didn't know, but the indians dressed in white were a tribe that came from downtown over here.

After a while of these goings on, it appeared that the Indians from downtown turned tail and ran. This is when we realized that what we saw was not two tribes facing off, but three. the center tribe which had just faced off against the tribe on the right side (the downtown tribe) turned and faced the tribe that had until now been behind them. Eventually that tribe left leaving only the tribe that had been in the center. This tribe then began chanting their name, "Creole Wild West" over and over in celebration. They chanted it as they returned to Washington Avenue and proceeded down toward Claiborne. The Creole Wild West is one of the oldest tribes; I believe they may predate the turn of the twentieth century; This seniority may have had something to do with why they seemed to have come out victorious in both engadgements. This acknowledgement of senority reminded me slightly of Rex submiting to the will of Comus in a way. As we followed them down Washingon, we didn't see any other tribes, and thus returned to the car.

After we bid Addie a good evening, Allison suggested that she and I go to Brocato's to check out the St. Joseph's Altar. We had our mini canoli's got our beans, a bide adieu to a perfectly New Orleanian St. Joseph's day.