Missing Mardi Gras in Mobile

It was the first week of March in Mobile, and no one seemed to be ready to let the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras pass from reality into memory just yet . Mardi Gras beads, blue and green and purple, hung (and would remain hanging unless removed by some force of nature) from tree branches, clocks, and statues, or lay sparkling in the morning sunlight on nearly deserted sidewalks on and around Dauphin Street. Stores were still selling feathered, fantastic masks, beads, puppets, and things that light up–some letting them go at 50% off, and others stubbornly selling them at no less than the price they commanded during Mardi Gras, which had been officially over for about a week. In the windows of the marvelously eclectic Bienville Books on Dauphin Street, books by Bukowski and Burroughs took a back seat to those chronicling, for example, Mobile’s succession of Mardi Gras Queens between the mid-1800's and the mid-1980's–books which people were still buying.

It had, after all, been a long year for anyone living on the Gulf Coast (although clearly less horrific for the people of Mobile than for many of their neighbors to the west), and there were still signs of the damage incurred along the causeway that runs across Mobile Bay between downtown and the Eastern Shore–boarded-up restaurants, skeletons of gas stations, portions of the causeway itself still being rebuilt. Mardi Gras this year must have been particularly cathartic, its crowds of revelers made significantly bigger by people who simply didn’t have the stomach just yet to party in New Orleans. (Mobile is actually where Mardi Gras originated on the Gulf Coast; the celebration spread along the rest of the area later. From what I’d been told, Mardi Gras in Mobile is a somewhat more wholesome–if not exactly G-rated–and less tourist-ridden party here than it is in New Orleans.)

The poor planning on my part that resulted in my visiting Mobile for the first time a week after the official end of Mardi Gras was for a short time a source of outraged conversation among the regular patrons of Veet’s bar, whose neon-lit and guitar-filled windows convinced me, in spite of the place’s status as the sole sign of life on the otherwise empty street behind the Riverview Hotel, where I was staying, that it was my kind of place. On a Friday night, just after an exquisite meal at a local restaurant called The Pillars (where the waitress, who had a face straight out of a Vermeer painting, was studying electrical engineering so that she could build NASCAR cars), I went in.

I wasn’t sure how my presence would go over. One of the many lessons that I’ve learned by traveling is that any thoughts I may have that I’ll be able to blend right in with the locals in the places I visit are delusions. In spite of the fact that my bland (to my ears) Yankee accent inevitably slips into an unintended, mild drawl when I’m in the South, it’s clear that some kind of “Yankee” symbol becomes evident on my forehead as soon as I hit the ground south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

There are some mean-looking guys in Mobile. On my first morning in the city, after walking along bright, silent Dauphin Street for a while, I stopped in to a little convenience store with bars on the windows and doors, in search of a couple of bottles of water. A sign outside still heralded the store as the place to go for all one’s Mardi Gras needs. The man behind the counter looked as if he’d just done 30 years’ hard time and was only waiting for the next opportunity to get himself arrested on a felony. He was, however, as charming and helpful as a Boy Scout, his gentle yet slightly mischievous Cajun accent soothing as the sea.

The man at the door at Veet’s looked only slightly less fearsome, but he waved me right in with a grin. It was just ten o’clock (pretty much midday for the bars and clubs in New York), but the place was already just-about-jumping. Couples danced to a country-western band while others sat in the darkness watching. The bar seemed like a good place to start. I sat down and ordered a gin gimlet, which is no more than gin, ice, and a splash of Rose’s Lime Juice. The bartender was very sweet and friendly, but I might as well have ordered one of those complicated, fruity concoctions that people like to drink on cruises and Caribbean holidays. They didn’t have Rose’s Lime Juice at Veet’s.

“I could just put a lot of limes in it for you,” the bartender offered helpfully. I opted for a one-ingredient drink instead.

“Excuse me,” said a woman seated to my right. “Would you do me a favor? When the man I’m with gets back over here, will you tell him what a great dancer I am?” Her date, evidently, didn’t think much of her dancing style, but she made it clear that she wasn’t all that impressed by his, either.

In a couple of minutes the date came back. I did the requested favor, but I’m not sure how much impact it made on their dancing relationship.

But the man had me just about speechless. “Do people tell you that you look like...” I started.

“Robert Duvall,” said the woman. Oh, yes. This was no mere vague resemblance–in face, expressions, gestures, and voice, this man was Boo Radley grown full-fledged into the Apostle. But he was, it turned out, a plumber, and not all that concerned about his doppelganger.

He did, however, buy me a drink, after unsuccessfully trying to get me to dance. He tried to guess what I was doing in Mobile.

“Great sex with a southern boy?” I pointed to my wedding ring, and shook my head.

“Great sex with a southern girl?” Same response.

He gave up. I finally clued him in that I was in town to write about Mobile.
“That shouldn’t take long,” he said. He paused, and gave the matter some more thought. “Mobile,” he explained, “is a dichotomy.”

“A dichotomy of what?”

“Rednecks and smart people.” I asked him to define “smart people,” but he had more pressing concerns: (1) that I would convince a lot of Yankees to come live in Mobile, and (2) the previously mentioned outrage that I had come to Mobile the first week of March, and had missed Mardi Gras. What, he wanted to know regarding the latter, was the point?

I explained that I’d been having a great time and great food in Mobile, but admitted to having lousy timing. Having apparently found his entire interaction with me frustrating and bizarre at that point, he grabbed his date and went off to dance.

While waiting in line to get into the lockless ladies’ room, I got into a conversation with a girl who talked about how long it had taken to get into the bathroom during Mardi Gras. I came clean right away this time, and confessed that I was a travel writer, and from New Jersey, and that I’d missed Mardi Gras. She, too, found the latter information shocking.

Back at the bar, watching in horror as the bartender laid long rows of Jaegermeister shots and chasers of Red Bull out along the bar, I got a tap on the shoulder.

“New Jersey!” It was the girl from the ladies’ room line. “Come on over here and meet the band. We want to show you some southern hospitality since you missed Mardi Gras, and get you a drink.” This, perhaps, was my chance for atonement; I followed her to the other end of the bar, where a very happy-looking and rather sweaty greeting committee had formed.

The girl (whose name I never got) introduced me to one of the band members, his girlfriend, and another, somewhat older man. “This is Nancy. She’s a writer from New Jersey. She missed Mardi Gras.”

“New Jersey, huh?” said the musician, affably. “Which exit?”

I’d completely forgotten about that joke over the years, and confusedly tried to explain which exit (on the New Jersey Turnpike) my town is closest to. No matter. The musician promised to play a Springsteen song in my honor, and went off to do the next set.

Turning to look at the older man, I saw it–the mysterious symbol that identifies Yankees for the benefit of Southerners. O.K., I didn’t actually see anything, but my antennae went up.
“Where are you from?” I demanded.

The man gave a little smile indicating that he’d been identified plenty of times in the past, too. “Brooklyn.” He drew me closer and whispered, “I’ve been down here since 1974. It’s the best place to be, Nancy. The best.”

The Chairwoman of the Veet’s Southern Hospitality Welcoming Committee presented me with some Mardi Gras beads, gave me her blessing, and sent me on my way. I wore the beads proudly as a headed out past the dancers, who were now locked together in slow-dance mode, oblivious to everything but the music. I waved at the mean-looking gentleman at the door, and he waved pleasantly back. This, I was thinking, is the kind of place I’ll want to come back to. And I’ll be damn sure to do it at Mardi Gras time.
By Nancy Bevilaqua (C) 2008