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St. Patrick’s Day is almost upon us and Granny, for one, can’t wait for Spring to be here …along with the green beer. Like most of you out there, we have either been snowed in or iced in or the temperature has been less than freezing. The kids and I have a major, if not terminal, case of Cabin Fever and we are waiting breathlessly for Spring Fever to hit. How sweet it will be. The whole world is planning a Prayer for world peace on 03-03-03-03-03. (March 3, 2003 at 3:03 p.m.) But the Pope has called a Day of Fast on March 5th,Ash Wednesday. Well folks, Ash Wednesday has always been a Day of Fast….Maybe he forgot that or maybe he thought he changed it of course, maybe he is directing his plea to people of other religions….who knows? Oh well. Gosh, by the time you get this Mardi Gras will be in full swing. Granny has been in New Orleans three times for the celebration….in 1953 with her parents….another time with her husband, Roquespiere, and the last time with Roques and three other couples……We traveled down there in a converted bread truck……the back was outfitted with a wall-to-wall mattress. We all sat up leaning against the walls with our feet in the middle. And the driver wouldn’t let us smoke…..but the uncomfortable ride down was made-up-for by all the fun we had when we got there. (You’ll have to remember, this was back in the days when Granny was young and foolish….with both feet firmly planted in ‘the world’….and she’s sure she’s not supposed to remember those days with such relish…..Why oh why does she? ….she doesn’t know. Oh Well.) ANYWAY, one morning, about 10:30 a.m., we parked the bread van in the French Quarter, fixed ourselves some drinkie-poos and took off down a wide street…..all in a row with arms linked, laughing, talking and sipping away. We were looking for Crazy Shirley’s, as I remember, an open-air Dixieland music bar that was famous for its patrons getting involved. ….snaking around the place, between the tables, led by a guy with an open umbrella…… ANYWAY, as I said, we were going right down the middle of the street, all eight of us, with linked arms and sipping away on our drinks, …..laughing and talking and celebrating early in the morning. All of a sudden we came to an intersection and the road ahead was closed off with a bunch of saw-horses all in a row. There was a city cop standing there to enforce the road block. We hesitated a minute, then hung a wide left…..I looked back over my shoulder and laughingly called to the policeman, “Hey, Mister….are we going the right way?” I’ll never forget his response, ..it was a classic. He said, “Lady, I don’t know anything about Religion!” And then, on the same trip, later in the day, one of our group’s women was overcome with an urge to ‘beat her feet in the Mississippi mud’ and she careened down a grassy embankment, her arms waving up in the air, going pell-mell toward the river. We were astonished. Then a cop came up next to us and yelled down to the woman, “Lady, PLEASE. PLEASE, PLEASE don’t drown!!!!! You would NOT believe the paper-work I’d have to do!” And even later, that same woman (she was a real card!!….a school-bus driver and an ambulance volunteer in Zionsville, Indiana) saw a man stretched flat out on his back on the sidewalk in the French Quarter…..a crowd was beginning to gather around. She ran over, jumped on the guy, straddling his tummy and started pounding on his chest in a ‘starting his heart going again’ mode. In a few minutes he started yelling, complete with slurred words, “Hey lady, get off me!….get OFF me!!!” We were all relieved he was just suffering from a few too many drinkie-poos and not seriously medically impaired………..well, like I said…..this was the Mardi Gras trip I remember the most! HAPPY FAT TUESDAY, EVERYONE!!!
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Pat Heidenreich |