Mardi Gras

I don't know whose idea it was to have a Mardi Gras celebration in a town where late February is a mixture of ice, snow, cold rain, and hard wind, but it's an interesting idea. They probably sell a lot of booze in the big tent, or maybe they sell hot food and people go drink a lot of booze at the Western. My guess is, there's a lot of booze. And with it raining, and just around 32, and a little slippery, things are going to happen.

I had a good view of the Mardi Gras parade this year. Our Volunteer Fire Department brought two fire trucks and one ambulance, and we were in spot #13. I was the passenger in one of the fire trucks, and threw candy and beads to all the folks down on the highway or on Burro Street coming back east. I looked in their eyes and noticed they were sick of winter. We have long ones here and standing out on the street in 35 degree weather letting your kid chase candy close to the wheels of a firetruck, isn't my idea of a warm-hearth kind of place to spend late February. On the contrary, that place would be this chair, where I reflect on the events of the day.

My first reaction to it was, you should hold a Mardi Gras in a place with a chance of having steaming, pleasant weather (like New Orleans, or Mobile), not a place 9000 feet with the snow still melting onto the road as it goes below 32. But my second reaction was, gee, green yellow and purple make a cool combination, and it sure is a lot of beads. I myself threw maybe a hundred. And I saw people who had as many as a hundred around their necks. And almost all of them were green, yellow and purple. A good combination.

Now in a town this small it doesn't take long before you know people that you see in a parade like this, and that was certainly true for me. I saw lots of people I knew. They too were cold. They too let their kids scramble around beneath them, picking up candy and beads. Seemed like every kid on the mountain was there.

Our fire department supplied boatloads of candy and beads. I was proud of them for that. We washed our trucks; we brought them in; we put the basketball teams on top of them; we threw a lot of candy; we did the whole route. We won. Everyone knows who we are.

Cold, rainy, bleak, yes. Another Mardi Gras is history.