Mardi Gras wraps up
NEW ROADS — Christine Hebert gave up her several-years-long boycott of Mardi Gras on Tuesday.
Hebert, of Gonzales, was with relatives attending the dual Mardi Gras parades in New Roads, a first for her party of four.
In years past, Hebert said she enjoyed making the trip to New Orleans when Carnival season rolled around.
She stopped going to the New Orleans parades some years back, she said, when she realized she’d “aged out of it.”
“I realized I was the most mature person there,” Hebert said. “I just got tired of it; Mardi Gras got old to me. All the hustle and bustle, people bumping you. It was kind of fun, but people can be so rude. New Roads just seems more polite.”
So when the 90th Community Center Carnival Parade started rolling through New Roads around 11 a.m. Tuesday, Hebert, her husband, Mark, and their two daughters, Kacy, 4, and Kenzie, 2, had set up a few rows back from the viewing stand.
It was the first Carnival for the two youngsters. Kacy neatly arranged the beads her mother caught for her on the back of a chair. Kenzie was asleep.
About three hours later, when the 69th annual Lions Carnival P;arade got under way, Hebert and family had first-row seats along Main Street, where they watched Mayor Robert Myer dancing in front of the Lions Club judges to get the show rolling.
“This is a better fit for us,” Hebert said, pointing to her daughters. “It’s fun, it’s pretty clean and it’s just a nice day out. We’ll probably make this an every-year thing.”
Across the street, Kimmy Roussell had staked out a spot near the viewing stand.
“I come to see the bands,” she said. “This is where the action’s at. If you don’t sit here, the bands will just march past you. They don’t even perform.”
She stood by and watched as a float made to look like an order of fast-food french fries went past. Another float had dancing cowboys. A third float stopped and one of its riders gave a brief history of how Louisiana achieved statehood.
Roussell was unmoved.
Moments later, marching bands from Baker stopped to perform in front of where Roussell was standing.
She tried to mimic their routine. She stumbled instead.
“That was bad,” she said. “It’s pretty embarrassing.”
Near the end of the day, a few hours after Darielle Derosin and Nicholas Gremillion Sr. had been named queen and king of the Community Center Carnival parade, and after Meagan Elyse Hotard and Donald Doucet reigned during the Lions Carnival parade, Jay Bartell scanned the ground to pick up stray beads, a discarded plastic cigar and other trinkets to take home in a bag.
“It’s for my nephew, Jack, in Ohio,” Bartell said. “He’s been to Mardi Gras once. Every year, he wants me to send him some beads. I have no clue what he does with them. He was named after me, so I send him stuff.”