Monque’D and Charlie Brown, all on a Mardi Gras day

I thought I was all set for a nice, quiet Mardi Gras day. The only activity in or even near our neighborhood when Fat Tuesday finally arrives is the early morning march-through by the Jefferson City Buzzards Marching Club.
They gather across Wisner Playground at Grit’s Bar starting about 6 a.m. and by 7 they start a walking parade through the streets of Uptown, visiting favorite neighborhood bars en route to joining the Rex Parade somewhere along St. Charles Avenue.
Once the Buzzards have left, all is quiet. The Uptown parades that swamp our neighborhood for the days prior to Mardi Gras with people, vehicles, bicycles and child conveyances — all costumed and decorated —  have moved many blocks distant.
But on Tuesday, the post-Buzzard quiet was broken by the familiar rap-rappa-rap-rap, rap-rap knock of J. Monque’D, our swamp-blues-singing, harmonia-playing, authentic-to-the-core, large and larger-than-life neighbor of many years. Monque’D’s health has been in decline, the circulation in his legs having become so problematic that he moves slowly, walking with a cane.
His condition has been such that Rosemary and I had wondered aloud to each other where he would be up to his usual revelry with his Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Creole Wild West. After all, it was J. Monque’D who gave us his defining soliloquy of Mardi Gras: “It’s like Christmas, your birthday, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween — all rolled into one,” he once told us, eyes raised slightly heavenwards.
But we needn’t have worried. He came knocking that morning to ask me if I could give him a ride down to the Creole Wild West den. “I know how to get us there so that we can get in and you can get out,” he said, describing a route up Valence to LaSalle, across Napoleon, etc., etc. “You’ll be able to get in and out if you go that way.”
And like Charlie Brown’s annual encounter with Lucy when she absolutely promises to hold that football in place for him to kick through the goal post, I fell for it. I did it knowing J.Monque’D well enough to know that he would tell me anything to get a ride to his destination, regardless of whether I’d be able to get back to the house.
Off we went, down Valence as planned, but after that we encountered only blocked streets and backed-up traffic. We squeezed around the floats of the Elks truck parade where they were staging to follow the Rex parade which was scheduled to follow the Zulu parade which did not get started as scheduled. When we found the grid locked, we looped out further until we bypassed that knot, usually to encounter another.
We saw parts of the Zulu parade making its turn from Claiborne onto Jackson; we saw the medicine man for the Wild Tchoupitoulas Indian tribe in full skeletal garb standing in front of the tribe’s den; countless hucksters tried to steer us into abandoned vacant lots where they were charging $10 to $20 for parade parking; everywhere costumed pedestrians made their way toward parade routes amid creeping traffic.
And creep we did until finally arriving at J. Monque’D’s destination where my stopping to allow his exit from the vehicle triggered a chorus of car horns from drivers behind us whose creeping had been momentarily delayed.
Somehow, turning on this street and that I got back to Clairborne and then, miraculously, across it. Once across, I headed north, away from the parade crowds to Carrollton, thence through Riverbend which was as quiet as Uptown.
When I finally reached home, I luxuriated in a cup of coffee I had been anticipating so long that it triggered a fine and delicate caffeine high I enjoyed while empathizing with good ole Charlie Brown.