CAROLINE'S CORNER: MARDI GRAS OR BUST

I have done my first and last Mardi Gras.

Two years ago, Boulware and I decided at the last minute to engage in a spirited adventure and join the throng of revelers in New Orleans.

It all happened so fast. On Friday morning before the big weekend, I came home from running errands to find a message on the answering machine. "Mom, Brenda and I are going to Mardi Gras", said Sharla, who was a student at Auburn. "Brenda's friends from the University of Connecticut are picking us up. We don't have a place to stay. We may stay in the car, but we'll stay in a safe area. I'll call you Sunday night."

I went to the mailbox and returned to find another message on the answering machine. "Mom, I am going to Mardi Gras with my friends," said Cara, who is a student at Mississippi State. "We'll be safe. Ten of us are going in two cars, and we are going to stay with Bubba's parents. They are going to have a crawfish boil for us. I'll call you Sunday night."

The crawfish boil did it. Cajun food is my favorite. Begin with a cup of gumbo. Add a serving of crawfish etouffee. Finish with a few fried crawfish tails, and you have the ultimate meal. Add to the meal a walk around New Orleans, taking in the historical sights and alternate lifestyle folks, and you have an uncommonly good mini vacation.

With this all in mind, I called Boulware at work and asked, "Why does God like our daughters better than he does us? They are both going to Mardi Gras."

"Be ready in an hour and we'll go," the adventuresome spouse answered.

Mardi Gras is the French name for Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the fasting season. New Orleans held its first Mardi Gras celebration in 1827, when students from Paris introduced the event.

Leaders of New Orleans society organize and stage the carnival. Old New Orleans families that have belonged to the society for generations create elaborate costumes and floats. Roads leading into New Orleans are flooded with normal folks rushing to "eat, drink and be merry" with the old society folks.

New Orleans has a population of 496,938. During the Mardi Gras Festival, that number must swell to at least double. With these numbers in mind, I hastily packed and began calling hotels. Finally I found one with a vacancy in a suburb of the city.

I should have known we were headed for the wrong place when Interstate 55 was crowded with cars full of college students, all south bound, all with "Mardi Gras or bust" signs hanging in their cars.

We made it to Canal Street, parked and set out among the throngs of partying humanity. I stopped to buy some beads so I would look like a party animal. I was thinking, "The daughters don't know we're here. We won't see them in this mass of people, and they will never believe their old, decrepit parents went on this adventure."

I glanced down the street and who should I see but Sharla, looking at me in disbelief. "I looked at a woman and she had on shoes like my mama's," she said. "Then I looked up and she had on a blouse like my mama's. I saw her hair and I knew it had to be my mama!"

As we watched a parade with Sharla and her friends, I looked across Canal Street and there stood Cara, never imagining who was looking at her. "Hey, Cara," I yelled.

She looked around as if she were thinking, "That sounds like somebody I know."

We were never able to get together, but she believes we were there because of the voice that sounded strangely like the voice of her mama.

About 10 p.m. We decided we were too old and too sober for the crowd on Bourbon Street, so we decided to call it a day. Unable to find a cab, we opted to take a bus to our home away from home. The seats were all taken, so we had to stand and hang on around corners. Being stuck in a traffic jam and being the friendly person that I am, I asked the young man standing beside me, "Do you think we'll ever get out of here?"

"Who, me and you get out of here?" he responded. I knew I had been friendly to the wrong person on the wrong bus at the wrong party. As his friends began to snicker, I began to panic. My first thought was to get off the bus and run. As I looked around the neighborhood, I realized this was not an option. I looked at Boulware in the back of the bus, and he looked very defenseless for the situation. He didn't know my dilemma, so why should I cause our daughters to be orphans? They could come out of this incident with at least a father.

I looked to the front of the bus and recognized a husband and wife who were staying in our hotel. The husband was big and brawny, and I shoved and pushed to stand beside him. "May I stand by your husband?" I asked his wife as I gently pushed her aside.

"You may," she answered. "You look pale. Are you okay?"

"I am not okay, and I'll explain it to you at the hotel," I answered as I snuggled closer to my chosen guardian.

The bus ride continued uneventfully as I promised myself that if I ever got off this bus alive, I would never step foot on a bus in a large city again.

The next morning, on the way to eat beignet doughnuts at Morning Call, (we traveled by automobile of course), we commented on the hordes of college students sleeping in, around, and on top of cars.

"Look, that girl's hair looks exactly like Sharla's," I said to Boulware as we passed a car with young people sleeping inside, on the roof and on the hood. Of course it was our first-born. We invited her group to eat doughnuts with us and off we trotted, two old folks and four unbathed college students who had all experienced the joys of their first Mardi Gras.

"We couldn't find a hotel room and we knew you would worry, so we found a safe place to sleep," explained Sharla. "We parked right outside the Hilton."

Boulware asked me last week, "Do you want to go to Mardi Gras again?"

"No thanks, I've done that," I answered with a shudder.