The throwing of the green

CHALMETTE, La. -- Heavy showers of cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions -- the staples of an Irish stew -- are in the southeast Louisiana forecast as St. Patrick's Day approaches.

About 175 tons of produce will be thrown from retooled Mardi Gras floats in a rain of freebies for spectators of the Irish-Italian-Isleno Community Parade in this New Orleans suburb today.

"People bring wheel barrows to this parade" to cart away the free food, says Walter Boasso, a state senator who four years ago helped found the parade.

Parade-watching has long been a participatory sport in the New Orleans area, where Mardi Gras Carnival riders hurl bead necklaces and other trinkets to people along the parade routes.

And for a number of years, St. Patrick's Day parades have been held in much the same spirit, except that produce with cultural ties takes flight alongside beads of green and white.

"It's Mardi Gras with a cultural twist," Boasso says.

Boasso fomented a perfect storm of parade enthusiasm when he decided that Italians, who celebrate St. Joseph's Day soon after St. Patrick's Day, should join with the Irish and Islenos of St. Bernard Parish in a multicultural mid-March parade. The Islenos are those whose ancestors came to Louisiana from the Canary Islands while Spain governed the Louisiana territory.

There were about 13 floats in the first parade. This year there will be 66, with more than 2,000 riders -- some traveling in from out of state, Boasso says.

"They tell me it's the biggest parade in Louisiana. It takes us three days to get ready," Boasso says. "Every year I say it's not going to get any bigger and then I get talked into adding a few more floats."

The Irish-Italian-Isleno Community Parade is held on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day. A day earlier, a somewhat smaller parade makes its way past the historic facades of Magazine Street in New Orleans, also featuring jettisoned produce.

Together with the smaller neighborhood marching clubs who take to their routes on March 17 -- often handing out flowers to women in exchange for kisses on the cheek -- the festivities have turned St. Patrick's Day into a mini carnival season.

"This is all about fun," says Aidan Gill, who runs a store on the Magazine Street route.

The hoopla -- throwing cabbages, everybody dressing in green and kissing the girls -- is in sharp contrast, he says, to the regimented parades he knew in Ireland when he was a boy.

"The idea that they throw beads at Mardi Gras parades and throw food at St. Patrick's Day parades is a strange phenomenon," he observed, noting that the original Irish immigrated because they didn't have any food and their descendants are now celebrating by throwing food off a float.

Most parades also feature music. Some floats carry Irish musicians who play as they ride, and the bigger parades now include marching bands just as Mardi Gras parades do. This year, high school bands from Jackson, Miss., and Bay St. Louis, Miss., will march in Chalmette.

"We're throwing produce along with our special Irish, Italian and Islenos throws, but otherwise it's like one of the biggest Mardi Gras parades you've ever seen in your life," Boasso says.

One of the unique throws from Boasso's parade are wooden "pickle nickels" which are redeemable at a local grocery store for a half-pound of pickled pork and paid for by Boasso.

The parade club also has joined with charity groups, who set up bags or bins along the route where spectators can place produce they don't intend to keep. It is then used to make stew at homeless shelters. Boasso says the Chalmette parade will carry about $100,000 worth of produce when it embarks on its 7-mile route.

But many of the food thrown is used by spectators -- sometimes on the spot. They pitch tents, set up barbecues and boil crawfish right there at the parade.

"It's basically a big picnic," Boasso says. "We've been throwing potatoes and they take and toss them right into the boiling crawfish, and for me, it's something exhilarating -- to see people having a good time like that. It's just perfect."