laissezz le bon temps rouler

“Laissez le bon temps rouler”

                   “Let the good times roll” is the motto for Mardi Gras. I’ve dressed up as part of the fun for many years. However, a some costume choices made for me when I was a child show how the times have changed. Some were taken with a cheap Brownie camera using black and white film. In the 1950s, we would take the film to be developed and get the whole roll back as little three by four booklets held together with a plastic spiral.

           In some ways, these booklets formed a stop action sequence of an entire event. But the picture I want to talk about was pulled out from its booklet. All I have ever seen is this individual picture with the left side a tangle of ragged little tears showing where it was once connected to other pictures taken with that roll of film. I don’t have a clear memory of that day. What happened before or after this moment in time is lost to me. But I do have a vivid memory of that picture.

            I’m in the center of the picture, a smiling eight or nine-year-old. Granny is pushing a stroller carrying my little cousin, Aaron. It was obviously taken on a Mardi Gras Day since the we are all in costume. He’s dressed in a clown suit with pompoms down the front and a cone shaped hat held on with an elastic band under his chubby neck. He’s about eighteen months old.

           The most arresting part of the picture (no pun intended) is me pointing a pistol at whoever is taking the picture. I’m dressed as a cowgirl with a fringed skirt and vest and a cowgirl hat is perched jauntily atop my corkscrew curls. The holster for the gun is attached to the ornate belt that slants at a jaunty angle from my waist. All three of us, Granny, Aaron and I are smiling at the photographer, as though a child holding a gun – granted it was probably a cap gun- at the photographer is okay. For those of you too young to remember “cap” guns were made by loading a spool of red tape that had small, round blisters of gun powder at intervals into a toy gun. When the hammer of the toy gun hit the blister of gunpowder a sharp clap could be heard. There- frozen in time- is a picture of me holding a gun pointed at someone and I'm smiling. 

                       In 1952 my child’s view of the world was both naive and simple. I didn’t know that guns were used to kill “real” people. I’d seen movies with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The bad guys were shot at and fell off their horses onto the ground. I don’t remember seeing any blood or even any wounds. These were bad guys and the good guys stopped them. That was the point of the movie and in my child’s mind how life really worked. I knew my Grandpa went hunting with a gun, but I never saw him shoot anything myself. Being a child, my knowledge of guns and how they worked was immature.

           Later when more realistic depictions of violence were shown in the movies, I grew to understand that guns hurt real people. There was blood and gore involved and lives were changed forever by one careless pull of a trigger. Today our nation is awash with guns and the carnage caused by them is shown every night on the local news. As an adult in America today, I choose to not participate in this gun culture. In 1952, I had no clue about any of the responsibilities or consequences of gun ownership. But there is a picture of a moment when I appear to think guns are fun.

           Today, I’m appalled at any appearance of joviality around gun use or even gun adjacent paraphernalia. Even the costuming of children to replicate the violence shown in videos and movies has changed. I saw a baby about six months old in a stroller the other day dressed in a camo onesie, with a camo cap on his little head. I wondered what enemy his mother was hoping to hide him from who was going to menace them in the Super Target on Westheimer. I must own the fact that I had some judgmental thoughts about his parents in that moment.

           There’s another Mardi Gras picture of my family a few years later. This time the picture is in color. It was taken with a Polaroid camera. The pictures did not have to be sent off to be developed now. They shot out of the side of the camera, almost like a tongue giving the world the raspberry. Once the picture came out, a gel of fixing agent had to be applied before the image faded away. Even if you carefully smeared the gel over the picture, over time the colors faded away leaving a pastel, ghostly image behind. There was no longer a small booklet to remember an event, only one frozen instant of time gradually diminishing to a shadow of its original glory.

           In this one, I’m now about 12 years old and dressed as a Chinese peasant with a mandarin collared shirt, elaborate braided buttons and wide legged pants. I have a wide brimmed straw hat, like the ones seen in countless Chinese paintings, on my head and my eyes have been elongated with mascara to look more Asian. Granny is dressed as a gypsy with a billowing blouse, gathered skirt, a scarf tied around her head and jangly bracelets on each arm. My mom, stepdad and younger sister, Debbie are dressed as American Indians. Their costumes are white satin with pink fringe what must have been bright red at the time. On their heads are white satin headbands with a single feather sticking out on one side. They had painted three stripes on the cheek of each face, as well.

           I hardly know where to begin describing how inappropriate I think any of these costumes would be today. As a child, I knew nothing about any of these cultures. Now, I cringe in seeing our family costuming in the most stereotypical depiction of each culture and ethnicity.

           It wasn’t until later, when I read Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, a book that follows a Chinese family’s hardships before World War I, that I had any concept of Chinese people being a lot like my family. I was especially moved by O-Lan who through her good sense and work ethic literally saved her children from starvation. Looking at the picture of me, so well fed, merrily parading around in a Chinese peasant costume, I wonder what she would have thought if she had seen me at that moment.

           Again, it wasn’t until I read Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Exile , after visiting my sister in North Carolina and visiting a section of the trail, that I had a sense of what it must have been like to be a Native American. Remember my sister, Debbie, was the child in the stroller dressed as a Native American. I learned that the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations were forced to relocate after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. They suffered exposure, disease, and starvation walking that aptly named Trail of Tears. More than four thousand died before reaching their final destinations. I have since visited many Indian Reservations and Cultural Centers. Each time, I’m moved by the resilience and dignity of the people I meet.

           I love my Granny very much but seeing her dressed as a gypsy fortune teller trivialized the rich culture of the Romany people whose lineage can be traced to Northern India over one thousand years ago. They have been marginalized and demonized over time in many places. The Nazis did their best to eliminate them during World War Two. Even today, they are often hounded out of communities because of the stories told of their lifestyle.

           Occasionally, my feelings have been hurt when I see someone making fun of my Cajun language or culture without understanding who we are and how we got to this place and time. I have learned to abide by the American Indian Proverb “Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins”        

            I have come to understand that behind all these stereotypical “costumes” are people just like me. People whose feelings can be hurt when others diminish their society into simplistic caricatures. So laissez le bon temps rouler -letting the good times roll- should be done with understand, respect and empathy for all.