Eye Abrasion - Mardi Gras - New Orleans February – March 1970

Waking up the next morning I wished I hadn’t. My head felt like overnight I’d had surgery and someone implanted a five pound lead sinker behind my right eye. Nothing in my previous experience prepared me for the excruciating anguish; it felt like I had a splinter in my eye. Realizing something was seriously wrong; I acknowledged that I required a physician’s services. Somehow managing to find a walk-in clinic, I spent the requisite $20 to find out that, “You have an abrasion of the eye”. Not sure what this meant, the doctor explained that it was a small cut on my eye. Evidently getting incredibly drunk, blacking out and not removing your contact lenses over a forty-eight plus hour plus period can create this condition. After receiving medication and being told to stay still, evidently walking around is not only throbbing torture but detrimental to the healing process, I managed to return to my lodgings.

The next four days I spent nursing my injured eye back to health. My hosts were gracious for the most part, but I could sense the restrained annoyance on the part of the reluctant roommate. However he nursed me back to health with a steady diet of red beans and rice. In good time I was able to continue my Mardi Gras shenanigans, however my partying was greatly restrained and I carefully monitored my alcohol intake.

One evening during the festivities I met a young lady who invited me back to her home. When we arrived I was duly impressed. It was in an old-money, expansive lawn, 100 year-old oak trees, two-story vintage historic home. Somewhere in the course of the evening it dawned on me that I was the entertainment; that this was a family tradition. Dinner was elegant, authentic New Orleans Creole cuisine and her parents were intensely gracious.

After dinner her father and I sat in the family room and had brandy and cigars. He began asking me questions and I began to spin out my story. He inquired about what I intended to do with my life. I mumbled something about wanting to help people. What he conveyed next stuck a nerve and resonated. He said, “First, you have to be in a position to help people.” In other words vagabonds were in no position to help anyone. A bit condescending but then I was only twenty-one and had my life in front of me. I decided it was good advice, but how I was going to get from A to B was poignantly unclear. The young lady made it clear as she dropped me off that this was a one night only event and that was fine with me. I later discerned that the evening was part of a ritual that was required as part of her family’s krewe. A Krewe (pronounced in the same way as "crew") is an organization that puts on a parade and or a ball for the Carnival season. The term is best known for its association with New Orleans Mardi Gras. (Wikipedia)

The rest of my Mardi Gras celebration was mostly uneventful. As I began running low on funds, somehow I got hold of a bugle and ripped off bugle calls and my own rendition of bugle jazz. This was the one and only time in my life when I made a living as a musician. It was short-lived, I wasn’t that good and it’s just that when you’re drunk you’re more likely to part with your spare change. It wasn’t much of a living anyway as I made perhaps fifteen bucks.

My mother bought me a trumpet when I was eleven because she and my grandmother thought all those musicians on Lawrence Welk always appeared to be having such a great time. Like I never had a good time and needed to have more fun. How my mother could ever speculate that I needed more fun defies comprehension, I was the biggest practical joker my family ever produced.

At eleven I was enrolled in the nation’s only Boy Scout Band and religiously attended weekly practice on the third floor of Fire Station Eleven in downtown Indianapolis. This is vivid because my trumpet and I often took the half hour bus ride there alone. Playing the trumpet continuously until I graduated high school had finally paid off. Fun had nothing to do with playing the trumpet; the guys on Lawrence Welk were smiling like crazy because Mr. Welk was paying them generously to do so. In the end I was no different.

Mardi Gras Day was a letdown. It was more a wrap up than a climax. The only notable thing I recall was running across a number of grossly attired, obnoxious gay guys whose repeated attempts to proposition me left me wondering how the hell I ever got to this part of town.