Mardi Gras 1974 - The Party

Mardi Gras 1974 continued... Then we partied every day for a week. I had only been out of the Navy several weeks and I wanted to let loose. There wasn't a better time and place. We had a great experience and met some amazing people.

There was a different parade every day too with beads being flung about. We got lots of them. We saw live music every day. Sometimes it was on the street but we went to bars and clubs every night for music. Of course we spent some time at Preservation Hall experiencing New Orleans jazz and lots of other venues throughout the French Quarter and the Garden District.

On one night as we were walking down Bourbon Street being carried along with the crowd when we suddenly realized we were passing a group of guys from our neighborhood in Philly. One of the guys I was greeting was someone that was in my class from first grade through high school. It all happened so quickly and then we were moving on down the street with the crowd going in the opposite direction. I hadn't seen that guy since I left high school and then that was the last time I've seen him since.

The food was amazing. We had lots of street food but also at least one restaurant every day. We did quite a bit of site seeing throughout the city and especially on the Mississippi River waterfront.

At the end of the night in the French Quarter we would take a trolley car over to Tulane University to sleep at the stadium. We slept in our sleeping bags along the concourse in the campus stadium along with a large number of young people. They charged us $2 a night to stay there and that included access to showers.

One night I was separated from John and fell asleep on the trolley on the way back to Tulane. I woke on early the next morning laying across the seat in the trolley that was parked in the trolley barn.

On Ash Wednesday we got in the car for the long drive back to Philadelphia through the ongoing gas crisis. To be continued...

The first photo here I took of some street musicians with John in the background. He's the guy with the white jacket, plaid shirt and muttonchop beard. I wish he was here to go through my box of photos from the trip and reminisce together.