Newly promoted ‘colonel’ reviews mardi gras

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 3

Newly promoted ‘colonel’ reviews mardi gras

NZPA staff correspondent New Orleans Colonel Sir Robert Muldoon reviewed a parade in New Orleans yesterday, and ended up wearing a string of pearls round his neck. Sir Robert, in New Orleans after talks on trade and payments with officials and businessmen in Washington and New York, was made an honorary Louisiana colonel at a luncheon in New Orleans. That may not be fingerlickin’ good (though it might have been in nearby Kentucky) but it is a definite advance on Sir Robert’s World War II rank of corporal. The festivities began in

the evening with a white tie dinner. Handsome men predominated along with beautiful women in off-the-shoulder dresses. The New Zealand party stood out (and were lucky to be invited, one guest confided) in lounge suits. The parade Sir Robert reviwed was a mardi gras parade, an exuberant tradition in New Orleans which leads up to the last Tuesday before Lent (this year March 6) when the city goes wild, everybody wears masks, people make love, people fight, and the streets become a sea of human flotsam and jetsam, broken wine bottles, and crushed beer cans. At this stage it is quiet, to the relief of the secret

servicemen protecting Sir Robert. The parade was great fun — kings and queens and knights on floats, all throwing ropes of beads and “pearls” to the crowd, and flinging “doubloons," high school marching bands, and young girls, whirling pompoms. The trick is to catch the beads and then drape them round your neck, which Sir Robert did as teeny-boppers squealed behind him. The expert catchers, though, were the secret servicemen. Trained to catch flies with a single blow, and forbearing all alcohol, they got far more than their fair share, but then distributed their spoils among the New Zealand party.