Fat Tuesday

Had our party last night. Got the house cleaned up, champagne cold, food prepped, and everybody came in costume for our Mardi Gras get-together. We had fried catfish, jambalaya, red beans, pickled this and that–and as the evening went on, the pickled this and that included us, since we had four bottles of champagne and then a couple more of still wine with dinner ...


Before dessert–King Cake, with the baby included–Blind Whitebread Perry brought out the guitar and did a few songs. Which was fun on a couple of levels. I had several Louisiana-songs, plus couple of funny ones. Did "Little Egypt," "Woke Up Dead Blues," "St. James Infirmary," "Louisiana, 1927," and "House of the Risin' Sun."


The playing was okay, I didn't screw up too bad. But what was more interesting were the crowd reactions. 


Understand, that this group of folks–there were nine of us last night, and four more who couldn't make it–gets together a couple-three times a year for dinner here or there, and we've been doing it for probably twenty-five years in the current configuration. Some of them go back longer than that. And while me playing the guitar ought not to have been a surprise to them, since we've talked about it since I got more serious with it, none of them outside my wife had ever heard me play or sing. Probably would have stayed that way, save that my wife urged me to do it and I didn't resist too hard.


My favorite response was from Dave, who leaned over to my wife and said, "Are you fucking kidding me? How come I didn't know he could do this?!"


I loved it. 


A fine time was had by all. We cleaned up, fell into bed, and I slept like a rock for nine hours.