Though much of it is all a blur to me at this point, my Thirsty Thursday last week was not a typical Tigerland hoo-rah but a rather magical small-town hoedown.
Louisiana is known for having all kinds of festivals, each town usually headlined by one. Crowley’s International Rice Festival, called “Trash Fest” by some of its younger faithful, is a lasting paradigm of the small-town USA our parents grew up in, only not as polite as Midwest corn county fair would be.
It’s Rice Festival — things get weird.
Situated on the boulevard in the vintage downtown of Crowley, the quaint-sized carnival gives you that old time feeling of being in high school again and the buzz feeling you get around Mardi Gras.
With the harvest finished up and the long hours in the rice paddies clocked in, everyone in town is ready to loosen up and get liquored up. It becomes a melting pot that South Louisiana is all too familiar with, where the social class line between trash and class vanishes and everyone’s just as “culture-rich” as the next guy.
There’s magic in the shrimp on a stick, the light beer and the two-stepping Cajun queens. And then there are those that make you squirm: the carnies with impressively grimy shirts, bar tar that slicks the pavement and a Ferris wheel that has probably hosted more than first kisses.
But it’s great. It’s completely grand, and the people just can’t get enough of it.
John Nickel, a native of Crowley, likes to describe the right-of-passage the Rice Festival stands for.
He explained that in your adolescent days, you enjoy the festival rides and the carnival at the south end of the street. But as you get older you travel north, first showing off your teenage athleticism by winning a gold fish for your sweetheart, then getting to the hurricane booth where an ID may be optional.
Finally, you reach the main stage in front of the courthouse where everyone’s been there, done that. Usually, it’s a big reunion for those who moved elsewhere but return to see old friends and relive the young memories. Here the crowd puts its pride aside to have a good time.
Fellow revelers and wily Rice Fest veterans also informed me to be careful as to whom I would share my funnel cake with — or there could be
matrimonial consequences.
Giddy with the probable outcome of funnel cake sharing, I figured this to be a bon temps of a different kind.
I did share some funnel cake, but the fried alligator on a stick proved to be a much more appealing share.
This festival maintains an incredible commitment from its partakers, many returning home to scratch their itch for this October weekend. Even the musicians are committed.
One year, Wayne Toups took time out of his prison sentence to make his annual appearance.
Commitment like that is found only in one other place — funnel cake proposals.
It’s like a poor man’s Disney World for a weekend and the rich man’s humbling through a baptism by hurricane. Everyone knows everyone’s Rice Fest stories, and it doesn’t stop anyone.
Festivities like this are a lapse in time. For a couple of days, the pangs of the economy and the fatigues of being a professional subside, and the starch is released from the daily grinds of life.
Of course, there are the large festivals in New Orleans with mainstream headliners and crowds for days, but let the tourists have New Orleans.
The small town festival is what the Louisiana experience is all about, where everyone is a common person and unconcerned with anything other than enjoying the simple life.
