Dear Editor (as written to the Krewe of MCCA and their extended family):

MCCA XXXV…WHAT IT WAS!!

What it was, was the most perfect MCCA carnival season in our 35 years ! The identity of the king and queen was an absolute secret. Anyone who tells you that “they knew” really did not. The queen’s son was a royal guardsman, and he found out who the queen was when “the shoe fit” and she was revealed! King Richard and Queen Deni and their families were magnificent for the entire season.

The court presentation and royalty revealing event had the highest attendance ever, then the Coronation Ball boasted the highest attendance ever, with the most gorgeous program we have ever presented, to the best prepared Coronation setting, with the best of everything from the vastly improved costumers to the lavish buffet of food.

The 10 dukes were a grand team! They were relentless in their attendance and performance in the maze of parties, formed an obvious close fellowship that will last forever and were proud to costume and parade together on the impressive MCCA Duke float.

The weather statistics of our parade day could readily appear in an encyclopedia as describing the perfect day! Our parade was breathtaking. My sincere thanks to you all for the great costumes and great float theme designs and decorations. Many of the den costumes were good enough to appear in Broadway plays. Masking was wonderfully improved. A Carnival adage goes: “Masking is the mystery of Mardi Gras, and magic

revealed is magic destroyed !”

The spectator crowd: Well, you were there. You saw it. Unprecedented! Places like the Columbia Street bridge, where we used to be able to “reload” throws and catch our breath for 10 minutes were shoulder to shoulder with people. Many thousands out to see our show! They were not disappointed.

The parade movement was perfect! Bill McGeehee is now a parade movement genius. I never heard one complaint of ”we went way too fast…..we went too slow…floats were separated by a mile, etc.” We had our 38 floats and the 65 parade units put together as perfectly as possible, separating floats with festival queen cars and marching groups, and Indians and horses and every marvelous opportunity that we had. Unprecedentedly few instances of “bumper to bumper” floats.

Eric Paulsen was a great and popular celebrity parade marshal. He was thrilled with our crowd and our parade. He tossed a parade marshal record quantity of beads, bears and throws. He announced that he was our parade marshal on his Channel 4 Morning Show on Thursday, showed his parade marshal medallion and invited folks to join us on Saturday.

The Southern University Jaguar Marching Band, also known as “The Human Jukebox”: It pretty much says it all when you say that you have the No. 1-ranked college

marching band in America appearing in your parade! What a show they were in our Krewe of MCCA Parade on Saturday! I suppose that we could say that we are sort of hanging with the very “big league”,when the Jaguars’ next march was in the Krewe of Bacchus the day after the MCCA parade, and moving even now as I pen

this summary report.

Drones, too? Yes, another first time for us! The entire parade was filmed by camera-equipped drones, courtesy of our friend Bleu Evans, technology expert extraordinaire. The drone ran up and down the parade column, providing detailed filming. At least twice, Bleu flew it down to hover just “head-high” in front of the Captain’s Float, and I took the opportunities to salute and hoist a cup in a toast to the feat.

My sincere gratitude to all our dedicated workers and leaders who do so much to help our “Carnival in the Forest” become bigger and better each year. It is worth the valiant effort. The Krewe of MCCA season is more than simply a celebration. It is a great part of who we are in Washington Parish. It is a privilege ride at the head of your column!

– Don Spiers

The Captain