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Doug MacCash, "Mardi Gras Beads" (Louisiana UP, 2022)
00:38:56
An interview with Doug MacCash
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Doug McCash
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:33]
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- [00:43]
Emily Allen
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- [00:47]
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- [01:01]
Doug McCash
Hello friends. Guess who? That's right, it is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of Duty Black Ops 7 with three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever frickin seen. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now.
- [01:25]
Emily Allen
Rated M for Mature welcome to the New Books Network hi everyone, welcome to the New Books Network. I am Emily Allen, your host for this episode. The guest for today's discussion is Doug McCash, author of Mardi Gras Beads, published by LSD Press in 2022. And this book is the first in a new LSG Press series exploring different facets of Louisiana's iconic culture. So Mardi Gras Beads delves into the of the celebrated New Orleans artifact, explaining how they came to be in the first place and how they grew to have such a presence in New Orleans celebration. So the book starts off with beads origins before World War I through their ascent to the premier parade catchable by the Depression era. So Doug McCash explores the manufacturing of Mardi Gras beads and places as far as India and Japan, and then traces their shift from glass beads to the modern disposable plastic versions. So overall, this book, Mardi Gras Beads concludes that in the era of Coronavirus, of course, as you know, the parades and therefore bead throwing were temporarily suspended because of health concerns. And he also considers the future of biodegradable Mardi Gras beads in a city ever more threatened by the specter of climate change. So a little bit more about our guest speaker today, Doug McCash. He covers New Orleans art and culture for NOLA.com Time Speaking and the New Orleans advocates. So thank you for joining us today, Doug, here on the New Books Network.
- [03:05]
Doug McCash
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [03:07]
Emily Allen
Yeah. So before we talk about your book, can you tell us more about you?
- [03:12]
Doug McCash
Well, I started my journalism career 21, 22 years ago as an art critic. And New Orleans has maybe the biggest, liveliest art scene in the country, if you count carnival, which I do. And when you think about it, all of those float makers, everybody who's building the sculptures for the floats, painting them, and there are, there are hundreds of floats. These are full time artists. Everybody in the city becomes an artist during Mardi Gras. They put on a costume, you know, a handmade costume. They, you know, they make throws. And so I cover carnival the way an art critic would cover it, looking for, you know, looking for the symbolism, looking for the meaning.
- [04:06]
Emily Allen
Cool. Thank you. So that's really fascinating. And we can talk more about sort of what you've seen in your career, you know, over the years in those parades, a little bit more. So kind of backtracking a little bit. Can you talk to us about how within your career, you started on this book? So how did this book get started? Right. And what was sort of like your process of working and researching this book, like, for you?
- [04:31]
Doug McCash
Well, happily, the phone rang and it was, it was LSU Press, and they were launching a new series, and it's called Louisiana True. And it is, it is a series of small books, each of which address a different symbol of Louisiana. The accordion, the crawfish, and in my case, Mardi Gras beads. And they ask would I, would I do it? And, and of course, of course, I couldn't have been happier. And, and yet I thought, you know, I think like everybody else, I thought, well, my goodness, this is a. Seems kind of trivial, you know, seems kind of what, what's the great symbolic content here? And in the end, my goodness, I, I would argue that there is no more unique symbol of New Orleans than the Mardi Gras beads. And if you think about it, I mean, really, you know, a jazz musician, crawfish. Oh, golly, a riverboat, all of those things. Well, those things can sort of be associated with, with other places, but beads, you know, plastic beads around somebody's neck that pretty much says Carnival in New Orleans. And so, so starting there, it's been, it's been a great time. It happened right during COVID I mean, the project started right before COVID And so I conducted practically all of my research remotely. And In a way that lent a texture to the book that I really like because I'm an old newspaper dude. Right. I mean, I've worked for a newspaper for almost a quarter century and this book, it kind of celebrates all of the reporting that's gone on for the last hundred years in New Orleans that let me string this story together.
- [06:34]
Emily Allen
Cool. What were some of like, just as a follow up question to that. You know, you're right. It's interesting that given your career path in the newspaper industry. Right. That clearly informed this project in a lot of rich ways, obviously, and your expertise on art. So can you talk a little bit about sort of what sources you found, you know, most useful? Like were there specific years in the newspapers you found most useful sort of within the primary sources here? What were some of your go tos you felt like?
- [07:14]
Doug McCash
Well, the, the only trouble with doing the sort of research I did where you look through old newspapers online and, and they're practically all online now, is that you go down a rabbit hole a day. You just can't stop. You can't stop reading them. But listen, I found, you know, popular knowledge, oral history says that throwing Mardi Gras beads began in about 1921. And I found right there in print, a reporter talking about someone throwing beads a decade earlier. So there was that sort of. It's a very simple revelation, but it tells you that, you know, what we think we know isn't always what we once knew. Try to figure out what I just said. I don't know what it was.
- [08:01]
Emily Allen
I'm with you. I'm with you. You're good.
- [08:05]
Doug McCash
Yeah.
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Emily Allen
And kind of still sticking here with looking to the past, you know, can you talk to our listeners a little bit about, you know, what a throw is, you know, sort of the blanket category of that beads today fall under. And when did that, you know, tradition. And you started to talk about this a second ago, but when did that tradition of throwing things start in the parades? And how did that evolve into what we see now with the plastic beads?
- [08:35]
Doug McCash
Yeah, yeah. In New Orleans, there's not just like one parade or one day. It's a season. And in the last 12 days of the carnival season, there are in New Orleans alone, 34 parades. And then in the suburbs, there are more. And so across the region, you're talking about 50 parades. Thousands of people ride in them. And what a throw is, is a little trinket or a toy or a souvenir that someone on a float throws to somebody in the crowd. And you stand on the Curb, and you yell, throw me something, mister. And. And if you're lucky, they do. And often by the end of the day, you are. You are 10 pounds heavier with everything hung around your neck and in your pockets. And it's all, you know, it's just this, you know, nothing but fun sort of custom. But I talked to somebody who really knows the business, and he estimated that in New Orleans, people spend between 40 and 50 million dollars a year on throws. And so it's not just this sort of, you know, celebratory custom. It's also, you know, it's an industry in town. One of the very biggest parades, the endemian parade, has 3200 riders. I say this for people who've never been to New Orleans. It's spectacular. It's pretty amazing. And each of those riders tosses about 500 pounds of throws every year. That's amazing. And the most popular of those throws are beads. Golly. When did it start? Well, chances are. Chances are that this particular custom of throwing beads from floats was inspired in 1871, when Santa Claus was the last rider in a carnival parade. And he rode in a carriage, and he threw toys to the crowd, little toys. We don't know what they were. And the truth is, he was advertising a downtown department store in 1871, the toy department of a downtown department store. But chances are that that was the spark parading was sort of new at the time. It was only, you know, it was only six or seven years old. And. And su. And the year after that was the first Rex parade, which is kind of. Its Rex parade is still around.
- [11:22]
Emily Allen
And.
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Doug McCash
And that was the beginning of the wave. And I suspect that some of those future Rex riders were standing along St. Charles Avenue or Canal street that night and caught something from Santa Claus and said, you know what? We should do that. That's my theory.
- [11:44]
Emily Allen
I like it. I like it. Santa keeps giving all the, you know, floatriders keep giving to the revelers. That's really interesting. And that. That makes a lot of sense.
- [11:55]
Doug McCash
There's just no telling when the custom of, you know, giving a little gift or something at a parade started. There's this wonderful kind of clue in an. A historian in New Orleans found in an 1834 newspaper, there's an advertisement for imported glass beads that you can. You can buy and come on down to Royal Street. And the. The thing that is so tantalizing about it is this ad is from January, and you just want it very badly to be an advertisement for Mardi gras beads. In 1834. I'm not sure whether it is or not.
- [12:35]
Emily Allen
Yeah. That's so close to like, piecing that together.
- [12:39]
Doug McCash
Yeah. Wouldn't you love it?
- [12:41]
Emily Allen
Yeah. And sticking here with kind of the, if you will, material culture of all this. Right. And in these different sources, it doesn't have to necessarily be beads, but did you ever find any particularly interesting, you know, descriptions of beads or gifts or, you know, other little knickknacks, if you will, from carnival's history that kind of stand out to you?
- [13:12]
Doug McCash
Only two or three thousand. Sure. It's great. Oh, golly. One of the interesting things that happens is in 1920s, 19 teens, you talk about trinkets, throwing trinkets. By the 1930s, you talk about beads. That's, you know, in the newspaper. It's like throwing beads. And, and I, and I love this one little story. There's a little kid, and he's standing next to City Hall, Galliar hall in New Orleans, and everybody else is catching beads and he's not. And he, he waits until the floats pause and he jumps onto a float and plunges his hand into the boxes of beads and, and leaps off the float, holding up, you know, the, the, you know, his, his treasure that he's got. And I love that, that, you know, it was like already 1930s were already crazy, crazy for beads. Gosh, I found so many. There's so many wonderful stories. I'll give you a handful. Before World War II, the glass bead makers, some of they sometimes used uranium to color the beads. It gave them a beautiful pale absinthe green color. It also made them slightly radioactive. Right. And to this day, if you can find them and you shine a black light on them, they glow like the Incredible Hulk. Right? So that's pretty funny. It just tickles me that, that all those years ago we were catching radioactive beads. I have a few, and Professor Google tells me it's perfectly safe. Don't worry about a thing. You know what I mean? Golly. Mardi Gras beads get swept into the storm drains and washed away after parades. And those storm drains lead to Lake Pontchartrain, which leads to the Gulf and down the, down the delta where the oysters are raised. So you gotta imagine this. Plastic beads, of course, are imitation pearls. And one little purple bead somehow got all the way down to the oyster beds south of New Orleans and somehow got sucked up by an oyster. And that oyster got taken to a restaurant in. On the north shore of New Orleans, where a friend of mine got a plate of Raw oysters and found a Mardi Gras bead in it. I love that. To death, huh? Golly. Oh, gosh. A subversive New Orleans artist produced a fake NASA website, you know, National Space Administration website, very authentic looking, apparently, and declared that the Mars rover had discovered Mardi Gras beads on the red planet. And I thought that that would be sufficiently absurd that it would escape the notice of NASA, but I was wrong. They got in touch with this guy and said, no, no, no, take. That's not cool. Don't you love it? Don't you love it? Oh, gosh, it. It goes on and on. Sometime in the hippie era, people, men and women, began exposing themselves to in exchange for beads, which is our own peculiar custom in our own peculiar, indefensible custom that goes on. So this is genius. Decided, well, what we ought to do is make beads that have little breasts on them, you know, and. And so they did. And. And. But. But the genius part was they patented them so that inevitably, when somebody brought out their own, you know, breast beads, the originator sued them. And it ended up in court with a female judge having to decide whether that part of the anatomy had belonged to humankind since the cave era when they began, you know, carving the Venus of Willendorf or whatever, or whether this person had arrived at a new thing. And the judge decided that this was a new thing. By applying that image to Mardi Gras beads specifically, you had achieved a new invention. And they protected. They protected the originator, which meant that the imitators had to burn. There are. Destroy all their beads. I love stuff like that. I love stuff like that.
- [18:05]
Emily Allen
Yeah, that's. Wow, that's so interesting that it went that far to court and everything. Oh, my God.
- [18:13]
Doug McCash
I covered myself a very similar case with marijuana beads where somebody had beads made with marijuana leaves, and then somebody else did, and he sued and said, you know, now wait a minute, you can't. I did the marijuana things, and, you know, once again, the judge ruled in favor of the originator. There you go.
- [18:34]
Emily Allen
Yeah, it's interesting. That kind of goes back to your earlier point about how this really is an industry that has that much profitability and whatnot that I don't think people would think about, like you were saying, when they think about something like Mardi Gras beats.
- [18:52]
Doug McCash
I think in the beginning, it was meant to be incidental trinkets, and in large, it still is. But. But, boy, it's, you know, when you. When you. When you find yourself in a federal courtroom, as I did, Listening to, you know, arguments, it tells you it's achieved, you know, an importance. Commercial importance, for sure.
- [19:12]
Emily Allen
Yeah. And you sort of. At the beginning of the book, you kind of situate all these different things, like what we're talking about, but other things that people can learn, you know, about New New Orleans as Mardi Gras history and kind of New Orleans in general. Right. You kind of argue or you state in the beginning, quote, mardi Gras beads are a touchstone of social history, geopolitics, culture, identity, and stuff like that. End quote. So can you talk a little bit more about some of these larger themes like we're talking about right now? But what are some other, you know, big picture points that you think people can learn from your book about this history of Mardi Gras beads?
- [19:53]
Doug McCash
Oh, gosh. Well, the biggest one for me, and heaven knows I had no idea that. I had no idea that this was coming. But there's a. There's a region in what we, you know, in what was Czechoslovakia right at the German border. And for. For hundreds of years, they were the world's source for glass beads. They had really perfected the manufacture of glass beads. And those beads can be traced everywhere around the globe. They were. They were master traders. And so they sold these beads in. In Africa, they sold them in the United States, in the west, they sold them all over the world. And they ended up. One of their biggest customers was New Orleans. We bought a lot of these glass beads, presumably many of them for Carnival. Well, 1920s, this manufacturing has reached the peak of its efficiency. And the trouble with that is with efficiency comes low prices. You can do it. Very. And so when the world depression comes, these people were, you know, threatened. I mean, they saw their livelihood slipping away and all that. And many of them, some of them, fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler across the border. And so when you hear about the Sudetenland being the very first place that. That Hitler invades, that is also the region that produced these beads. I had no earthly idea that the spark of World War II in Europe was going to take place at the very place where these beads came from. And then history being as ironic as history always is, fast forward to the end of World War II.
- [21:55]
Emily Allen
The.
- [21:56]
Doug McCash
The bead industry, you know, from the past, bead industry has been completely disrupted, as you can imagine. Of course, some of the Czech bead makers are now in Germany. We've searched for other markets. So imagine this, 1947, you're at a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. You catch beads. All the beads you catch will have been made by either past are future enemies of the United States. So you catch German beads, you catch Japanese beads, which is where a lot of the industry went, and you catch Czech beads, which will very soon be, you know, part of the Soviet bloc. So it's this incredible irony that gives us a snapshot of global trade and global politics from a source that who would have imagined, who would have thought that in any. You know, who would have thought Mardi Gras beads, right?
- [22:57]
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- [23:53]
Emily Allen
Yeah, that's really interesting, especially the transnational sort of implications there of, you know, the beat in that way. And kind of like we'll come back to kind of what you saw with this current season of Mardi Gras, for instance, later. But yeah, people wouldn't be thinking about, you know, the politics of Mardi Gras beads, for goodness sake.
- [24:19]
Doug McCash
And yet there it is. We import, you know, all of that, that $50 million in Mardi Gras beads that comes from China. And in China, I don't have to tell you, is it confusing trade partner, you know, are they. Are they our trade, you know, partner? Are we antagonists? I. I don't know.
- [24:45]
Emily Allen
Yeah, and kind of, you know, zooming out a little bit here further. Besides, we've been talking a lot about beads, but in your sort of expertise in being in New Orleans and now having done this book, do you feel like there other aspects of, you know, New Orleans Mardi Gras material culture that should also be explored from a standpoint? You know, you mentioned this series that's coming out, but I wasn't sure if, in your experience and expertise, is there something that you think would complement something like this bead research you've Done.
- [25:22]
Doug McCash
Well, I'll tell you what interests me. What, what I've, I've. There's a lot of things, but I'm always interested in the homemade costumes in Mardi Gras. On Mardi Gras morning downtown in Mardi Gras, people come out onto the streets, you know, nine or ten o' clock in the morning. It is my favorite place to be on earth. And everybody just does their own thing and you have, you have costumes that, you know, are very self revelatory. They're, they're like, this is what I really am. They're preposterous. They're political. You know, you, you imagine, imagine what anything. And you may might see it. And I love, love, love that. So there's a newspaper article From I think 1839, very early on a marching parade in the French Quarter, Mardi Gras morning. And sure enough, there's. The reporter makes a coy reference to cross dressing. He kind of, you know, calls, well, he implies that some people are scantily clad. He, there's, there's, there's topicality because some people are dressed as a British female author or at least one person's dressed as a British female author who is very critical of slavery in the United States, etc. And what, what I would love to do is go kind of decade by decades and see what I could find in the record, you know, old newspapers and all descriptions of what people are wearing as costumes, which would get easier and easier as you get closer. But just to show that, to see the ups and downs, to decide how. I mean, it seems to me that this has been a language sort of, of expression for an awfully long time and I'd love to fool with that.
- [27:24]
Emily Allen
Yeah. And sort of, you know, looking at your relationship to all this, can you talk about your experiences with catching these beads, your experiences with like costume, you know, what's sort of your relationship to Mardi Gras beyond just, you know, you were talking about how you write about these things, but in terms of your own sense of participation in ritual and these things. What's been your experience to these different artistic forms?
- [27:55]
Doug McCash
Oh, gosh. Well, I didn't grow up in New Orleans, so I didn't have a childhood of it, but my kids did. And so I got to see it from their point of view. And there's this great custom and I'm certain that, that, that lawyers. Nowhere else in the world would allow this to go on. But what you do as a parent is you go to the hardware store and you buy a 10 foot tall wooden ladder. And then you screw a seat onto the top of the ladder and you take your precious children who you have done everything to protect in their little lives, and you sit them on a seat on top of a ladder so that they become targets for everybody who loves children, throws them Mardi Gras book beads during a chaotic Mardi Gras parade. And that I love. I mean, that's just, I, that tickles me to death that we do that. And then you grow up with it and are, you know, they grew up with it and I, gosh, I have been, I loved it for so long. Been so interested for so long. I can't, I can't quite separate myself from, you know, what do I think? Well, I think too much about it.
- [29:13]
Emily Allen
I mean, you wrote a book, so that's clearly.
- [29:17]
Doug McCash
Exactly. But you can find, My goodness, the beads, they are, they are also like a language. They're like T shirts where everybody puts something they believe in on their good, bad, in between, you know what I mean? And, and, and, and you, you, you come to be a connoisseur of, you know, these crazy beads, you know?
- [29:46]
Emily Allen
Yeah. Have you, you know, I was thinking about how from my experience, at least in a different city with Mardi Gras, but you know, sometimes when you're experiencing these things, it could be dangerous having some of these objects, you know, coming towards your face and that kind of thing. You know, what the other side of that for you, like, that you've seen like how dangerous or what techniques have you, you talked about the ladder, but sort of, what are the different strategies besides just the ladder with dealing with these throws?
- [30:18]
Doug McCash
Oh, gosh, you, you know, you see everybody with their hands up. And part of that is because you're saying, throw me something, mister. I want, you know, you're, you're, you're beseeching the float riders with your hands, but you're also protecting your face. You want to have your hands up when it, when it comes out of the darkness, you know, you want to catch it in your fingers before it hits you. Everybody gets hit. Everybody can see it. With beads, there is a, there is a state law that, that, that protects Mardi Gras crews or what we call the clubs that put on the parade, Mardi Gras crews and riders from, from being sued. And it's, it, it, it works like this, as I understand it, is that they're protected from anything that would happen in the normal course of a parade. Now if you do something, you know, ridiculous, if you do something deliberate, to hurt somebody. But. But. But nobody does. I mean, very. I can't imagine anybody doing. So. So then. So then the idea, I guess, is if you go to the carnival parade, you're. You're taking your chances, you know. Yeah.
- [31:27]
Emily Allen
You know what you're getting into. You know what you're getting into. You know what you're getting into.
- [31:31]
Doug McCash
And you don't have to stand up close. You know, you can stand 30, 40ft back and. Yeah.
- [31:38]
Emily Allen
Yeah. And kind of sticking here for a second with sort of the experiential side of all this, you know, what was this past, you know, 2022 carnival season? Like, you know, obviously this was a big comeback given, you know, everything that happened starting in 2020. So what was this current, you know, the season that we just got past, like, in New Orleans?
- [32:04]
Doug McCash
Well, we had to skip carnival or I had to skip Mardi gras parades in 2021. And. And I think everybody felt it.
- [32:13]
Emily Allen
It.
- [32:13]
Doug McCash
That. That's a. You know, that's a blow now. I'm so proud of us. So proud of New Orleans because we did other things. We decorated houses and we conducted a safe, you know, a safe carnival celebration. But the comeback was fabulous. And my goodness. Oh, I read in a. I wrote in a parade and. And threw, you know, beads and stuff from the top deck of the float. And I gotta tell you, at times, it truly was moving. I mean, it was like, oh, my goodness, we're back. You know, it's like life is back. It was fabulous. And everybody seemed to be in a wonderful mood. I saw very little. You know, part of what goes on in carnival is. Is political satire and, you know, and. But. But. But it was. It's. It was gentle this year and less of it. Not a lot of COVID satire. A little. And it was great. The stuff I saw was. Was great. There's not enough time to tell you, but. But not a lot of rancor in the satire this year. There's an exception to every. Everything I'm saying. But. And I think everybody would agree, and the weather cooperated. It couldn't have been. Couldn't have been prettier. And boy, just smiles from. Smiles from curb to curb. It's a good time. Listen to this. So I don't know how soon before Mardi Gras morning, Russia invaded Ukraine, but Mardi Gras morning, I ran into these two guys, and they had done, like, a dual costume in celebration of Ukraine. And you've seen those big feather hair, you know, feather headdresses and stuff like that. Well, well, part of the costume was that only it was made out of wheat in, you know, which I think is a symbol of reference to, to, you know, Ukraine and all that. And it was, it was so well done. And, and it was a, it was a celebration of Ukraine that completely unexpected. Not, not a, not a protest in, in the simplest terms, but just a true demonstration of, of what empathy. It was, it was marvelous. Marvelous. Marvelous. Yeah.
- [34:47]
Emily Allen
And that goes back to kind of what you were saying earlier about how these different, as these different artistic expression forms, you know, in Mardi Gras, is a language, right? Like it has its own symbolism, it has its own meaning from what you're saying, from these, you know, makers of these different things. That's really cool.
- [35:08]
Doug McCash
It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:12]
Emily Allen
And so you kind of see yourself, do you see yourself in that case as sort of a translator of these things or is like a, you know, vehicle to share?
- [35:25]
Doug McCash
Chronicler for sure. Chronicler for sure. I, I, every year I try to, you record some of the great creations. And it's really true. If you and I went to a contemporary art exhibit, we would see some of the very same things. We would see, you know, people trying to find personal and, you know, clever, poetic ways to interpret current events and current moods and all those things. Well, you see the exact same thing in costumes. They tend to be comic, you know, they tend to be beautiful and comic. But, but, but, but the motivation is the same. The motivation is to say something and, and, and I guess I, I, I see it, it's my, it's my pleasure, but also my, my, my duty, my task to point out, look at this, look at this, look at this, how good this is, you know what I mean? Look at how this is brilliant, you know?
- [36:31]
Emily Allen
Yeah. Well, that's really awesome that you have, like you were saying, you're so connected to this New Orleans community to be able to do those things. And I was curious. Besides just this book, what else are you chronicling right now? What other projects are you tackling at the moment?
- [36:52]
Doug McCash
The great thing about my job is that it changes. It changes every day. Oh, gosh, golly. What's going on? Oh, for instance, we had a, we had Hurricane Ida blow through. Hurricane Ida damaged the siding on an old house in an old neighborhood in New Orleans. They peeled off the siding to make repairs and discovered that they'd found the signage from a 70 year old corner store. And that would be the sort of thing that I'm, that I'm writing about. And you know making people where I'm trying to find out things about the corner store.
- [37:34]
Emily Allen
So I have.
- [37:35]
Doug McCash
I will. I have the best job. I have a great job is coming. Yeah. All that stuff.
- [37:46]
Emily Allen
Yeah. Sounds like you're definitely always busy and always hustling. So I look forward to keeping up with your other writings. But thank you so much for joining us today here on the New Books Network to chat.
- [37:59]
Doug McCash
Oh, my goodness. My pleasure.
- [38:01]
Emily Allen
Yeah. And just listeners, just to give you a quick recap, you just heard a lovely discussion with Doug McCash specifically about his book Mardi Gras Bead, which was recently published by LG Press in 2022. And I will see you next time here on the New Books Network. This is Emily Allen. Talk to you again soon.