Welcome to Almostcajun.com

     Almostcajun is designed to bring to you ,the curious, a little known tradition that happens once a year in small rural towns in Southwest Louisiana. Courir de Mardi Gras (Mardi Gras run) happens on the day before the Catholic holiday Ash Wednesday.

     As a child growing up in the New Orleans area, we would come home after parades on Mardi Gras day, sit around relaxing and watching the days highlights on the evening news. Every year a few news snippets were shown of the Cajun Mardi Gras. I was so taken by them that I knew one day I would have to go see it for myself. Then in 1996 I did for the first time.

     On a foggy February morning, after leaving home at 4:30 am, driving about three hours and getting lost several times. I found it! Highway 13! The road to Mamou. Driving south on Hwy 13, trying hard to see through the thick soup of fog, I began to see something across the highway emerging, tall shadowy pointed figures on horseback. This is it! Mamou! The Cajun Mardi Gras! I made it just in time to catch the Mardi Gras leaving town. After quickly parking my truck, I got out and what I saw and heard was unbelievable. There was a cajun band being pulled by a tractor playing a screechy fiddle song, what I know now as "La Chanson De Mardi Gras". I saw horseback riders in brightly colored patchwork style costumes that strongly contrasted the fog and the brown tone of the winter landscape. They wore masks, likes of which I have never seen before. The masks were made of painted window screen with miss-matched cloth and various other objects to create a face. They drank heavily, hooted, hollered and danced to the Mardi Gras song, which to this day when I hear it, gets me so excited the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I was hooked, and have been back every year since.

     That was in 96. Since that year I have discovered many other small towns in Southwest Louisiana that have similar Mardi Gras. Each different and unique in it`s own way. Towns like Eunice,Iota,Basile and Churchpoint to mention a few.With hopes to see many more. My photo images are a collection from a few of these towns. So sit back and enjoy my images of Courir de Mardi Gras.