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Queen Coleen in her French Quarter
courtyard, with royal accoutrements
The gilded replica of the Royal Chariot—
on the rack underneath the basket
is a box labeled "Dixie," as in the
beer—was a gift from an old Mardi Gras
cohort, Reva Stover, who also crafted
also made her highness' velvet crown.
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A Mardi Gras Immortal Reigns in the “Quest for Immorality”
Reached by phone, Coleen Salley, aka Queen Coleen, is in no mood for long-winded small talk. “I’m so busy, going in so many different directions,” she says, exasperated.
A meeting that evening. Fly to Indianapolis the next day to hold court at Butler University for a children’s literature conference. Return home for a brief respite before driving seven hours to Panama City, Fla., for another conference. Return the following week to gear up for the festivities and hoopla surrounding her reign over the Krewe du Vieux parade in New Orleans. Family members, friends and professional associates, including the head of the children’s trade book division at Harcourt Brace, are coming in from all over the country to revel in what promises to be the crowing achievement for a beloved Mardi Gras character, whose 30-year-old Krewe of Coleen marching club has inspired countless Kodak Moments and become the stuff of Fat Tuesday lore.
And, she huffs, “I’m still trying to take down these [expletive] Christmas trees!”
For her annual holiday decorating extravaganza, which never ceases to amaze visitors on the French Quarter Patio Tour, she put up six trees. “I finally got the two live ones out yesterday... almost killed me.”
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Negotiations with the Krewe du Vieux over various particulars, including the Krewe of Coleen’s participation in the parade, have also crimped her time. Her patience is wearing thin. “I gotta get off this phone,” she says. “Anything else you want to know? I knew I shouldn’t have picked up that phone.”
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Kicking off the Carnival parade season on February 7 at 7 p.m., the Krewe du Vieux is a bawdy free-for-all known for blasphemy, political lampooning, sexual innuendo, balderdash, ridicule, outrageous behavior and the liberal use of phalluses for float props and costume accessories.
Members belong to so-called "sub-krewes," each of which presents its own unique take on a theme meant to inspire satire and social commentary (e.g., “Souled Down the River,” “Depraved New World,” “The Idiots and the Oddities,” “Unnaturally New Orleans,” “Krewe du Vieux Rights the News”).
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Carnal-Val Cumquest, Mystic Krewe of Spermes 2003
Adult content is de rigueur in the Krewe du Vieux parade.
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The captains of the individual sub-krewes — there are 17 in all — essentially comprise the brain trust of the mother krewe, which takes care of procuring a parade permit, hiring brass bands, choosing a theme and organizing the post-parade ball. Sub-krewes are left pursue their own interpretations, or “sub-themes,” without interference or censorship from the mother krewe. The result harks back to Carnival in medieval times, when buffoons and rabble took to the streets and merrily mocked the elites.
The theme for 2004, “Quest for Immorality,” is a play on the title of a major exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art: “The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt.” The limits of decorum will undoubtedly be sorely tested, if not exceeded with abandon. According to the Krewe du Vieux’s Le Monde de Merde newsletter, “Queen Coleen will guide the Krewe though the long dark night into the promised land of eternal dissolution, depravity and decadence.”
Mind you, Queen Coleen, 74, is a woman of considerable accomplishment. After a 30-year career at University of New Orleans, she retired in 1994 as Distinguished Professor of Children’s Literature. She has received several professional accolades; authored two children’s books, Who’s Tripping Over My Bridge? and Epossumondas (the latter was heralded as “a treasure” in the New York Times Book Review); and made presentations around the world, charming audiences with her joie de vivre and peppery folk humor. No fewer than 10 authors and/or illustrators have dedicated books to her. Her services are demand among professional organizations looking for talent to liven up their conferences.
So how does Queen Coleen — celebrated author, raconteur extraordinaire, professor emeritus and scholar — feel about reigning over a procession of ne’er-do-wells who, proclaims Le Monde de Merde, “will not rest until the ultimate essence of profane pleasure is within their gasping grasp”? Is she at all reticent about the “Immorality” theme?
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Queen Coleen's
"Talking Pictures" submission
Over the years in the city of Mardi Gras
merriment, shutterbugs have been drawn to the Krewe of Coleen like moths to a porch light on a summer night.
Photo © Linwood J. Albarado Jr.
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“You know, I can go along with that because this is my other life,” she explains. “You’ve heard of the those three faces of Eve? Well, this is the two faces of Coleen Salley. I’ve got my professional face and my raise-hell face. The raise-hell face is going to be the queen in the ‘Quest for Immorality.’ “
Given her celebrity status and never-ending pursuit of noteriety, her royal highness can easily be forgiven for having convinced herself that the theme was “Quest for Immortality.” Over the years, her Mardi Gras exploits — riding around in a shopping cart known as the Royal Chariot, blowing kisses and parting crowds, reveling in cheers of “Hail to the Queen, the Queen Co-leen” — have been fodder for local TV news coverage of the festivities.
She was among 70 people, both famous and unknown, tapped to partake in a project called “Talking Pictures.” Participants, including the likes of Rosa Parks, Benjamin Spock, Ginger Rogers, Martha Stewart and John Updike, submitted a single photograph — it didn't necessarily have to be of themselves — along with an essay explaining its personal significance. The result was an exhibit that opened in New York in 1994, then traveled throughout the country. Alongside each photo was a handset; by picking it up and pressing a button, you could hear a recording of the person discussing the photo they'd selected. Queen Coleen submitted a shot taken by a New Orleans photographer, Linwood Albarado Jr., capturing the Krewe of Coleen triumphantly rolling their namesake monarch down the street on Fat Tuesday. (The exhibit photos and essays were also included in a companion Talking Pictures book.)
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Queen Coleen also was immortalized in the children’s book To Market, To Market (whose illustrator, Janet Stevens, is traveling from Colorado for the Krewe du Vieux festivities). It was Stevens’s idea to model the book’s main character — a shopper who goes back and forth to the market, carting home a bunch of unruly animals — after Queen Coleen.
Eventually, having become disheveled and exasperated, the shopper gets the animals to push her back to the store in the grocery cart, and buys vegetables to fix a delicious soup. Notwithstanding the fact that Stevens didn’t know the specifics of the Krewe of Coleen’s antics when she conceived the character, one can’t help but think of the party animals who cart their queen around on Mardi Gras, spreading hilarity and good cheer.
After some prompting by the telephone caller, Queen Coleen relates how she came to learn that the Krewe du Vieux theme was “Immorality,” not “Immortality.”
She got a call from Jean Howell, a resident of Fayetteville, Ark., and a key player in the Krewe of Coleen’s formation. “She said, ‘Hey, Coleen. What did you say the theme was?’ I said, ‘The Quest for Immortality.’ And she said, ‘I think you better look again, Aunt Coleen.’ “
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Buy Market to Market on Amazon.com
Janet Stevens illustration from To Market, To
Market (© 1997 Harcourt Brace & Company)
Stevens, along with the head of Harcourt's
children's trade book division, will be
in New Orleans for Queen Coleen's
royal ride with the Krewe du Vieux.
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Whereupon, Queen Coleen found the letter she received from the Krewe du Vieux confirming her selection as royalty and noting the “Immorality” theme. “I just heard what I wanted to hear,” she says. “Then, obviously, I transposed that onto the printed page. And when I [took a second look at] what they’d written, it dawned on me: ‘My God, it’s Immorality!’ “ While the revelation didn’t diminish her enthusiasm for the endeavor in the least — after all, Queen Coleen is known to thrive on adulation — she did put the kibosh on plans to use the illustration from the cover of Epossumondas in the design for the Krewe du Vieux cups, which are throw from the royalty float in the parade.
In a nod to the Egyptian exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art, which inspired the theme, Queen Coleen will be got up as Cleopatra. The Krewe of Coleen will march in front of her float, wearing the trademark yellow T-shirts.
Assisting Queen Coleen on the royalty float will be a dear friend and longtime Krewe of Coleen loyalist, Charles Hadley. The de facto captain of the krewe, he often finds himself on the receiving end of the Queen’s royal wrath. “I cuss him out all the time,” Queen Coleen once told an interviewer. “Jackass! He’s always trying to make decisions on his own.
“The Queen doesn’t tolerate independent thinkers. What royalty does?”
When someone suggested to Queen Coleen that Charles assume the role of consort for the Krewe du Vieux parade, “I said, ‘Consort, hell! He’s my slave!’ He’s going to be up there [on the float] handing me the cups and things to throw.”
It was also suggested that Charles could sit with her on the float’s throne. Queen Coleen: “I said, ‘Hell no! He can’t sit by me. He can sit at my feet.”
“If you write anything,” she adds, affecting a tone of queenly condescension, “say, Charles was her slave.”
"I’ll have to make sure I keep her semi-sober when we parade," says Charles, adding with a chuckle: "Big job."
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