Saluting Abbeville

When the float bearing the Cattle Royalty arrives in front of the Court House, the Grand Parade comes to a complete stop--or at least it's supposed to. This year's driver kept going, as queens and relatives all yelled for him to slow down, and the festival director, Miss Denise, ran after the float. She managed to stop him before it was too late, but it was not easy, as she had to run while both hands held full glasses of milk. The point of stopping the parade is so that the royals may be handed big goblets of chocolate milk which they then raise in a toast to Abbeville, the Parish, and all those who have attended the festival. It's a tradition as charming as the town itself. Thank you, Abbeville--I salute you right back.

Nothing is sacred. No, really.

Now, even God is doing product placement.

I never doubt their commitment to sparkle motion

The parade route is almost five miles long and takes several hours to complete. While that's grueling enough on a 90-degree day for people in floats, it's brutal for all the marching bands, majorettes, cheerleaders, and dance teams. While the tiniest dancers (like the Tabasco Sauce girls, shown at bottom) understandably looked pretty weary at the 4 1/2 mile mark where I was taking pictures, some--like the front wave of the Abbeville High band, shown above--somehow kept their shine on till the very end.

If beads were gold, our economy would be fine.

The great thrill for many children at the afternoon Grand Parade was the chance to catch penny candy and endless strings of beads thrown from the fire trucks and floats.

No one leaves here hungry

If you're in Abbeville, you wouldn't want to skip a meal at Miss Beaulah's Kitchen. Though usually closed on Saturday, Miss Beaulah was behind the counter for Cattle Festival and the joint was jumping. Her specialty is crawfish pie and she's known for hamburgers about the size of your head, but day to day the menu varies. When I chose the New Orleans style po boy from the handwritten options listed on the board, Beulah's lovely daughter handed me a huge stack of napkins. I asked if she thought I was likely to be messy, and she and her mother both just laughed. "Oh, it'll be messy, alright!" she warned, and she was correct. But I will also add that it was excellent.

I always try the local food at these festivals and I had my first authentic cracklin' in Abbeville. It cracked all right—my teeth, mainly. When I couldn’t get through the first bite, I was told to just persevere (some pieces are tougher than others) and it was delicious after that. The Cattle Queen showed me the proper technique.

Beauty & this week's Beast

One of the primary duties of a festival queen is to attend other festivals and participate in their traditions, many of which involve mud, livestock, or both. Chelsea's a good sport, riding the bull even though she wasn't crazy about the idea, and then kneeling down for a little "kiss." At first, she was just playing along for pictures, but then Mr. Puzzles took a liking to her and nestled his head into her lap, which (as you can see) won her over.

It's not just a festival for the Menards

Farmers Mike and Paula Menard and sons Kyle and Jabian showed the visiting royalty the ropes with little Buddy and Mr. Puzzles, the bull. At one point, Jabian (shown above playing with Buddy) grabbed Mr. Puzzle’s tail to “surf” behind him on the grass. That set off Mr. Puzzles, who bolted, pulling first Jabian (who let go) and then Mike (who held on). The bull dragged Mike for a few yards as queens darted out of the way, until Mike (flat on his back, arms over his head, but smiling the whole way) got the bull under control. Later, the family taught the queens how to prep a bull for a show and offered a hands-on guide to where all our favorite cuts of meat come from. (I now see brisket in a whole new light.)

Girl on a mission.

"Buddy! Buddy, I have a crown! I have a crown for you! Buddeeee!"

Buddy, for the record, did not want a crown.

"I can't talk now. I'm in a field with the queens."

That headline above is, verbatim, what the farmboy was saying when I took this photograph. When the caller asked him to repeat himself, he added emphatically, but not very helpfully, "The queens." The queens in question were both visiting from Rayne: Chelsea, the Frog Queen, and Kelsey, the Teen Frog Queen (who won her title on her third try). I was surprised to discover that farmboys no longer resemble Alonzo from Little House on the Prairie--though Kyle, shown here, lives on a farm and shows cattle at Ag Fairs, he also has manic panic red hair, piercings, camos, and a cell phone.

Lead by example

The 2008 Cattle Queen, Kristen Ann Hoover, lives two and a half hours away from Abbeville, but when she decided to run for a festival pageant, she chose Cattle anyway because she was impressed by the dedication of local Vermillion Parish farmers who had waded neck-deep in flood waters to care for their animals during Hurricane Rita (which devastated the parish). On the Saturday morning of the festival, she not only led her "herd"--as the Cattle royalty are called collectively--but the visiting queens in activities at a local livestock yard. Most years, the visiting queens have to milk a cow but the local cattle were stressed by the back-to-back hurricanes that recently hit the region and milk production is down, so this year's royals bottle-fed a baby calf named Buddy and then climbed aboard Mr. Puzzles, a bull. Kristen led the way on both counts.

Sunrise over Abbeville

The sun is barely up this Saturday morning of Cattle Festival weekend in Abbeville, Louisiana (population 12,000), but at the parking lot of the Super 1 grocery store, the floats are already being lined up in a long, quiet row, while volunteers ready them for festival queens, local politicans, and small business crews to ride in the parade a few hours from now.