JUNE 3, FRIDAY (REALLY SUNDAY)

MARSHALL MERMAID PARADE

The annual Mermaids and Pirates celebration in Marshall, NC, just up the French Broad River from Asheville, is a chance for the whole town to let go and celebrate. And this year, it was simply named the Mermaid festival. And with the celebration of the lifting of pandemic restrictions everyone was determined to be as wild and nutty as they could. Everyone in town, women or men, seemed to attempt to wear something fishy or mermaidy and a little risqué. A huge number of people who descended on Marshall squeezed themselves into the parade across the bridge over the French Broad River and then round and round the town so that the parade was coming and going and crossing over itself until it finally ran out of steam. A number of individuals or groups built floats that were pulled by pickup trucks and each year these seem to get more elaborate with some of the decorations being held over to the next year. Somewhere along the line spraying water from the floats began and last year there was a good deal of playful squirting.

But this year the parade almost turned into a water fight. Determined little boys with powerful squirt guns, cannons almost, lined the parade and the people on the floats were equally ready with water cannons and squirt guns of all sorts and big pots of water to reload with. And as the parade came over the bridge and down Main Street the water began to fly in every direction. Soon everyone, including me was soaked. Luckily my iPhone is waterproofed because it took a number of direct hits and I needed to keep wiping it off. There was chaos and no chance to frame most photographs, I was firing blindly into the deluge. It is Marshall’s version of Varanasi’s Holi festival, except in Varanasi the water is a rainbow of colors and everyone is turned orange, pink, blue and green and sacrifices the clothes they are wearing to the holiday. But in either place, everyone has a terrific, squealing time and then in Marshall settles into all the eateries and bars in town to unwind and admire each other before realizing how ridiculous they look and heading for home.