Middletown’s Mardi Gras Parade Takes the King Cake on Main Street

Hundreds of Middletown residents, including Mayor Gene Nocera, brought a bit of New Orleans to Middletown for the city’s first-ever Mardi Gras Parade this past Tuesday.

Mardi Gras is a celebration held before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a month in which many Catholics abstain from something they enjoy. The holiday’s Catholic origins date back thousands of years, and people across the world enjoy celebrating with beads, puppets, and parades each year. 

“Mardi Gras, if you go to New Orleans, is a big, massive celebration,” Nocera said. “It is the day before the Christian Lent, which is tomorrow.”

Churches sparkled with glittery shades of purple, gold, and green decor. Middletown’s resident revelers spent the night enjoying live Dixieland jazz, Cajun and Creole dishes courtesy of Perk on Main and Esca Restaurant & Wine Bar, and plenty of king cake to ring into the Lenten season.

Many Middletown churches and houses collaborated to host the event, including the Church of the Holy Trinity, where the parade assembled at 5:30 p.m. to kick off the celebration. The event came from the idea of a church drummer, Trevor Davis. Several pillars of the Middletown community were seen making an appearance.

Nocera was speaking to residents about the event before the parade kicked off. The Argus then spoke with Nocera.

“There is food at the restaurants, and there is some music at the First Church, which is two blocks that way,” Nocera said. “I’m going to be behind or in front of the puppets, I am not sure yet.”

People of all ages and a troupe of ten-foot-tall dancing puppets marched down Main Street and through First Church of Middletown’s doors to a party held in the church’s Parish Hall. At 6:00 p.m. on Middletown’s warmest day in months, families and friends donned their festive beads and took to the streets, dancing and clapping along to the sounds of a high-energy, brass-heavy jazz band. The procession followed the Church of the Holy Trinity’s Rev. Mary Barnett and First Church’s Rev. William Tanner, both of whom wore white albs and rainbow stoles.

The pair of ten-foot puppets on Main Street was impossible to miss. A charming purple cat with bulbous yellow eyes, a notable lack of neck, and a million-dollar smile flaunted his shimmering golden collar and matching wrist cuffs. 

“His name is Pinto Bean,” the puppeteer of the glitzy kitty said in an interview with The Argus. “He has a brother named Lima Bean, who is green. He isn’t here though.”

In lieu of Lima Bean, Pinto Bean strode alongside Molto d’Oro, which is Italian for “very golden.” Molto d’Oro has a hollow, golden sun for a head, two concentric, hula-hoop–like rings for a torso, and golden tinsel all about him.

Both Pinto Bean and Molto d’Oro come from Hartford, along with Anne Cubberly, the giant puppet artist who created them. The dancers dressed in black from head to toe, attached the puppet’s feet to their ankles with bands, and controlled the puppet’s arms with long, thin rods that looked somewhat like ski poles.

As the sun set on the Mardi Gras parade and the night grew dark, the puppets seemingly came to life. Led by Pinto Bean and Malto d’Oro, the fast-flowing parade swept bystanders off the sidewalks and into the street.

Volunteers from St. Vincent de Paul Middletown collected donations for the organization’s soup kitchen and warming center as people filed inside.

While many Middletown residents came in their own carnival costumes, festive beads and feathered masks were available throughout the room for anyone to wear. Lines for jambalaya and king cake filled the space as the Trevor Davis Dixieland Jazz Affair, a seven-piece Dixieland band, took to the makeshift stage.

Davis, the band’s drummer and regular performer of Music on Main, came up with the idea for Mardi Gras in Middletown and first proposed the event to his faith community at First Church. Davis also played an essential role in coordinating the event’s administrative aspects.

“Trevor proposed [Mardi Gras in Middletown] to First Church and he’s in a band,” Burkey said. “He went to Downtown [Business District] to get the funding for the food, the party, the band, and the puppets.”

Davis first decided to turn the party into a fundraiser for St. Vincent de Paul Middletown, leveraging his community connections and personally contributing to make Mardi Gras possible. 

“I was able to…rent the hall from the church, because I don’t like to ask them for something like that,” Davis said. “And that’s why every penny of cash at the door is going to St. Vincent de Paul, but we also have money left over from the budget. I don’t have the final tally yet, but it should be approximately $2,000 that will go to St. Vincent de Paul.”

Rev. Dr. Julia Burkey is a pastor at First Church and intends to turn Mardi Gras into an annual, city-wide tradition. However, collaboration between churches and the city will be essential in this endeavor. 

“We have been wanting to do a Mardi Gras celebration for years,” Burkey said. “And as churches, we are trying more and more to work together.” 

In this phase of his life, the stressful world of event planning simply demands too much of Davis, and he plans to move on to new ventures.

“I had this event in mind as my last event that I was going to produce,” Davis said. “I’m going to be 72 years old in a couple weeks…so, it causes a lot of stress to wake up in the middle of night and think, ‘oh, did I order the port-a-potties?’”

Davis has left big shoes to fill in his retirement from hosting events, believing that turning Mardi Gras into a Middletown tradition will require support from organizations with greater access to resources.

“We need the city to step up, and this is a great event for this city to work with Wesleyan,” Davis said. “And if Wesleyan recognizes that and says, ‘gee, wouldn’t it be nice to do a town-and-gown event like Mardi Gras?’ If the city and Wesleyan could throw some money in next time and make it a little bit easier, then that will increase the chance that the event will happen next year and maybe every year.”

Davis thinks that an annual Mardi Gras celebration would light up an otherwise gloomy season in Middletown.

“Bringing people together is so important,” Davis said, “and [having] some fun, especially in the dark of winter.”

Hope Cognata can be reached at hcognata@wesleyan.edu. 

Claire Farina can be reached at cfarina@wesleyan.edu.