I’ve been longing to go to Jazz Fest for a long time and last week it finally happened. I signed up to volunteer and in March was awarded two shifts. Volunteering is competitive; some of my fellow ushers asked me how I’d landed positions and I have to admit I don’t know. I signed up, got the call and on Thursday presented myself, sweating, sunscreened and nervous, at the volunteer gate.
Two minutes later I had my badge, time sheet and ticket, asked the security guy which way to the closest entrance, and waited as he cackled and pointed. Literally around the corner.
I got lost a few more times looking for my station, parking lot N3, but roamed the dusty racetrack under my sunbrella taking in the competing musical acts, beer vendors and hundreds of sweaty attendees.
No one told me anything at N3 either, so I waited around until the supervisor Miss Porsha sent me to a waiting minivan. The driver barked, Who told you to get in here? Um, Miss Porsha, I said, scared. She gave me some more shit and when I was about to turn away, teary, she relented and let me in. I spent the next three hours with 69 year old Miss Jackie, who’s been attending Jazz Fest for 45 years and working it for 12. She gave every person who got into the van the same good-natured shit. In between pickups, we said hello to her son who’s also a driver, a niece who’s a cop, and multiple cousins. She showed me pictures of her cat, her kids, herself in gorgeous makeup. At the end of my shift she drove me and another volunteer across the hot, dusty track to check out. I walked home down St. Bernard, enjoying the slightly cooler evening and the continuing festivities all along the street.
Day two I was less fortunate. I got to N3 early and was assigned to ride with a first-year transplant from Massachusetts, a white guy know-it-all who kept leaning on my seat and mansplaining literally everything. We were busy, shuttling musicians around the grounds, me hopping out to help people and equipment in and out. We had a whole van of second line performers, little kids in seersucker suits, tired Moms, a man with a feather headdress who told me how he hacked his knee surgery. We brought some of Jon Batiste’s family to one stage, a friendly and excited group.
During any down times, my driver literally passed out. Ten seconds and he was asleep, head back, eyes closed, waking with a snort. It was weird. Once he followed “Doug” around the track, an old white man in a golf cart covered in plastic, who he said ran Churchill Downs and this race track and is his sister-in-law’s nephews friend or whatever nepostic shit, who got them VIP passes last year and he parked on site and blah-fucking-blah. How he was going to see The Cure and Depeche Mode and whatever other tired old white bands were coming tow town. Toward the end of my shift, he kept interrupting me while I was asking him what time he needed something and finally exasperated I interrupted back and he got pissy, apologizing to our lone passenger that “he had to hear that.”
I hopped out at the N3 parking lot and went to the trailer to pass a message to Miss Porsha. I mentioned that he kept falling asleep so she had me write it up while she signed my timecard. He returned to pick me up but I said I was done and he drove off, irritated. Miss Porsha thanked me and zum Gluck, Miss Jackie was about to drive a vanload of volunteers to check out. I hopped in, all of us laughing and talking. I caught the last 15 minutes of Ludacris, the crowds excited, dancing and singing in the hazy sunset. I walked home down Bayou Road this time, the party in the streets continuing, people selling beer and jello shots from coolers, two brass bands playing. Wow.
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