Joe Cain Is...

Joe Cain is the closest thing to understanding the heart of Mobile in one day.

It is cookouts in Bienville, Cathedral, and Spanish Squares and local restaurants feeding police officers an appreciation lunch at the Temple.

It is a crowd of hundreds gathered in the Church Street Grave Yard wearing sequins, hats, wigs, and tutus waiting for widows veiled in black with names like Eugenia and Georgia to place their lilies on Joe Cain's grave while fussing over who killed him or who he loved the most.

It is friends passing out necklaces to remember Seth Maness on their first Mardi Gras without him.

It is a woman apologizing for saying “Oh shit” in front of a police officer.

It is Addison trying to sell 200 more boxes of Girl Scout cookies at the parade after she already reached her goal of 500 to help pay for summer camp.

It is the busy beginning of two food trucks. Cowboy Sammie’s, built and owned by a legally blind man, and Hotdoghery, bought and run by two determined women. All working as hard as they can to keep up with demand.

It is an 84-year-old woman coming from St. Louis with her family for her first Mardi Gras.

It is a friend from Birmingham celebrating her 50th birthday with Joe Cain.

It is the Delta Swamp Sirens passing out bee-friendly wildflower seeds to "Keep our Swamp Beautiful."

It is a skeleton key from the Skeleton Krewe with the instructions to “Lift up your bottle and open your brew.”

It is the debut of the Society of Monstrous Women dressed as a paper doll, icons of mythology, Lizzie Borden, and the power of the ocean. One dressed as a toy ball because “when you become a mother you aren't a woman anymore, you are a plaything.”

It is a footmarcher shooting a confetti cannon at Steve Joynt and thanking him for what Mobile Mask does for Mardi Gras.

It is a masked squirrel handing out messages that say "It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.”

It is oyster shell necklaces and boxes of Cracker Jacks given away with hugs and smiles and skull rings presented to children with the flair of a magic trick.

It is signs with faces of Trump and Pelosi held high as targets for beads and Moon Pies.

It is a tiny guitar handed to children to let them play along the way.

It is three generations — grandmothers, mothers, and daughters — watching parades together.

It is children sitting on their fathers’ shoulders clinging to recycled teddy bears.

It is police officers dancing, singing, and wearing a pig nose as they work the parade.

It is pants made of doubloons and skirts made of beads.

It is squirrel paws and tails, rainbow flags, drums, horns, kilts, pirate hats, feathered headdresses, tomahawks, war paint, and Louis XIV.

It is floats of Khaos and dead rock stars.

It is the Knights of Cain, The Dauphin Street Drinkers and the SOBs, Society of Bums.

It is signs that say “In a world where you can be anything, be kind,” “We are all the leaves of one tree,” “We, the people, are one human family. Happy Mardi Gras,” and “Vote Bienville Square as Mobile’s Official Squirrel District.”

These are the days when we, the people, are one human family. A family that is quirky, kind, and from the same tree.

Happy Mardi Gras Mobile.