A Front-Row Seat to Joe Cain Day

Ladies in black appear once a year to weep on Augusta Street. Tantaras of trumpets and drumrolls are harbingers of their coming. They lead a funeral procession from their husband’s grave to the home he shared with his only legal wife and wail toasts in his honor, taking sips of their cocktails under the veils shrouding their faces. Liquor leads them to bicker, and each of the widows proclaims to all that will hear that their dearly-departed groom loved them best. Sorrow moves them to hysteria. They reach into their handbags and fling black garters and beads into a sea of mourners who claw the treasures out of their neighbors’ hands. As suddenly as the widows arrive, they depart, taking their brass band and grieving cortege with them. It’s a tableau that Becky Pomrenke watches from her house every Mardi Gras. She welcomes the pandemonium. It’s a celebration of a Mobile luminary’s life, and the widows put the “fun” in “funeral.” It’s just part of living next to the Joe Cain House.

 Being the neighbor of the father of modern Mobile Mardi Gras wasn’t part of Pomrenke’s plan when she moved from the Chicago area to Mobile. The little house in the Oakleigh Garden District just had everything she was looking for — charm, history and winters that didn’t chill her to the bone. “Everyone thinks that the cold is great, but unless you’ve ever walked outside and had your eyeballs freeze, you don’t know what cold is. After I graduated from the University of Iowa, I went back to Chicago where my parents were, and I knew I had to get out,” she says. A trip to see her brother and his family made her fall in love with the warmth of the people and the weather in Mobile. “I came to visit them and was like ‘Okay, this is cool. It’s historic. So, I started looking for jobs. USA Health had a whole bunch of job postings, and I’m not even kidding, I applied for just about every job they posted.”

Her plans to move to Mobile fell into place in a whirlwind, proving that big, exciting changes rarely wait for the perfect moment. “They called me to offer me the job and I said, ‘Yes, I will absolutely accept this job, but can I please call you back? There’s a limo in my driveway waiting to take me to see The Rolling Stones,” Pomrenke recalls. “They were like, ‘Of course! Go have a good time! Call us tomorrow.’” She arrived in Mobile about a month after accepting the position during BayFest. One drink-in-hand walk through the street party that had taken over Downtown, and she knew she was where she belonged.

Pomrenke first settled in West Mobile when she arrived in the South, but she quickly realized that it didn’t quite feel like home. She was drawn to the turn-of-the-century architecture in Mobile’s historic neighborhoods, where she found a house that seemed to have been waiting for her. “I just really liked the historic neighborhoods and areas,” she says. “I remember being at work and looking at the newspaper, and there was this little ‘For Sale by owner’ ad. I called my realtor and said, ‘I think I want to look at this house.’ So, we did, and from the minute I walked in, I thought, ‘This is my house.’”

Pomrenke’s front porch is the perfect perch for watching all the Joe Cain Day action. Lisa Valentine, Amy Smith Inge, Ed Pomrenke, Rigg Curtis and Bradford Fuller know that there’s no bad place to party at Pomrenke’s house.

At the time, her decision to move to Midtown raised eyebrows among her friends, who couldn’t see the potential she did. When she moved into her home in 1999, it was one of only a handful of renovated properties in the area. “My friends all asked me, ‘Are you sure you want to move there?’” Pomrenke says. “Now everyone tells me, ‘You’re so lucky that you bought that house!’ I think I got in here about two years before this area really blew up.”

It wasn’t until after she’d settled into her new home that Pomrenke realized that it came with a bit of local lore. “I don’t know if my realtor said anything much about this house. She might have told me that Joe Cain’s house was next door,” she says. “My friends who are from here were like, ‘No, you don’t understand. This is a big deal.’” Becoming Joe Cain’s neighbor meant inheriting a front-row seat to one of Mobile’s most-cherished traditions — the spectacle that is Joe Cain Day.

Every last Sunday of Mardi Gras since 1974, Joe Cain’s Merry Widows have pilgrimaged from the Mobile icon’s resting place in the Church Street Graveyard to his home to celebrate his legacy as the savior of the city’s carnival traditions. Taking on the persona of Chief Slacabamorinico, a mythical Chickasaw chief, Cain led a spirited parade through the streets, reviving Mardi Gras in the city following the Civil War. The mystic society of women honors “Ol’ Slac” with toasts, tears and throws before riding on their signature black bus in the People’s Parade. Their maudlin performance is one of the most beloved events of Joe Cain Day.

For Pomrenke, Ol’ Slac’s day has become something sacred. “I love Mardi Gras. I’ve told my bosses that I have to be off every Joe Cain Day. I will work every Christmas, but I will not work on Joe Cain Day or Mardi Gras day,” she says. “My house is open at about 7:30. There could be about 50 people here depending on the time of day — people are in and out. I have friends who are on foot who will come by to grab a drink and just head Downtown after that.”

Any Mardi Gras party worth attending is excessively indulgent, and the Joe Cain block party at Pomrenke’s is no exception. It’s a BYOB affair, but champagne bottles are bottomless, bloody mary mix comes by the gallon and coolers full of beer seem to materialize from thin air. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Mardi Gras party without a spread that’s as over-the-top as the drinks. “My brother makes a crawfish pie from a recipe our cousins from New Orleans gave us. Everyone loves those,” she says. “Some years we’ll have 75 king cakes. One of my friends actually does a savory king cake from scratch. I’ve had some friends come in from Baton Rouge that make chicken gumbo. One guy brings West Indies salad every year. But the staples are obviously crawfish pies, bloody marys and mimosas.”

While crawfish pies and cocktails might get all the glory, Pomrenke’s friend Kathy ensures that there’s no shortage of something just as essential, even if it’s not the most glamorous hostess gift. “My friend Kathy brings toilet paper every single year. I don’t know what I would do without her generally, but she’s my toilet paper person,” she says. “One time, I panicked a little and called her and said, ‘No pressure, but are you bringing toilet paper this year?’ And she was like, ‘Of course!’ She told me when we became friends that she used to stand in the street for the Joe Cain Run and look up at my porch and say to herself ‘One year, I want to be invited to that party.’ Now, she is one of my dearest friends, and every single year, she brings me toilet paper.”

Kathy’s one of many in the Oakleigh Garden District who knows how to keep the good times on a roll. When the pandemic put Mardi Gras celebrations in jeopardy, Pomrenke and her neighbors rallied together to make sure Mobile’s biggest party didn’t miss a beat. “I think it was Joe Cain Day of 2021 that we didn’t have Mardi Gras. All of us in the neighborhood just said, ‘We’re doing something,’” Pomrenke says. “I got together with the Oakleigh president at the time, and we pulled some money together and got the Blow House Brass Band to do a second line around the neighborhood. We asked one of the Merry Widows if they would be willing to do a toast, and a whole bunch of us made second line umbrellas and had sequin masks. And we just did a little Oakleigh thing. We all said, ‘We have to do something. Joe would never let this day go, and we’re not going to either.’”

Joe Cain Day isn’t just a revered tradition for Pomrenke. It’s a full-blown celebration of everything she loves about Mobile. “If you look on my Facebook page, it will say ‘best day of the year’ literally every year,” she says. “The day is so completely us — it’s about what Joe Cain did for Mobile. It’s a thing for locals who know about him, but it’s also not just for them. It’s very inclusive. Mardi Gras touches everyone in the city in some way, but that’s especially true on Joe Cain Day.”

Rigg’s Bloody Mary Mix

Serves 20 – 25 

2 46-ounce cans tomato juice
1 15-ounce can beef broth
1 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup Crystal hot sauce
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
juice from 1 lemon
juice from 1 lime
4 teaspoons prepared horseradish

1. Combine all the ingredients in a large container and stir until well-incorporated. Refrigerate overnight. 

* A typical bloody mary contains 2 ounces of vodka to 6 ounces of bloody mary mix, but feel free to adjust to your taste! Garnish with lemon wedges, pickled okra, celery, or olives.

Crawfish King Cake

Serves 10 – 15 

8 strips bacon
1 small purple onion, chopped
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
12 ounces cream cheese, cubed and softened 
12 ounces frozen crawfish tails, thawed and drained
2 tablespoons Tony Chachere’s seasoning
2 8-ounce rolls crescent roll dough
1 1/2 cups parmesan cheese, grated
Purple and gold food coloring

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.   Line a 9×13-inch baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Place 4 strips of bacon in a cold skillet and fry over medium heat for about 7 minutes or until crisp. Remove from pan and drain on a plate lined with a paper towel. Repeat with the remaining bacon, reserving 1 tablespoon of bacon fat. Clean skillet.

3. Return 1 tablespoon bacon fat to the skillet and add onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Saute for 5 – 7 minutes or until onion is translucent. Add cream cheese, crawfish tails and Tony Chachere’s seasoning to the pan and stir until well-mixed and creamy. Remove from heat. 

4. Unroll the crescent roll dough on a clean, flat work surface or cutting board. Shape into a rectagle and pinch any seams together. Spread crawfish mixture evenly over the dough. Starting with the long side of the rectangle, roll up the dough into a log. Shape the log into an oval ring and pinch ends together to seal. Move the ring to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes.

5. While it bakes, divide the parmesan cheese evenly between two bowls. Add 2-3 drops of purple food coloring to one of the bowls and mix to coat the cheese. Repeat with the gold food coloring. Chop bacon and set aside. 

6. When king cake comes out of the oven, sprinkle the colored cheeses over the roll in alternating bands until the top of the ring is covered in purple and gold stripes. Sprinkle bacon on top and return to oven for 5 minutes. Slice the king cake and serve hot.

Mini Crawfish Pies

Serves 28

1/2 cup salted butter
1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 green onions, thinly sliced
8 ounces canned diced tomatoes with hatch green chilies
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 pound whole crawfish tails, cooked and peeled
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped 
28 mini pie crusts

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Melt butter in a large pan. Add onions, bell pepper, celery and green onions and saute over medium heat for 6 – 8 minutes, or until onion is translucent and golden brown on edges.

3. Add tomatoes, salt and cayenne pepper to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Add crawfish tails and cook for an additional 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

4. Meanwhile, dissolve cornstarch in water to form a slurry. Pour slurry into the pan and stir until the mixture thickens. Stir in parsley and divide the mixture into unbaked pie crusts.

5. Place pies on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crusts are golden brown. Serve hot.