New Orleans’ social aid & pleasure clubs take the street the way they take care of their own — quietly all year, gloriously for one Sunday. The route is a memory map: the barrooms that sponsored them, the corners that raised them, the blocks where everybody on a porch knows somebody in the line.

Aid came first — dues for the sick and the burying, coverage the insurance men wouldn’t sell. The pleasure comes Sunday: the brass band, the club in its colors, and the whole neighborhood — the second line — dancing behind. Wear shoes you mean. The club doesn’t parade past its neighborhood; it parades for it.