By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – While clearing out her late godfather’s Reserve home one afternoon, Reserve resident Yvette Oubre came across something rather unexpected that showed her godfather’s love for Mardi Gras.

Oubre explained her godfather, Lin Vicknair, would every year dedicate one weekend during the Carnival season to spend in downtown New Orleans – right smack in the middle of the celebration.

“He loved every bit of it,” Oubre said. “He would always get a hotel package and spend several days down there. He loved being in the crowd.”

When Vicknair passed away in June, he left the house and everything inside to Oubre. One afternoon while she was clearing away stuff in the attic looking for beads to use this year, she came across something unexpected. It was a bag full of metal doubloons from decades of parades.

“I knew he had lots of beads, because he keeps everything,” Oubre said. “But we had no idea he had hung on to so many doubloons as well. We spent hours going through them all.”

Although relatively rare in more recent years, doubloons were once a wildly popular staple of every Mardi Gras Parade. Some were occasionally made with precious metals and given as gifts to riders and krewe royalty.

Although Vicknair’s collection contained nothing of gold or silver, he did hang on to a few unique specimens, including a set of extremely thick gauge doubloons from Krewe du Monde from 1976 that were incredibly heavy.

He also had coins from parades that no longer roll.

“These are parades I had never heard of before,” Oubre said. “I had no idea he had kept all of this for so long.”

Another unique find in Vicknair’s collection was a cadre of phony paper money adorned with various krewe emblems. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, krewes like Bacchus and Endymion threw what were called “bogus bills,” a unique alternative to the metal doubloons.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Oubre said. “I understood the doubloons, but the paper money was a total surprise.”

Oubre said she learned a lot about her godfather while going through his belongings. In addition to the beads and doubloons, Oubre found old newspapers from the founding of Reserve, as well as documents from the first Andouille Festival.

“He left me lots of surprises,” Oubre said. “It has been interesting sifting through this stuff.”