MOBILE, Ala. — One of Mobile’s most popular parades, the Mystics of Time, comes out on the Saturday before Mardi Gras and unleashes smoke-breathing dragons on the streets of the city. The krewe was formed in 1948 and first paraded the next year. As the story goes, a group of friends, while playing their regular poker game, started discussing forming a new Mardi Gras group. One day, in the old Azalea Grill, that group bumped into a group of men who were members of another parading organization but were disenchanted with that organization. Together they formed the MOT. The theme was “Father Time Looks Back in Time,” and the parade included 19 floats, among them the self-propelled dragon Vernadean and her offspring, Verna and Dean. The floats were built by Royal Artists out of New Orleans.
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