New Year’s Eve through the Years

Even though I lived in the New York area for almost fifty years, I never had the desire to go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I can’t imagine anything worse than standing in the cold night air with two hundred and fifty thousand people engaged in various stages of merriment and drunken frivolity.

As a teen ager and young adult we preferred house parties where we made our own fun singing, dancing, games and jokes. Around eleven-thirty we turned on the TV to watch Guy Lombardo play from the Roosevelt Grill. We counted down the last ten seconds and shouted “Happy New Year.” We kissed everyone and sang “Auld Lang Syne,” and continued the party. Before we left, the host made coffee and served breakfast. Because Catholics held January first as a Holy Day, we stayed up all night to attend five thirty Mass. We sat through the obligatory ceremony in various states of sleepiness, sometimes nodding off only to startle awake with a head jerk.

After marrying, I remember once going to a party at the Long Island home of my sister Dottie and her husband Artie. One of their neighbors just bought a VW beetle. We thought it great fun to release the brake (no one locked their cars in those days) and relocate it around the corner. So there I stood in high heels and fancy dress pushing a car and laughing all the way. At another time and another neighbor with a new small Renault, the guys at the party lifted the car and placed it on four cement blocks. When the owner started his car and accelerated, his wheels spun around but he went nowhere.

One of the party goers got sick and threw up in the bathroom. Unknown to him, he also threw up his denture and flushed it down. Much discussion followed about the feasibility of shutting the water off, and removing the toilet to see if the denture got stuck in the trap. Artie vetoed the idea.  “You’ll have to say good-bye to your denture Don.”

I slept on the couch in their living room and my husband Dick on the floor with a sleeping bag and pillow. Artie’s brother Bill slept upstairs in the children’s bedroom.  The next morning I heard him crashing down the stairs. He lurched into the living room hanging on to the door jamb.

“Where’s that little brown dog?” he said.

“What little brown dog?”

“The one that crapped in my mouth while I slept,” he retorted, stumbling to the bathroom.

New Year’s Eve celebrations went dormant during my working years. In order to have Christmas off, I had to cover New Year’s Day.

In my senior citizen years, Henry and I went to a black and white dance every New Year’s Eve. They decorated the Morro Bay Community Center with streamers, balloons and top hats. Confetti sprinkled around candles adorned each table. We danced to a live band playing music from the 40’s and 50’s. Everyone brought a pot luck dish to share, hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, sweets and snacks. We drank apple cider, coffee or tea – no alcohol. At the stroke of midnight or thereabouts, we completed the New Year ritual and bid everyone good night by 12:05am. With no road traffic, we sailed home by 12:30.

Lately, I watch the New Year arrive on east coast time, nine pm California time. I kiss my dog Prissy, drink some sparkling cider, eat a cookie and go to bed.