This was my eighty-somethingth New Year’s holiday. I’m a bit older than our current president but younger than Methuselah (see Holy Bible or jump to last paragraph). But that’s “a lotta’ welcoming of new years by anyone’s measure. Hoping for many happy returns.
Of course, I was a baby and small child for the first few, but sooner or later you realize what’s happening and start singing “Auld Lang Syne” with the grownups, having no idea what it means. Still not sure.
As an adult, the New Year’s observances tend to run together when you look back over the decades. Lots of parties with friends, a few big events, some symphony concerts, occasional dining out, some quiet evenings at home when the kids were little. One becomes another in one’s memory.
I do have one that stands out, and it goes way back to my adolescence. I was in my teens in the mid-1950s. A friend and I had nothing in particular planned on New Year’s Eve; we just met early in the evening and wandered around the neighborhood in our overshoes wondering what to do. Wondering as we wandered, as they sing at holiday time.
As we strolled, my friend — I’ll call him Larry — revealed that in his jacket pocket he had a half pint bottle of whiskey. What? Well, it was New Year’s Eve, after all. Isn’t that the biggest alcohol consumption holiday on the calendar? Isn’t it time we grew up and acted like adults? Hadn’t we sprouted hair in our armpits already? Yup.
So, as we strolled through a neighborhood park, Larry took a couple of big swigs from the bottle. Offering the bottle to me, I turned him down. I was still hoping to go to heaven when my time came, and boozing was believed to be high on the list at the Pearly Gates that could send you down below. Also bald-faced lying, more on which later.
Larry took a few more swigs and soon began to feel the effects. He was getting sick. Oh no, what to do? My parents had gone out to a gathering of close friends, so our house was empty. I led Larry to my home, where the effects of the whiskey were taking hold to the point where he could barely stand. So, he laid supine on our living room floor, groaning and showing signs he might actually throw up on the carpet.
I dashed to the basement and got a large, low, galvanized steel pan used for changing oil on cars, now serving as a potential barf pan, and set it by him, hoping for the best. I figured there would be ample time before my parents got home and I could guide Larry to his own nearby home before they arrived.
Suddenly, to my shock and dismay, I heard the footsteps of my father coming up our front porch steps. Yikes, what to do? My dad was home earlier than I expected because my mother, the organist of our church, had to play for a midnight New Year’s service. Those old Lutherans really knew how to have a good time on New Year’s Eve.
Upon entering, my felt hat-and-overcoat-clad father, who would mercifully be missing the church service, surveyed the situation in our living room wondering what was happening (certainly not an oil-change), as I quickly started coming up with false explanations. This is called “lying” at the Pearly Gates, another mark against you when the time comes, I was thinking. I didn’t care.
Gosh, I falsely explained, Larry’s sick because he had some spoiled apple cider at home earlier in the evening. My father seemed to swallow it (the story, not the bad cider), I thought, although I doubt he did. He’d been around the block a few times and was even a member of the American Legion, which had high drinking standards.
Well, I got Larry to his feet and escorted him out the door and to his own nearby home, depositing him inside the kitchen entrance and letting him fend for himself with his own parents. History does not record how that went or how he felt the next day.
I don’t recall the rest of the evening or even the arrival of the new year. This was the era when Duluth’s numerous big industries used to blow their whistles at midnight on New Year’s and I suppose I listened to that on the front porch, contemplating the consequences of bald-faced lying to my eternal salvation when that day inevitably comes. I’m closer to that day now, of course, and have probably done a lot worse things from time to time than a little fibbing.
Before I go (not to heaven or hell but to lunch), a word about old Methuselah. The Good Book says he was 969 years old when he died and was the grandfather of Noah, a pioneer boat builder. Ah, the arc…oops, ark…of history.
Belated Happy New Year!
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.
