When they were young my parents would host an annual New Year’s Eve party that people would talk about until the next year’s New Year’s Eve party. One party, in 1953, was so extraordinary that old timers were still talking about it 60 years later — at Mom’s funeral. But my younger brother and I were change-of-life babies and by the time we entered the picture my parents’ party days were over. Most New Year’s Eves Mom and Dad took us to dinner and an early movie and we were all in bed by midnight.
By the time my brother and I were teenagers we had outgrown New Year’s Eve with the folks, so in 1975 my parents decided to break with the “dinner and a movie” tradition and relive their glory days by hosting a large New Year’s Eve party. Invitations were sent and my older sister, a young wife and mother with way too much time on her hands, was called in to coordinate. My younger brother went to spend the night with a friend but I managed to convince my parents that at 16 I was old enough to stay at home, promising to spend the evening reading in my room, a promise I had no intention of keeping.
My older sister planned the party and since my parents and their friends were avid golfers she dreamed up a golf-themed New Year’s Eve party. Accordingly, she set up a miniature golf course throughout the house, with 18 separate holes complete with sand traps and water hazards. The odd numbered holes were different food courses and the even numbered holes each offered a different cocktail: the idea was to progress, in order, from hole to hole, culminating at midnight with champagne at the 18th hole.
It was a classic 1970’s party. My mom wore what she called “palazzo pants” — huge, flowing polyester bell bottoms that invited a broken hip with every step. Dad wore a houndstooth leisure suit (I am not making this up!) with the bright red polyester shirt he got for Christmas.
I don’t remember the exact menu but I know that the 3rd hole was a rumaki station, and that there was a fondue pot at 15. I know that the cocktail at the second hole was a Harvey Wallbanger and that subsequent holes featured trendy 1970s drinks like pink squirrels, sloe gin fizzes, Tom Collins, tequila sunrises, white Russians and grasshoppers.
Since most guests showed up after 9:00, and the goal was to get to the champagne station by midnight, the guests had to move with alacrity enthusiasm from hole to hole. Too late, my sister realized that she did not factor in the effect that having nine drinks mixing gin, rum, vodka and tequila in less than three hours would have on her middle-aged guests, and by 11:30 there was a definite electricity in the air.
That was when I skulked out of my room and, lurking in the shadows, began to investigate: I saw my mother getting ice in the kitchen when Leo McNally, my dad’s accountant, put his hand on her backside and gave her a kiss on the lips. I saw our neighbor, the Widow Pinkney, holding a sprig of mistletoe, chasing my father around the pool. I noticed that my Uncle Carl (Dad’s brother) and my Auntie Rose (Mom’s sister) had taken their drinks and cigarettes and gone to sit in the back seat of Carl’s car clearly not caring whether their respective spouses, Aunt Marge and Uncle Frank, noticed, although, by that point, Uncle Frank had passed out on the back porch and Aunt Marge was doing the tango with Mr. Coleman, one of my father’s bowling buddies.
In the family room I saw that my middle sister, 22 and newly married, was trying to match my older brother drink for drink, which was both unwise and impossible — she would be vomiting before midnight while my older sister kindlykept her hair from falling into the toilet. As midnight approached I was mesmerized watching Mrs. Bassey and Mr. Smathers at the 13th hole, the kielbasa station (don’t ask). That’s when I felt a moist, fleshy hand on my shoulder. It was the Widow Pinkney, looking furtively around the room as she handed me a glass of champagne.
“Look at you,” she said, swaying slightly and holding aloft a sprig of mistletoe. “All grown up!”