It must be the
least-memorable holiday, too, as I can only vividly remember two New Year’s
Days. The earliest I can remember was in
the mid-fifties when I was still in grade school. I spent New Year’s Eve with my good buddy
Jake.
We went to a
card party with his parents at the Union school. It was a fairly modern version of the
one-room schools that dotted the landscape in the early 20th Century. The adults played either Pitch or Pinochle. I think Jake and I were joined by one or two
other kids. I think we played Rook, but
we might have played Pitch or Pinochle, too.
I was mildly
disappointed because the parents of the girl I had a crush on were there, but
not the girl. We stayed until midnight
when everybody greeted the New Year and headed home. It must have been a bunch of Methodists
because there was absolutely no alcohol at this New Year’s Eve party.
On New Year’s
Day, we visited Jake’s sister, brother-in-law, and family up north near the
Washington County line. It was shirtsleeve
weather, probably in the sixties or seventies during the short afternoon with
the sun always in a low early-evening position even at noon. (That time of year always requires use of a
sun visor in the car unless you are travelling due north.)
They had a huge,
high stack of bales that invited us to climb and run across the top, but alas,
we were forbidden to crawl up that stack.
The reason given for the prohibition was for our own safety. Kids have a way of knowing when they aren’t
getting the truth. I think the real
reason was because Johnny didn’t want us knocking bales down and destroying his
neat stack. I don’t blame him.
I remember a few
New Year’s Eves at the farm, staying up till midnight to look out an upstairs
window to the southwest to see small little glows on the horizon. No, not Aurora Borealis, the Add-a-Man club
shooting fireworks off Pikes Peak.
Another memorable
New Year’s really happened before the actual New Yer's Day.
I must have been a freshman in college.
Brother John had had a mishap with his old green Cadillac in
Greeley. We spent the day, maybe
December 30, taking our lives in our hands by replacing the A-frame on the
right front of the heavy old car. It
meant collapsing the ornery coil spring enough to get the damaged frame off and
a used frame we got from somewhere back on.
We were racing
the sun on the short day, trying to get the machine on the road before dark
because there would be no time to replace the damaged fender. There would be only one headlight if we had
to travel after dark. With the help of a
floor jack we borrowed from a neighbor, we managed to lower the body onto the
a-frame assembly, using bars to line up the bolt holes.
We got
the job done, but not before dark. We
had the Cadillac follow closely the yellow ’57 Chev pickup. Maybe the cops would miss the missing
headlight. It may be a figment of my
imagination, but I seem to remember we did get stopped on Highway 34 east of Greeley. If we did, the cop let us go on. We got home safely.
December 31 of
that year, we spent in B Leach’s junkyard removing the right front fender of a
Cadillac nearly the same style and color as John’s. It didn’t even have to be painted to match
his car.
That evening, I
took in the New Year’s celebration at the VFW in Hugo. I over-imbibed. We had hoped to finish the Cadillac repair in
time to return to Greeley for winter quarter.
Between the ill effects of the celebration and the departure of Uncle
Ricky and family, we didn’t get much done on New Year’s day.
It was left to
Dad to finish the fender job during the first week of January. We did at least get the car into the old
school farm shop where Dad could work in some comfort with the wood-burning
boiler blazing away.
Since 1970, New
Year’s has come to mean Japanese food.
The Goodwife would make a trip to Pacific Mercantile in downtown Denver
to lay in supplies needed to prepare the feast.
New Year’s being a bigger holiday than Christmas in the Oriental
culture, the store was always crowded to the gills. I spent all my time trying to keep out of the
way as the Goodwife shopped.
The traditional
New Year’s Day meal included rolled sushi, rice with three other ingredients,
not two or four, exactly three, rolled up in a 8” X 11” sheet of sea weed
(nori), then sliced into cute little rolls about an inch-and-a-half wide.
Our sushi rarely
included raw fish, what most folks think sushi is. It is hard to get fish fresh enough to eat
raw in the great heartland of our continent.
Canned crab meat or canned shrimp can be substituted, but many of the
sushi rolls are vegetarian, including cucumbers, pickled radish, ginger slices,
burdock roots slice into strings, or my own very favorite, California-maki which includes slivers of avocado and mayonnaise in the rice. (My mouth is watering at the thought.)
Other menu items
include sweet black beans, sliced cucumber and shrimp in rice vinegar, special
potatoes boiled in soy sauce, maybe a grilled salmon, maybe teriyakied chicken
or beef. I must quit. I’m getting hungry.
In later years,
when the girls grew up and left, we didn’t always have the feast on New Year’s
Day. We had to schedule when everybody
could be there. Some years, we have to
pretend we are celebrating Chinese New Year’s, coming some weeks later than our
Western New Year.
We won’t be
feasting this New Year’s Day. We haven’t
had time to get to Pacific Mercantile.
We won’t be going today. It’s
fifteen degrees, snow on the ground, crazy drivers on the road, and a trip down
I-25 is not much fun in the best of weather.
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