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New Year’s Eve

There was a time, I suppose, way back in the distant past, when I wasn’t old enough even to know that Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 were special times to celebrate. Heck, I didn’t even know that years were numbered, so what was so different? It wasn’t long before I found myself begging my parents to allow me to stay up until midnight so that I could listen to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians bringing in The New Year with “Auld Lang Syne.” I am pretty sure that the permission to stay up until that time really meant that I would fall asleep before the midnight hour and then I would be awakened by my parents to actually hear the stroke of 12 and the playing of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Eventually I reached an age when I not only managed to stay up until midnight passing the hours before playing cards at a friend’s home. By then it was no longer listening to the radio at midnight, but rather going outside to listen to the fireworks which were traditional in our area (though illegal at the time in Ohio). It was firecrackers and some folks shooting guns at the bewitching hour.

In his early ’20s, Guy, born Gaetano Alberto Lombardo (b. 1902), and brothers Carmen, Lebert and Victor, formed The Royal Canadians billing themselves as “the sweetest music this side of heaven.” The brothers’ father, an Italian immigrant in London, Ontario, Canada, was an amateur baritone singer and the sons accompanied him when they learned to play different instruments.

The brothers formed a group, under Guy (a violinist) as leader, that became known as both an orchestra and as a band (part of the big band era), making records under labels of Columbia, Brunswick, Victor and Decca. Some of their hit singles were: “The Tennessee Waltz,” “Blue Tango,” “Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “Deep Purple,” “Bell Bottom Trousers”… Are any of you readers singing a few words in your heads right now?

New Year’s Eve will probably always bring to mind Guy Lombardo and Auld Lang Syne for several generations. He performed from the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City from 1929 to 1959 and then at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel from 1959 to 1976. The early performances from 1928 to 1956 were on radio, with the first television Dec. 31st performance on CBS TV. Though Guy died in 1977, the live performances on New Year’s Eve ran for two more years, eventually yielding to the popularity of Dick Clark’s “New Years Rockin’ Eve.”

jtr

So there were those years into my 20s when New Year’s Eve meant some sort of party, including a couple of years making reservations at a night club and (oh, horrors — dancing! — not my favorite thing to do) until the clock struck 12 when there were lots of paper whistles and loud noise and such. Incidentally, my celebrations were not of the drunken-blast type, in case you were wondering.

Eventually I (now we) graduated to a really calm evening of playing bridge with a few other couples and watched the ball descend from the flagpole on top of One Times Square. I am not sure what New Year’s Eve I first watched nor where I watched the descent of the ball, but I would guess maybe in the late 1950s or early 1960s — back when television was still a sort of novelty and I wasn’t doing one of the afore mentioned activities.

The descent of the New Year’s Eve Ball first took place in 1907 in Times Square and the tradition has continued since then except for 1942 and 1943 when “blackouts” were observed during the war. I believe the blackouts were supposedly to make it hard for enemy bombers to locate the important places in the U.S. Blackouts were observed not just in NYC, but in communities across the entire country. In earlier columns I have written about the block wardens patrolling the residential streets to make sure no one had any lights shining through the windows. The blackouts led to some music toward the end of WWII — do you remember Vaughn Monroe singing, “When the lights go on again all over the world”?

jtr

A few years back — not admitting to how many years — the bridge games disappeared on New Year’s Eve and it became more of a stay at home with maybe just a couple of folks visiting, but still waiting for that ball to drop on Times Square. If no one happened to visit or we did not go out, I must admit to reverting back to that childhood time of having trouble keeping my eyes open until 12. Growing up in the eastern time zone I watched the ball drop live at midnight and sometimes I watched a replay of the ball drop as it reached 12 in the central, mountain, and Pacific time zones — wow, did I really stay up that late?

Now in the central time zone I succumbed some time ago to watching the ball drop live when it was only 11 p.m. here. If there were a ball dropping from some building in the time zone east of the Eastern time zone, I would probably watch that and call it a night. I think the time has come when I will settle for seeing a live change of the years when it happens in say, London or Paris. Now that will certainly give me time for a good night’s sleep.

jtr

On a slightly more serious note, the month of January is believed to be named after the Roman God Janus, usually depicted as a man with two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward. So this time of year has become a time to reflect on what has happened as well as a time to look forward to what is coming in the future. We all know that we cannot change what has happened, but we can indeed work to make the future better. Looking forward, I give you the greeting, Happy New Year, with the wish in the most optimistic way that everything goes well throughout the year.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!

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