“A look at Old New Year’s Eves”
Hayter for Jan 1, 2023
This is my 73rd New Year’s Eve moment. I can’t remember the other 72 of them. I could come up with several Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Fourth of July gatherings. New Year’s Eve never registered much with me.
I imagine we watched a lot of TV on New Year’s Eve. Other than that, I don’t—wait a minute! I think it was New Year’s Eve about three years back when the neighborhood had a big fireworks display. I remember that because I donated $50 for fireworks. Hit me hard, it did.
I don’t remember any big event or any article I wrote for the New Year. But, I do have a collection of several of my earlier New Year’s articles. Hey, I keep records. They’re hard to find, but they’re here somewhere. – Ah, here it be.
My 1982 piece included my predictions for the year. One of which was that Idi Amin would not be given a role in “Different Strokes”, and no movie with the name “Smokey” in the title would win an academy award. I stuck my neck out on that one. For the last one, I predicted that it will not be discovered that the members of the rock group KISS are actually the Gospel Goodman Family. I was right on two of those predictions. I never dreamed how versatile the Goodman Family was.
For 1983 I predicted that, in separate incidents, three local youths and an elderly woman would turn up missing. The only clue in each of the cases will be that each person was last seen looking for Reece’s Pieces in Conroe’s remodeled Safeway Store. – By the way, five years ago when Kay and were staying in Washington I applied for a Safeway card and they already had me on record. From 30 years back! Of course, they had the wrong phone number.
I also predicted that an episode of “That’s Incredible” would feature an Idaho man who will construct an artificial heart out of the carburetor of a ’62 Rambler. The only problem will be that the recipient will have to be jump-started after every sneeze.
In another January 1983 article, I mentioned the famous people who had died in ’82. The young among us won’t remember these people. Henry Fonda (One of my top 10 favorite actors), Vic Morrow (Sargent Saunders of the ‘Combat’ TV series. He and a young boy he was carrying filming a scene of a “Twilight Zone” movie were killed by a helicopter blade). Hugh Beaumont (Wally and the Beaver’s Dad. Such a nice guy.) Marty Robbins, a country western singer with one of the most pleasant voices you’ll ever hear), and John Belushi, (one of the original Saturday Night Live crew. To me, the guy was more crazy than funny. I don’t remember ever seeing him smile. Likewise, I don’t think I ever saw Bill Murray smile.)
I’m sure things were less ridiculous in ’84. Let’s see: I predicted that the aging actor Richard Harris would star in a new movie called “The Next to the Last Return of a Man Called Horse.” I considered it a movie that in no way deserved sequels.
In January of ’85, I didn’t make any predictions, but I did mention how much trouble I had applying for the Challenger Teacher in Space Shuttle Mission. That was one tough application. Among other things I had to come up with lesson plans for teaching students while I was in space. You see, I had never been in space, so I was pulling lesson plans out of my rear. I mean ear. Sorry.
I realized there was little chance of me getting selected, but I was still a bit discouraged when I wasn’t picked among the finalists. And sad as all get out about the Challenger disaster.
The worst ever New Year’s came in ’96 when I was on crutches for tearing loose my achilles tendon during our ’95 Christmas family football game, and having a volleyball-sized kidney stone removed shortly thereafter. Not to be totally outdone, Kay had gallbladder surgery in the same month. We were one sick couple on New Year’s Eve of ’96.
Let’s zoom over to, uh, New Year’s 2000. Look at this. Kay and I were with Virginia and Freeman Pliler in Natchitoches, LA. This was where the movie “Steel Magnolias” was filmed. In the movie, there’s a scene downtown near the Cane River, where people are getting a combination of corn on the cob, crawfish, onions, and other stuff tossed on a plate. I’d hafta watch the movie again to know what all was in the kettle. Not happening.
The place was so lively and everyone was happy. So, we started 2000 with a visit to Natchitoches. The actual location was every bit as lovely as in the movie. The townspeople not so much. Finding a public restroom took a good while. The different shops had a sign on their doors that read, “No Public Restroom”. If a shop didn’t have that sign, it didn’t have a restroom either.
No corn on a stick or big kettle filled with a wondrous mixture. Regardless, from what I wrote, we had a good time in Natchitoches. The girls walked into each of the three billion shops. Freeman and I left the women in search of a restroom. We didn’t see them again for a couple of hours. It was a good way to start 2000. – Well, that didn’t flow well.
That was a look at earlier New Year’s Eve events. Much earlier. I’m glad I’ve got a record of the happenings, otherwise, I would hafta be hypnotized to recall a lot of that.
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