New Year's Eve 1977

The best New Year's Eve parties are the ones you can walk home from, or those which are held inside your own home.

The party I attended on New Years 1977 was at Mac Smith's house on Fairmount road and was only a couple of blocks from my house on Glenwood road. It was held during the break between semesters my freshman year at college. This was a time when you could be fairly certain of running into any number of friends from high school, and that was the case on this evening.

Freshmen home on break from college are still a hugely enthusiastic bunch. The grind of studying during the winter months, the toll of pledging fraternities or sororities, and lastly the realization they have left the nest generally have not sunk too deeply into their thoughts by this time. Freshmen still have strong attachments to their home towns and feelings about their high school days so any chance to relive them, even tangentially, brings them great joy. This night in 1977 was no exception.

I must have arrived fairly early in the evening as not too many people had shown up. I was wearing underneath my clothes a pair of red Long Johns from LL Bean so I was set for a frosty night. It might have been the fact these Long Johns were making me feel quite warm that sent me out into the night for a breath of fresh air. Once outside I noticed cars of people my age doing what we always did on the weekend, that is, drive around looking for parties. These cars began stopping by me, as I stood under the street light at the corner of Fairmount and Heights, and asking me if I knew "where the party was tonight." My initial response was quick and accompanied by a broad smile as I pointed to the house behind me. Though after two or three of these occurrences I began to see the fun and mischief that might ensue if I stood there for a while. And that is what I did for the following 45 minutes, until the house was literally bursting with people.

It was a good party that night and we all made plenty of noise and probably broke some things in Mac's house. I vaguely remember a door being cracked, or maybe that was some other night in my past. You could usually rely upon somebody to do something idiotic. You could also rely on everyone who wasn't the host having a good laugh thinking about how Mac would explain the breakage the next day. Though on the whole it was a peaceful party and the police never came. Maybe our newly acquired college sophistication was beginning to show, or we were just more interested in talking with old friends we might not see again for a while, if ever.

I do remember walking home that night feeling like this was our last hurrah together and we had made the best of it. Of course, we would meet up again at reunions but in my mind those nights were too far in the future to contemplate and understand. It indeed was becoming apparent to me that nobody knew the dramatic affect life after high school would have on our perceptions. Nor did we know how it might dampen our desire to drive around Ridgewood hoping to find a grinning young man, standing under a streetlight, pointing people to the party which was going on behind him.