New Year's

Ushering in this Bicentennial Year, my New Year's Eve was spent in Cleveland (City of Light) Heights in an apartment at a picturesque spot, overlooking Little Italy. We ventured out once to this view to see the fireworks but either there weren't any or else we couldn't see them through the smog. We did hear lots of firecrackers though. The party was the usual lackadaisical gathering of old high school friends but I didn't know any of them. There wasn't enough ice; the dope was raunchy, the champagne not dry enough, and, frankly, I was bored. I was beginning to wish I had spent my New Year's Eve with my New Year's Eve buddies of five or six years, my old high school friends in Birmingham, Alabama.

But of course it wouldn't be the same. We had always combined our parties with a "surprise" birthday celebration for our friend Shelley, whose birthday, appropriately enough, coincided with the New Year at midnight. But now Shelley is a married lady of some six months and living in Chicago.

One of my happiest New Year's Eves was spent in Birmingham at a party at a friend's house whose father is the president of UAB. The university has given him this mansion to live in which is nothing short of incredible. The kitchen alone could service a community. First you are buzzed in at the gate, then you drive up a winding driveway until you come to The House. The front is part of a residential neighborhood of old homes while at the back there is a terrace with a steep drop to downtown. On one side you are blinded by the gleaming lights of the metropolis while on the other you are seeped in the peace and stillness of suburbia.

It started snowing this New Year's Eve. Big deal, you say, what a drag. But in Birmingham when it snows you simply can't drive. You have to wait until it stops and starts to melt. Because in Birmingham it really does melt. It doesn't lie around, grotesquely, like huge lumps of frozen spit, for you to trip over and break your neck. There is a mystique about snow in the South. I think it is because it vanishes so fast. It doesn't stay and harden to annoy you with its grey horror, but leaves, like a good guest, without a trace, so it is sometimes even hard to believe it happened at all.

In that party of the hard rock era, all of a sudden the music stopped. We went out on the terrace to the snow and the absolute quiet, the sound of its falling. Nothing broke that stillness except one girl who'd had too much to drink and was discreetly throwing up in a corner.

But in Cleveland everyone is blase about snow, and after four years in Massachusetts, I had become inured to it also. Out over Little Italy all I felt was the cold, and I was the first to suggest going back in.

I had arrived in Cleveland that very day to visit my boyfriend, L.S., as a friend calls him, and to confront his parents. To make commections I had had to traverse the entire airport at Detroit, and the airlines had failed to transfer my luggage. Because of the holiday, no one was working and I didn't get my luggage until January 1st was almost over. I had been wearing a new green dress to freak everyone out of their minds but the novelty was beginning to pall and I was yearning for my jeans. That evening we had a sedate family dinner, complimented the Christmas tree, and the fire-engine red harpsichord L.S.'s father had made as well as the royal blue room he had built onto the house to put it in.

The rest of the holiday proceeded on this colorful note. Near L.S.'s house was a scene guaranteed to blind you with its eternal glory. In Birminghan the "energy crisis" or at least the rising cost of electricity has precluded most outdoor decorations, but if the Southern industrialists are feeling the crunch, the Northern ones don't seem to. Some gentleman, purportedly with a crewcut and perhaps even a VFW, has consecrated his entire property to the glory of God. At least 30 small trees, not to mention the big ones, are strung with lights; a large manger scene graces his front lawn; his garage lit up like a chapel; and his house is the temple itself, supporting the Star of Bethlehem, mechanical of course, proclaiming its message to the world. Most people, including L.S., label the display "garish" or even "obscene," but I, as a member of the heathens to whom it is directed, find it absolutely enchanting. With no regard for cost, this gentleman kept up the display into January. But even after it was taken down and packed away for the next pursuit of the millenium, the traffic signs the police department had thoughtfully placed remained. To avoid accidents caused by gawking motorists, Christians and heathens alike, the yellow diamonds read "Caution Slow Christmas Display Ahead." Perhaps they are there still, stopping cars well in advance of next year.