AULD LANG SYNE

The New Year has come again, much too fast I fear…And I rifle my mental card file of holidays past and then find one from the 50's, back to our little homemade home in South Millville.  Mom’s out for a festive evening at the White Sparrow in Vineland that boasted of its warm fireside atmosphere…Pop was at the Eagles lodge playing cards and that left Nanny and me and the TV.  

In 1953 we had a new giant box of a TV that my mom bought.  Matter of fact, I remember the first thing we saw after Mr. Brown, the one and only TV repairman in town, delivered it and hooked it to a new device on our rooftop – a TennaRotor,  a small motor that turned the antenna for the best reception.  Nanny worked it a lot but never seemed to get it down pat - even though George guaranteed that it was easy to get a bead on all of the 4 channels we could receive in those days without 4999 choices.

Our first program that October evening, as the picture slowly filled the screen from a small dot in the middle of the massive (to us) 21 inch Motorola screen that replaced our first 10 inch Admiral was a newsreel film of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II which had been flown to CBS network via a military fighter jet which refueled twice over the Atlantic.  This was a first for television news.  It took five hours to cross the Atlantic  that today is delivered in HDTV  via the speed of light.

The year had run its course and the Queen was well established on her throne.  Nanny and I were waiting for our annual viewing of Guy Lombardo and his Canadians New Year’s traditional live broadcast, which started in the golden days of radio,  directly from the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom,  New York City.  As we waited we had our traditional TV watching snacks – Nanny cut a wedge of very sharp cheese into small squares and we munched them on Saltines.  The cheese was so strong it made my eyes water!  Next round – as I kept an eye on the clock – two hours to go to midnight - was homemade chocolate chips and eggnog!  Nanny made me promise that I would not tell Mom that she gave me (just this once) her concoction that she spiked with a hefty dose of Four Roses.  “Don’t get pie-eyed like your Pop Pop,” she warned.  I was on my way that night,  at ten years old, toasting many futures New Years to come.

11 O’clock came fast as we finished our next snack – Mom’s famous Apple-less Apple Sauce cake which had ten thousand raisins in it instead of sliced Mackintoshes.  A secret recipe that only those moms who read the Ladies Home Journal would know.  I loved that cake and it was a tradition to have a very large slice every year until my mother stopped baking and bringing a large cake to me.  It was a great dark brown spicy concoction - that only mom seemed to make correctly – many others tried but failed to make one as good as she.  Mom credited her success to the white, well used and chipped enameled pan handed down from her grandmother.  

The clock was ticking down as Guy’s guys played his famous rendition of Pennsylvania Polka – Nanny and I sang along and we were both in good voice tonight.  During a commercial I raced to find the  hats and horns saved for years and found them in the far reaches of my bedroom closet/toy depository/hiding spot.  Nanny put on a cardboard tiara and I wore a pointed clown beanie.  This year I chose a horn that rolled out a foot long tube of paper and made a blatting sound when it was totally unfurled.  Nanny always took the metal box-like one with the little handle that made a song like a dying moose.  The confetti started to fall in our TV ballroom – Guy proclaimed,  “Haaapppppy Newwwww Year everyone”, and with a downbeat of two foot baton the orchestra struck up their  trademark low and moaning sound playing the yearly song that nobody few actually  know all of the words or what it has to do with a new set of days.  We made noise and I hooted a couple times out the kitchen door.  Nanny turned off the TV and the picture collapsed to a dot as the big tube cooled down.  She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Happy New Year. OK time for bed.”  And that ended my 10th year’s celebration of our world travelling around the sun and back again. 

I have celebrated many more revolutions – over 77; some sober and alone; others loaded to the gills and celebrated in very tipsy crowds after a gourmet meal.  I even spent one on New York City’s famed Broadway and saw the great ball come down high above over two million revelers. (After dodging a flying beer bottle!)  But honestly, those fleeting eves in our little home with Nanny remain the sweetest – for when we are young we look forward with excitement and anticipation to another year to come.  But as we grow old,  there comes a time when we surely regret another old year passing as we try to sing...Guy's song once again.

(Click link for a memory of your own) - Auld Lang Syne

CHRISTMAS COLORS

Every Monday after Thanksgiving I would start my annual project that continued throughout my elementary school days after I did the first one in third grade for Miss Russell – and this year I was determined to out-do last year’s chalkboard Christmas mural (and yes we were allowed to call the season Christmas in those days)  This temporary picture, my last year before high school, was going to be my final masterpiece.  I decided on the subject that I wanted to do and got the shoe-box of colored chalk that had been collected over the years.  I had been given time off from regular school work  in every class for six years at each major holiday to express myself on the blackboards that wrapped around our classroom and in those days; they were black, not green or white or electronic.  A daily dose of chalk dust permeated our kid's lives for nine and a half months each year.

To get a new idea for this year, I had surveyed all the Winter issues of the Ideals Magazine in our school library - this was the teacher's Bible for  bulletin boards.  The scene I choose to duplicate was in the December 1957 issue - a classic Raphel type scene rather than a comic book cartoon.

 (Editor's note: In the 50's religious subjects were permitted to be discussed and celebrated in the public school.  At the start of every day that I went to elementary school a student had read a chapter of the old testament and we then recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag which was in the front of every classroom (although most of us didn't know what an allegiance was - but that’s a subject for other blogs, podcasts and rants on Twitter.)

    Back to my story.  This year I would produce a Nativity that used not one - but all of the blackboards in the classroom - it was to be a lifesize tableau and I would finally become to Bacon School's blackboards what Michelangelo was to the ceilings.

And so I began...the Wise Men came first, riding camels from the left.  This year I added something totally avant garde to my creation.  Along with the shepherds coming across the room from the right, wanting to touch all bases in our kid's world, I added Rudolph the Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman in a stand of pines decorated with actual red and green paper chains.  I used the giant jar of paste that every class had and every kid I had tried a taste to stick silver stars on the black sky.  These were the kind we got for a 100 on a spelling test.  Lastly, I added a large Star of David hovering over the stable.  However, I must admit that I stretched my labor out as far as I could to keep me out of doing arithmetic.  One day while I was working on final touches and shading another teacher came into our classroom and interrupted a lesson in diagramming a split infinitive or something like that?  After a brief hushed conversation with my beloved teacher I was told that I had been drafted to create another mural for this teacher's classroom.

Those weeks before our long awaited Christmas vacation I did four other blackboards of various subjects for various teachers.  I had become for Bacon School's holiday blackboards what Michelangelo was to ceilings.