Happy New Year to all my lovely followers. May 2016 be filled with good health, joy, and love.
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My most memorable New Year’s Eve occurred when I was eleven years old, and I saw The Music Man, starring Robert Preston in his award-winning role, on Broadway with my mother and uncle. Toward the end of the performance, we could hear celebratory horns blaring outside on Times Square, their sounds overtaking the music.
Afterwards we joined the New Year’s Eve revelers on Times Square. It was bitterly cold that night, and my feet froze in my thin nylons and suede pumps. I felt tired and needed to keep busy.
My uncle bought me a horn. I stood between him and my mother and blew my horn at everyone that passed, especially the sailors—and there were a lot of them. They stopped and blew their horns back at me, smiling at this silly, awkward girl in a charcoal-gray wool coat and red beret. I loved it.
When the crystal ball dropped, signaling the start of the new decade—1960—everyone began kissing and hugging. The sailors grabbed nearby women in strong embraces. My mother put her arm around me and held me close. Uncle Richard hugged his sister for the first New Year’s Eve in thirty years. What a wonderful reunion they shared!
People were stacked on the sidewalk ten deep, and we felt tightly packed together. A few minutes after midnight, this mass of humanity assumed a life of its own as it moved away from Times Square. We became trapped in the crowd and could only walk in the direction it went. The crowd advanced down Broadway, and we were shocked by the number of women’s shoes left lying on the ground this bitter cold night. Many had been literally swept off their owners’ feet.
Eventually we made our way to Penn Station to board a Hudson Tube train to New Jersey. As we descended the stairs to the platform, a drunken man behind us fell and his legs slid under me, scraping my legs and running my nylon stockings with the heels of his leather oxfords. He mumbled an apology, and I clung to my mother and uncle, frightened by this drunken stranger’s intrusion. Then I dozed off between them until the train arrived in Newark.
I haven’t returned to Times Square on New Year’s Eve since. For me, once was enough.