New Year’s Eve … 1949

 

Few of my New Year’s Eves are memorable enough to write about but I thought you might get a kick out of this.

I was 16 years old in 1949 and the youngest of 5 girls. We all had invitations to New Year’s parties that year and my folks said it was OK but they were very firm about the times that we were to be home … 12:30 for Peg and me and not later than 1 a.m. for the older girls. They also told us that they were going to a neighbors for the festivities but would be home shortly after midnight.

Of course you can imagine what happened. We were all late by at least an hour and had no idea what would be waiting for us when we got home. Luckily it seemed very quiet and we breathed huge sighs of relief … obviously our folks had trusted that we’d meet the deadlines and they had gone to bed. Just to be safe we carefully took off our shoes and left them at the bottom of the stairs. Then we snuck up bare-footed, being sure to miss the creakiest treads. Sure enough our parents bedroom door was firmly closed and we were home free !

Fast forward to a family reunion in the ‘60’s. As often happens at those times we were all reminiscing and my sister Nancy gleefully brought up the New Year’s Eve when all 5 of us had hood winked our parents. “Not so fast”, my dad said and he went on to tell how he and Mom had come home much later than planned. The shoes were the first thing that they saw and, although “it was a dead give-away” they decided to let it go. They had much more fun the next morning listening to our carefully crafted versions of our big night out !

Ah…my parents. They always managed to get the last word !