The New Year's Eve that Changed My Life

      In my family the New Year's tradition was fairly standard. There was no celebration of New Year's Eve. On New Year's day there was a traditional family day. Mom's cousin and her family would come over and a big turkey dinner was eaten at noon. All afternoon we visited, played games and nibbled. Since we were farmers the men would leave to "do the chores" around five PM. In other words they went to tend their livestock. Then about 6:00 PM we had a rather lavish cold plate. More of the same until midnight when we had more lunch and the day ended. It was a complete day of feasting.

     Once I left the family so that I wasn't able to be home for festivities, I had to try something different. So I was introduced to the New Year's Eve party with dining and dancing and drinking lots of "pop."

    Now the New Year's Eve that changed my life happened rather innocently. There was nothing earth shattering. There was no epiphany. There were no great resolutions. I needed somebody to take to the New Year's Eve party. I tried to phone a certain nurse but I guess she was on shift and I couldn't reach her. My friend was in the same boat. We were moaning about this to a public health nurse who lived in our building. She said, "I'll see what I can do for you guys". Now Merle had a wicked sense of humor. she would set these up as blind dates. We didn't know who we were going to end up with. If it was somebody we really didn't want we were ready to run out the door. We you guessed it. Merle got the girl I had been trying to phone.

    Now the rest of the story is that the nurse I took to the party became my wife! So New Year's Eve 1964 was the first date I had with my wife. That certainly changed my life forever..