Now I'm sure that everybody can look back to some memorable New Year's Eve. Any variety of things can happen to make a memorable New Year's Eve compared to all the others.
The New Year's Eve of 1964 is the most memorable for me. I'd been in the Arctic for a year and a half. There were many community social activities and lots of visiting to houses and individual families. In the 1960's New Years Eve was a big celebration. Fancy dinners and dances were very popular.
Now it wasn't fun to go to an New Year's Eve party alone. I'd done that once. I wanted to go to the party and I wanted to take someone with me. I had met a girl a couple of times as she had just come in. I liked her and tried to contact her and see if she wanted to go to the New Year's Eve party with me. I phoned the nurses residence an number of times and couldn't contact her. My friend was in the same boat and we both sort of gave up.
An older nurse was a good friend of ours. We visited her one day. Merle was a very with it gal. She soon found out that we had both tried to arrange dates. She said, "I'll look after it." She did look after it. In no time we were given instructions to phone these two girls and they would be waiting for our calls. The fix was in. All arrangements were made. We were going with a large group of friends.
So 50 years ago last night was the first date I had with my wife. We always joke that we met on a blind date but that's not exactly true.
We partied until about 2:00 AM and then walked about a mile back to the nurses residence. Many other couples were there and so visiting continued until about 4:00 AM. Some people had to work the next day! So things shut down.
Anybody else out there with a special New Year's Eve?
