Apparently at the time, neither my sister Holly nor I had a life. At least one that would include a New Year's Eve celebration that we would have chosen to attend. And so, somehow, on December 31st. 1996, we ended up with Mother in Santa Barbara.

Dinner was at the Institute, which is what we children called the retirement home into which my parents had moved when they came to the west coast. Its real name is Vista Del Monte, but my dad always called it Vista Del Morte, which turned out, in his case, to be dead on. Anyway, dinner at the institute was never one of the kid's favorite things, primarily because, although there was a rule against discussing anything medical at dinner, it was honored more in the breach than in the observance, as old Will Shakespeare said. This night however, the assemblage was overjoyed to find funny hats, New Year's hats, at their places; obviously the highlight of their week. Well, not for everyone. My sister has a picture in which all of the women and none of the men are participating in the wearing of the hats. The jollity of the occasion did little to deter tales of dreadful maladies, great discomforts, and surgical procedures. And a lot of discussion of digestive trouble was included. The food was memorable, consisting as I recall of chicken a la mush, powdered mashed potatoes with genuine artificial butter-like substance, with a lovely puree of stewed prunes for dessert. I can't remember any adult beverages, although I'm sure I must have fortified myself in some way.

The next exciting event of the evening was the drive to the theater. Mother sat in the back and couldn't see much of anything, her height and vision at the age of 86 not being conducive to navigating. The street signs in Santa Barbara are not on the corners of the intersections, but are on huge signs hung directly over the center of the streets which mother couldn't read until she was going under them and often not even then. To further exacerbate the problem a light rain was falling. She nevertheless kept up a relentless and rather cranky stream of directions. "Turn right!" she would suddenly cry out in the middle of an intersection. "No" I would answer. "TURN TURN TURN!" she would insist. "NO NO NO!" I would gently reply. Holly would calm her with a soft logical remark, such as "That's the wrong street, mother." An undertone of hysteria could be detected by the trained ear, "That will take us to Toledo, Ohio". Mother, unlike her children, did not like to be told she was wrong. And so it continued. We found the theater anyway.

The theater was the Arlington, a Santa Barbara landmark. Mission revival style, it was built in 1926, and has since been restored. In a scene reminiscent of a Fellini movie, my sister and I, an arm under each of mother's elbows, strolled past the ticket booth, through the Spanish courtyard with fountains splashing through colored lights, and into the theater.

The unreality of the scene was provided by about two thousand people, all of them clones of the Institute clan, all dressed up and all wearing funny hats, except, of course, the men, and all approaching the upcoming gala with happy anticipation. This rather bizarre spectacle should have raised the alarm. Holly and I, both mature adults, were perceived by the elderly as children and were carefully watched to be sure we didn't suddenly break loose and plunge into the fountains. Had they been spewing champagne in the traditional fashion there might have been reason to be suspicious. They were, tragically, just spewing chlorinated water. Don't ask me how I know.

The interior added to the twilight zone aspect. It is decorated to look like a Spanish village, with balconies, windows and staircases painted all around in a triumph of trompe l'Oeil. The ceiling is blue-black and covered with twinkling stars, making one feel as though they were outside in the courtyard of a villa, watching a show in the open air in Guadalajara. Or so the decorators think. I wasn't fooled for a minute.

Holly and Mother sat in the very back against the wall so that mother could rest her neck which was quite sore. There were only two seats there so I moved down to the center and got comfortable. Until others arrived and surrounded me. Cozy does not begin to describe it. And cozy was just the beginning. Somewhere in the middle of the first act of the program the very large past-middle-aged lady to my left began to rub her leg against mine. At first I thought it was just unavoidable due to the press of people all around, but when I shifted to the right, her thigh followed. Now I was not, in those days, averse, under the right conditions, to playing a little kneesy with a stranger, but she wasn't real attractive, to understate the matter, and her husband looked like a large unfriendly mobster, and anyway, the music had captured almost my full attention.

We're talking about a combination of Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music, Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians, and Xavier Cugat and his Blazing Bongos. I glanced back, occasionally, at my sister who was staring, dazed and slack-jawed at the stage, glints of impending insanity flashing from her eyes. Beside her, Mother wore a beatific smile.

When the fat lady, (not the one rubbing my leg but the one on the stage) sang to end the first act, I again twisted around to look at Holly and found her staring at me with a macabre grimace on her face, frantically gesturing with her thumb that it was time to leave. As the first act curtain fell, Holly and I scurried out of the theater, our hands once again under mother's elbows, but this time with her lifted about a foot and a half off the ground, her little legs churning madly in the misty air. She couldn't understand why we wanted to leave when there was so much more to come.

The rest of the evening is a blank, perhaps mercifully, but I have retained enough memory of the evening to have never gone out on New Year's Eve, ever again, anywhere. However, I did save my funny hat. I look kind of cute in it.

2004

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This site maintained by John Reagan and last updated January 17, 2005