As I chill at home with my wife waiting for the change in the day, my thoughts are back on a New Years past.
It was when my brother, who was dating, invited me and my friends, early college students who weren't dating at the time, to a New Year's house party.
Jim, Ed and I got into our best "frat boy" plaid and corduroy digs, and selected our favorite LP albums to take to the party -- much like we did when we were going to high school classmates soirees. To set the stage, one has to understand that in the late post-graduation 1960s two things dominated our lives -- getting through our first years of college, hoping for a "girlfriend" and collecting our favorite music on vinyl LP albums -- the music and albums a tool for attracting a girlfriend.
I was the designated driver, taking my "new" white 1966 Corvair packed with four people so my brother could meet his date, and we could party with the rest of the group -- maybe dancing a bit with some single women and remising among ourselves about the year past. No matter what we did, it was better than what we had planned before the invitation to the party.
When we got there, my brother greeted his date, who introduced us to her friends -- a teen aged married couple who rented the second story flat where the party was located, and their circle of friends, a group of people largely dressed in black tones and leather, who wore Blues Brothers fedoras indoors before there was a Saturday Night Live for the Ackroyd / Belushi act. The meeting was a distinct reflection of what Detroiters term as the separate societies classified as West Siders (us) and East Siders (them) -- a akin to the meeting of touch football aficionados at a motorcycle gang club house.
While we pushed shoulder to shoulder into the crowded front room, the door opened and we were shoved deeper into the room as a rather heavy bruiser and his posse pushed into the room. He apparently had been invited by the husband in the young couple, and apparently had been tilting a few drinks for hours before getting there -- the greeting routine lacking in a grace as he tried to maintain his balance and his acquaintances stepped back to avoid having him fall on them.
This took place while Jim, Ed and I huddled in a corner by the record player and my brother wandered off with his date, who apparently was a friend of the bride.
As we maintained an ever shrinking perimeter, Ed decided to flirt with one of the single girls in the room. His approach to her drew stares from the black-garbed guys and added attention to the three odd-ones out in the crowd.
Then, someone produced a bottle of liquor, and the bruiser lead the way guzzling what he could before passing it along to his compatriots. The party got louder and more boisterous until the bride, who was dressed in discrete party clothes started crying behind her horn rimmed glasses.
The groom, taking note of his young wife's distress, tried grabbing the bottle at the same time the bruiser was gripping it. In seconds, words were exchanged, and the groom started pushing at the bruiser, reminding him of who's house he was in and pointing to his distraught wife.
The bruiser pushed back, and a fist flailed in the crowd. While we watched mouths agape, one fist caught a chin, and the target fell on the coffee table in the center of the room, collapsing it in a jumble of lumber.
It was at that point we decided discretion being the better part of valor, to edge our way toward the stairs and back in the street to the safety of my car. My brother paid his respects to his date and her friend and we moved to the street where I tried to figure out how to get the car out of a tight parking spot on the snowy street. It was at that point, Jim said, "Oh, shit! I left my records." We debated and he decided he'd return to the room by himself, quietly collecting his records and returning to the car while we waited.
He disappeared in the front door while we watched.
After what seemed like an eternity while my brother, Ed and I debated whether we should venture back into the flat to find him, Jim appeared at the door proceeding down the long front steps toward the street level. He was followed at a small distance the bruiser apparently recharged and steadied by the adrenalin of the confrontation trailed by the groom and rest of the people from the party. It was at that point we realized we had changed from innocent bystanders to the target of the drunken fury.
As Jim squirmed into the rear seat of the Corvair, no easy task even when planned ahead of time, he said, "Let's get out of here" as the group approached the car. It was at that time Ed, apparently had taken more than a few hits off of the bottle (or bottles) that were being passed around to get into the "party mood" rolled down the window and shouted a friendly, "Hey guys!"
While Jim struggled to get the window closed, the bruiser started beating on the car while the others, lead by the groom, began pulling at the doors to get us out of the front seat and into the street. I started to slip, but was saved by clutching the steering wheel and the lap belt that kept me in the seat.
Our only defense was to get out of there as fast as the car could move -- engine whining, gear shift slamming, wheels spinning and edging forward and back with inches to spare in the foot or so space left between the bumpers of my car and the ones in front and back.
In what seemed like another eternity, the front bumper cleared the rear of the car in front and I floored the accelerator to pull away from the curb, spinning slush at the bruiser and his friends who chased us down the street.
The ride home found us with a new adventure to regale each other for the hour it took to get from the East Side to our homes on the West Side. This was one evening when we didn't end the outing with a visit to a drive in for a burger and shake -- we were content to just get to the safety of our neighborhoods.
After a long night of rest, I went out to inspect the car and found little damage for all the noise of the beating it, and we took. The one casualty I did find was a watch with the band broken on the floor between the driver's seat and the door. At first, I felt bad for whoever lost the watch, then considered "I earned this" and got the band replaced.
That watch lasted me through the rest of my college career, I suspect a place where it never would have visited before that night and safe from a place I never wanted to visit after that night.
