I was trying to remember the first New Year's Eve that I could remember and aside from bits and snatches, there was one in Cincinnati, Ohio in the' middle 50s. We had just moved into the first home my parents actually purchased instead of renting and they went to Michigan for New Year's Eve as my dad had been transferred and they hadn't told us yet - so why they were at the Winona Hotel in Bay City Michigan calling us was a mystery to us and a grand plan to them.
They also left me, 11 years old in the care and feeding of my "older brother" who promptly took off in the family car at every opportunity. Lucky that I could live on crackers and milk or this blog would not have been written.
That hotel - the Winona, until it burned down in 1977, sat on Water Street overlooking the Saginaw River and it
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| The Winona Hotel in flames, 1977 |
The deal was that my dad was going first to Grand Rapids for half a year and we were following him a year from that March so I was 10 and then on to Bay City after another half year. My older brother was drinking Mogan David wine from the refrigerator in the kitchen and WLW as broadcasting horror flicks...all that I remember. TW 20754 was our phone and it rang with my mom and dad on a lobby Hotel Wenona with a polka in the background pretty near midnight and that was that. I had to fib to my parents that my brother was down the block at the Drisocoll's house and they bought it.
I suppose that was the first NYE I can recall. I led a very sheltered life.