Ringing in the New Year

This particular new year's memory happened while Bob and I were independent contract drivers for Mayflower. We were in Los Vegas, Nevada and had just emptied the truck and were awaiting reload instructions. We stayed the night there and somehow ( I don't remember how ) we acquired tickets for the Red Skelton ( well-known comedian of that era :)  ) midnight show. I don't know what I expected - having never been to a Los Vegas show before - but it exceeded anything I could have imagined. Not only was he hilarious but also he seemed to be enjoying the occasion as much, maybe even more than the audience. So much so that he went way past the time when a normal show would have ended. Perhaps it was because it was the last show of the night and it was New Year's Eve, but he just kept coming back for encore after encore after encore! I don't remember what time it finally wrapped up but it was definitely way above and beyond! To this day it remains the funniest and the most unique new year's celebration I can recall. ( Ask your dad, Kyle. He may remember more of the details, maybe even how we came to have the tickets! )

Comments

  1. AdminJanuary 7, 2025 at 12:56 PM

    What a great story! Thank you so much for sharing!

    I'll reciprocate with a couple of quick new year's memories. One, when I was a kid, no idea how old, I'd invited a bunch of friends over to celebrate new years and we'd pushed the trampoline up close to the house so that we could jump on and off the roof (which seemed like a normal thing to do at the time) and the idea was that at midnight we were going to bang pots and pans together to ring in the new year. But when the moment arrived I ran to the trampoline and hit my head on the crossbar holding up the porch, and I realized as I fell on to the trampoline that I'd cracked it open. Unfortunately everyone else was banging pots and pans together and jumping up and down so I just tried to hold my bleeding head until things settled down enough to get off an go inside to clean it up. I think this more or less sums up what it was like to be a kid in the 80s.

    Then a few years ago we were preparing for a new year's party here and somehow Mars went down and sliced his head open and needed stitches. Lucky for him his mother is an ER doc and some other doctor friends were headed over and brought her some supplies and she put him on the couch, sewed him up in her high heels, and by the time the party started everyone that back to normal. Hopefully that's the last of head injuries and new years :)

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