Out with the old year, in with the new as his wife rallies--unlike Michigan

On New Year’s Eve after dinner we walked over the dirt road to the Paige house in the dark, guided by our borrowed flashlight. It is only a quarter to half a mile, but it is up and down, and full of potholes, ruts and rocks.

The Paige house is the newest of the nine houses that Romulo Gomez has built in our colony down here on Santo Tomas Bay. Ralph Paige and his house guest, Al Gyving, had stopped by our house that afternoon and invited us for the evening.

Altogether there were nine people: the Paiges; the Gyvings; the Gyvings’ son, Jeff; his friend, Lena; Jeff’s teen-age daughter and her friend, and the Paiges’ granddaughter, Missy.

We talked about life as Gomez’s tenants, which is the principal topic of conversation here, and then Paige broke open the first of his eight bottles of champagne.

Paige is a jazz buff. He has a record collection and a windup phonograph. We heard “Wabash Blues” and one or two others, but the family’s real genius turned out to be the making of live music. They broke out an assortment of odd instruments, including a harmonica, spoons, a tambourine and a washboard, Jeff set the beat on his guitar, and everyone set to.

I am not a musician, but Lena forced the washboard on me and gave me three silver thimbles for my fingers.

“Those belonged to my grandmother,” she said.

I wasn’t too bad. We went through a repertory of family favorites, and wound up with “Bill Bailey.”

At 10:45 my wife and I stood up to leave, explaining that we liked to begin the New Year alone. Jeff offered to drive us back to our house in his pickup. That sounded like a good idea. It was a scary walk in the dark.

Of course Suzie, our dog, had followed us over and spent the evening wrestling with the Paige dog. I assumed she would follow the truck back to our house. But when Jeff dropped us off and headed back, Suzie did not appear.

“She’s probably back at the Paige house,” I said, “wondering where we went.”

“I’d better go get her,” my wife said.

“It’s up to you,” I said, not wanting to walk back over the road in the dark.

She pumped up a Coleman lantern and set out. The night was black. There was no moon yet, and the stars were obscured by low clouds. I stood on the porch and watched as her lantern grew smaller.

Suddenly the dog trotted up. She had merely been taking her time. I shouted after my wife, knowing it was useless in the wind and the roar of the surf. I got the other Coleman and stood on the porch swinging it back and forth like a railroad man, hoping she would turn around and see it. Her lantern grew smaller and smaller and finally she went over the top of a hill and the light vanished.

I opened the bottle of wine we had saved for New Year’s Eve and poured a glass, not being able to think of anything else I could do.

I kept glancing at my watch. The old year was slipping away. It was 12 minutes to midnight when she opened the door.

“Suzie’s here,” I told her. “She came back not three minutes after you left.”

She put her arm against the doorjamb and leaned her head against it and cried. She rarely cries. I didn’t know whether it was anger, or release of tension, or happiness.

It was not happiness. Her lamp had gone out just after she started back from the Paige house, where, of course, she had not found the dog. She had had a terrifying walk back, groping her way in the dark.

“I couldn’t have caught you,” I said weakly. I hadn’t been able to think of anything heroic to do but foolishly wave that lamp.

She shook it off in time to celebrate the New Year properly.

(We remembered another dramatic New Year’s Eve we had spent down here. We had come through the valley in a rainstorm, splashing through the swollen river several times, and finally our engine died. A Belgian couple came up behind us and helped us dry off the ignition. Drenched, we drove on to Gomez’s store and sloshed inside, hoping he had some wine. Gomez the unpredictable. Incredibly, he had a magnum of champagne, which he said he was saving just for us.)

On New Year’s Day, my wife went back to cleaning the bathroom walls. She had washed off all the smoke; now she was trying to scrape off the sticky paint.

She needed a putty knife. “Do you think you could borrow one from the Paiges?” she asked.

Glad to have a chance of making up for the previous night’s failure, I walked over to the Paige house and borrowed a putty knife, which he just happened to have.

That afternoon, while my wife worked on the bathroom walls, I listened to the Rose Bowl game on my portable radio. Somehow, on this primitive and distant landscape, the roaring of the crowd and the frenetic voices of the announcers seemed rather silly. But it was a pleasant diversion from Nero Wolfe, and I was gratified by the way Arizona State manhandled Michigan.

I also spent a good part of Saturday and Sunday listening to parts of the four National Football League playoff games.

No matter where we go, we take our culture with us.