Caution: This story contains language, nudity, and fireworks!
With another new year knocking on our door again, it only makes sense to bring back a New Year’s Eve that ranks up there with some of our best. It was December 1999 and we were planning for one heck of a New Year’s Eve party. 2000 was just around the corner. I decided to make a trip up to Wisconsin and bring home some fireworks, the really good ones. I bought a lot. The ones that go up high in the air and explode into wonderful patterns are known as displays. I bought a lot of displays and loaded up the car for the illegal drive back home into Illinois.
Christmas that year was nice, but with it just behind us, we were down to one week left and there was still a lot that needed to be done for the party. I dropped in at the local rental store in town and reserved a foosball table for our guests. We made a huge investment at the local liquor store and stocked the bar in our den. We owned a ping pong/pool table combo and we had a dart board mounted to a wall of cork. We were going to be able to entertain just fine. My inhouse music system was awesome and I had created a New Year’s Eve playlist to keep the party going all night. And in 1999, our parties were almost always going all night.
New Year’s Eve landed on a Friday that year and that was just great for all of us young working lads & laddies. The kitchen was in full swing by the time the first guests arrived thanks to Carrie’s sister Teresa who catered the party. We had invited 60 guests. I had a big roast that I was carving under a heat lamp. People were arriving with dishes to share. Soon the dining room table was full of food and the living room was full of guests. Hour after hour on the way to midnight, the celebration and music increased. We had a table set up just for champagne and by 11:30pm Carrie was starting to fill tulip glasses.
The fireworks were going to be the big event kicking off at precisely 12am. I had installed two extra large speakers outside up on the second deck of our house for blasting music to my timed displays. The river was frozen (a frozen river is an excellent place to launch fireworks because you get the reflection on the ice). Winter had arrived and it was a very cold night. People had to bundle up to come out into our backyard to watch the fireworks being launched from just beyond our pier. I had mounted the firework displays on three wooden pallets. At the stroke of midnight. REM’s “It’s the End of the World” and my first display went off! The crowd cheered to the aerial entertainment, song after song and display after display. Then it was done. Everyone started back to the house to warm up.
As I turned back to go in I could see our wonderful river house was fully lit and I could see into a lot of it. Rooms warmly lit with guests wandering around, talking with friends old & new, sipping on beverages, and picking at food. Many were making their way to the den. I had help at the bar and we got drinks reloaded. The music inside the house went up. Dancing started. The next thing I know, it was 3am and some guests were leaving, but there were still a lot of people here. I stepped out on the back porch probably to have a cigarette. I’m pretty sure I was smoking at that time. There were other addicts out there with me. We convinced ourselves that the smoke was worth enduring the deep cold.
“What the heck?!!” I exclaimed. Inside the house running from room to room was my younger brother. He was naked. I saw him in the den, then the living room, then the kitchen and then down the hall. He took a sharp left into the hallway door and then I heard a female scream. He had burst into an occupied bathroom and found one of our guests on the toilet. He was out of the bathroom. I ran into the house and caught up to him. “Charlie, what are you doing?” “I have to pee! I have to pee!! I was upstairs in bed and woke up. I have to pee!!!” he said in pain though I wondered if he was fully awake. “For heaven’s sake, there is a bathroom upstairs!” I declared. “Oh, sorry. Should I apologize?” “I think you should go upstairs and go to the bathroom and then back to bed!” And then he was gone.
CRASH!!! Someone had dropped a wine glass somewhere. I found the mess in the den by the pool table. It was a wine glass. Some guests were playing a fine game of pool when the pool stick hit the glass. I noticed a large wild crowd had gathered around the foosball table. The game was heating up. I cleaned up the broken glass. Then there was banging up by the kitchen. Someone had locked themselves in the bathroom and people were lining up to use it. We had two pregnant women in attendance and they were first in line and did not care for the delay of the facilities. I had to pick the lock to get the door open. My guest (I will not name her) was slurring. We like to say in our household, “You didn’t have too much to drink, you just haven’t eaten enough”, she looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week. The pregnant women were going to have to wait a little longer while Teresa got the bathroom cleaned up. She insisted.
It was approaching 5am and I was at the bar with my wife and the last of our troops destined to see the sun rise for the first time in our new millennium. The majority of the party had dispersed and we were down to the last eight or nine. The music had slid into a soft jazzy theme with lazy saxophones. My brother was dressed and back. At 6am, I started talking about making breakfast for anyone who was interested. By 7am I was in the kitchen making omelets, bacon, bagels, coffee, and more. I looked out over our great living room before me. It was destroyed by a serious party. It would take hours to clean up. Something to worry about tomorrow. It was 10 am and our remaining guests were leaving. But our boating neighbors started showing up looking for Bloody Marys and beer chasers. It was noon and I was so tired I couldn’t see straight. Carrie and I called the morning party to a close and went upstairs for some much needed sleep. As we climbed into bed, our cats protested the outrage that they had suffered through. We could make it up to them tomorrow.
Time to rest… nighty-night, sleep tight. Happy New Year!
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