My first New Year's Eve ball reminded me a lot of a teen sock hop, but crowded with adults who didn't take off their shoes.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't so much like a sock hop. It was a lot like a dance. Band, booze, banter, that kind of stuff. I think Nancy and I went to our first one together in Chamberlain when we both were home from college for the holidays. I'm pretty sure we never went when we were still in high school because, well, the New Year's Eve ball at Chamberlain was for adults, and we weren't quite there in high school, although in my day, a kid could buy beer at age 18.
I put those "B'' words -- band, booze and banter -- together, but I could have added "buss,'' which is an old-time word for kiss. A lot of that went on as the clock ticked down to the midnight hour. Folks who barely knew each other were locking lips like long-lost lovers. I guess that's all right, although I know from witnessing the moment of midnight from the stage of a dance hall as part of a band years later that some of that bussing led to some fussed-up feelings.
That may have been because of another definition of "buss.'' I Googled the term before I put it in this column and found that the definition of "kiss'' is called "archaic informal,'' which means not hip. The other definition, one I discovered in something called the Urban Dictionary, says:
"Buss is a term used in ... the Hawaiian Islands to describe the state of being high/drunk out of your mind. Being 'buss' or 'bus' relates to being drunk/high for the reason that, if one is 'bus/buss,' they must use a bus or other reliable form of transportation to get home.''
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The Urban Dictionary gives this example: "Ho, brah, you buss already?''
Um, yeah. That isn't something you heard around the Chamberlain Armory during a New Year's Eve ball.
When Nancy and I used to go out on New Year's Eve, we had to stick around until midnight to welcome in the New Year and all that good stuff. As we grew more mature (read: "older'') we were less interested in welcoming in the new year in a crowd of noisy folks, and we began to observe midnight and the change of years from the comfort of our family room with our old pal, Dick Clark.
Then I went and joined a dance band (The Sensational Standbys. You've heard of them, I'm sure. We developed a pretty solid reputation across a wide swath of Pierre and Fort Pierre.) and we started booking jobs on New Year's Eve. Those were pretty easy gigs, because what with all the bussing and folks being "buss already, brah,'' we could play most any tune and the crowd was festive. The only pressure was to stop the music in time for a countdown to midnight, which meant our bass player had to shout over the crowd to make sure everyone knew his watch was the official timepiece of the New Year. He had the voice to do it, too.
We'd stop whatever song we had going, the bass player would count down the last seconds, and everyone would shout Happy New Year at the top of their lungs. While people bussed, we'd strike up "Auld Lang Syne'' and repeat it about 15 times as we waited for the crowd to head for the exits so that we could head there, too.
I haven't played a New Year's Eve gig for most of 20 years. After the band broke up, I stayed home with Nancy and whichever kids might be around on the holiday.
Recently, it's been just the two of us, with a fire, some movie classics, maybe popcorn and sodas. As the years have passed, we've been hard-pressed to last until midnight. A couple of times we tuned in an East Coast station to catch a midnight celebration an hour early. Lately, we haven't even tried.
If the clock hits 10:30 p.m. and we're tired, we turn in. The New Year shows up with us or without us.
