Chinook
by George Hosier II - January 8, 2007

New Year’s Revolutions

Another year is upon us. I’ve noticed that people have many fascinating ways of celebrating the New Year. Sauerkraut and pork is the requisite New Year’s Eve meal among certain Americans of German descent. In Cambodia, celebrants put on new clothes and wage a massive water battle. The king of Swaziland eats part of a sacred pumpkin and throws the leftovers to his warriors. Some people get sloshed until they puke their guts out and pass out in the chip dip on New Year’s Eve. Others wear ridiculous paper hats, blow noisemakers, and sing an unintelligible song in an obsolete Scottish dialect.

Then there are the diehards whose entire year is ruined if they don’t have a chance to usher in the New Year by discharging a box of shotgun shells into the air. Personally, I find that to be a childish and dangerous practice. Why can’t people understand that a slug or a shower of birdshot landing on one of their reveling companions’ head would turn a party into a tragedy? I, long ago, resorted to a safer technique. Now I only shoot high-powered hunting rifles into the air. That way, when the spent bullet surrenders to the persistent tug of gravity, it will land far away on some other crowd of merrymaking strangers and never disrupt my festivities.

One of America’s favorite traditions is to gather around the town square and watch something drop on the stroke of midnight. I think this originated in New York with the dropping of the ball in Times Square. The practice has spread across the country. For instance, Atlantans drop a peach, and Brasstown North Carolinians drop an opossum. However, Pennsylvania seems to be the state that goes craziest with the drop concept. The capital city, Harrisburg, drops a strawberry from the Harrisburg Hilton. In Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, the townsfolk watch a giant dill pickle drop. Lebanon drops a bologna, York drops a white rose, Falmouth drops a goat, Lititz drops a pretzel, Frogtown drops a frog, Hummelstown drops a lollipop, Mechanicsburg drops a wrench, Duncannon drops a sled, Blain drops a cow, and New Oxford drops an antique trunk.

Back in Moose Hole, Alaska when I was a kid, we used to watch the Walrus drop. It all started on New Year’s Eve, 1982 when the Smorkstini twins dared Walrus Fahnestock to celebrate the arrival of the New Year by stripping to his under shorts, shinnying to the top of the school flagpole and quoting the Gettysburg address. I have no idea why he accepted the dare except that he was the kind of a guy who would do anything for attention.

It would have been painful enough for Walrus to hoist his fully clothed 375 pounds to the top of that pole in June, but in the buff at 20 below? We watched in horrified awe as he writhed and clawed his way upwards. As his quivering bare thighs squeezed against the stainless steel pole, a 35 mph wind snatched shrieks of agony from his blue lips, bounced them off of the school roof and slam dunked them back down his throat.

Halfway up, the shrieks subsided into thick-tongued hypothermic moans. Within a yard of the top, his fingers had contracted into a bundle of frosted rubbery appendages like wilted Slim Jim meat sticks stapled onto the end of his arm. Somehow, using his wrists and elbows he persevered. Incredibly, we watched him pull himself up onto the apex of the pole. He teetered there for a moment, clenching the brass eagle with his Fruit of the Looms and shuddering great convulsive shivers.

Then Walrus’ chin moved and a noise came out. It was a ghastly, croaking sound, garbled by any linguistic standards. It sounded sort of like he said, “Verzhgerin zab bunears zhu goarfars bravor..” Then he lurched sideways and toppled toward the ground. He probably would have broken his neck if his ankle hadn’t become entangled in the flag hoisting rope. He swung there like a pendulum until we formed a color guard and lowered him into a snowdrift with military honors. It seemed the only decent thing to do since his flesh was vividly mottled red, white, and blue.

Walrus walked funny and couldn’t use his hands for about six months after that. Unfortunately, just when he seemed to have recovered, he miscalculated the timing on a cherry bomb he was dropping down Old Man Hanley’s chimney on the Fourth of July; so altogether, his hands were not in very good shape for almost a full year. The entire time he was convalescing, Walrus could talk of nothing but his regret that he had “wussed out” on the flagpole dare. “Just wait till next year!” he vowed. No matter how hard we begged him to forget it, he was determined to conquer this challenge. Sure enough, a crowd of Mooseholians gathered at the school flagpole about a half hour before midnight, January 1, 1983 to cheer Walrus as he again disrobed and began his ascent.

That time he made it to “…kunseev din libberdee…” before he succumbed. We caught him in a cargo net and bore him back to the community hall where the women had a hot bathtub waiting for him. After that, the Walrus drop became a revered Moose Hole tradition for a dozen years or so until a grizzly ate Walrus’ foot one night at fish camp and ruined New Year’s Eve for everybody.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all New Year’s Eve traditions is the making of New Year’s Resolutions. I really don’t think people understand the definition of the word. “Resolution” is etymologically related to the word “resolve” which, according to the dictionary means “to make a firm decision; to change; determination; purpose”. From my observation, none of these definitions applies to the typical New Year’s Eve Resolution.

Every year the same people make the same resolutions: “I resolve to quit smoking.” “I resolve to lose 30 lbs.” “I resolve to finally tell my wife that her mother will have to stay in a motel from now on when she visits.” “I resolve to shoot my neighbor’s cat!”

Perhaps these well-meaning people are getting the word “resolution” confused with the word “revolution”. I’m not talking about the kind of revolution where you gather at Concord Bridge and fire your Brown Bess at some redcoats. I refer to the kind of revolution performed by your automobile tire—an endless cycle: make a resolution January 1st; break it January 5th; do the same thing all over again next year. What is the point of making a resolution that you are incapable of or unwilling to keep?

I used to get very frustrated with my inability to carry out my New Year’s Resolutions, until I realized that I was going about it all wrong. I learned to tailor my resolutions to my lifestyle, not try to change my lifestyle to live up to my resolutions. Now that I have tweaked my resolution making process, It has been years since I have experienced the slightest twinge of guilt over any broken resolutions.

To illustrate, I will share my list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2007:

1. I will eat lots of chocolate. It is a great comfort food. I will eat it in bed and at the computer keyboard. I resolve to keep a fistful in my pocket. I will permit my life to be awash in its luscious brown fat.
2. I will throw away the scale. If I want to watch my weight, I’ll wait until I can no longer see my toes, then my weight will be much easier to watch. In fact I’ll be able to use my weight for a tray table on which to rest my chocolate box while I hunt for the raspberry creams.
3. I will never change the oil in my car. It is a greasy, knuckle-barking job that robs me of dignity and quality TV remote time. When the little red light on my dashboard begins to glow and the temperature gauge pegs, I will buy another car. Until then, why worry?
4. I will not do today what I can put off until tomorrow. If I can’t put it off until tomorrow, then I will decide it is too late anyway, and forget about it. Life is to short to plan stuff.
5. I will spend less time with my family. If I give them all my time, then they will come to expect it, and I won’t have any time for myself.
6. I will stop stressing myself out at work. I will begin to consider my job description as suggested guidelines. I will remind myself that my boss’ expectations are unreasonable, and if he wants the work done a particular way, he can do it himself. I’m doing him a favor by working for him. He should feel honored that I bother to show up at all!
7. I will take up smoking. It looks cool and if I do it long enough, maybe I can talk like a frog.
8. I will never volunteer for anything. If my community or church or civic organization wants me to do something, my time is worth $25.00/hr plus a paid lunch.
9. I will be suspicious of everybody. I’m tired of being used. If someone has what I want, I will figure out a way to get it from them. If that is unsuccessful, they are of no further value to me. I resolve not to waste my time on them.
10. I will become loved, respected, rich, happy, and healthy.
Hmmm! That looks a little crass, now that I put it on paper. Maybe I’ll go back to the old style of resolutions, but instead of trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, I’ll try recognizing that I am powerless to manage my own life and humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings and to give me the power to live my life according to His will. Then maybe I can experience a truly clean slate in 2007!

 

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