Happy New Year?

The holidays were different that year. We were a small family. Most holiday dinners growing up were spent with our next door neighbors. It was easier that way. My father didn't talk to his brothers most of the time. My Mom had no brothers or sisters and had lost both her parents by the time she was 35. But she did have an Aunt...Aunt Alice. More about her later...but for now, she, my father and brother came to California for Christmas.

Before Disneyland became a destination point for traveling family holiday celebrations, the very best time to visit was on Christmas Eve. The park was decorated and, even better... deserted. That Christmas Eve my brother, great Aunt Alice and I spent breezing onto every "E" ticket ride we could find before heading back to my apartment in Toluca Lake to pick up Big Joe for dinner at the Brown Derby.

The building housing the Brown Derby restaurant really did look like a big brown derby hat. A longtime famous hang-out, for both stars and "wanna be's", you could almost hear what the walls had to say. In 1977 there were more than the occasional celebrity sitings. As we ordered cocktails it became quite apparent this was not Big Joe's. He had spent the afternoon throwing a pity party in his hotel room that included a few Dewar's and soda, which was somewhat ironic because he and my Mom had been very unhappy during the last years of their marriage.

Without going into the dynamics of our family, suffice it to say Emmy was definitely the hub of our wheel. Without her, the three "spokes" were on a very bumpy path. Big Joe and I were best together when we weren't. Phone conversations had become ominously annoying over the past months without Emmy to diffuse the many unresolved issues between us. I had decided to just "go with the flow" during this trip and let him annoy without restraint. That night he was in rare form. Did I mention he was a self employed, Italian-German attorney? If not, perhaps that may shed some light on his personality. Always right...about everything. That night at the Brown Derby he decided the New York steak he'd ordered was not as advertised. Insisting it was actually a sirloin he demanded to go into the kitchen, bellowing "I'm a butcher...I know my meat", as my brother, Aunt Alice and I chewed in embarrassed silence.

When the Manager came over with our check while we were still eating our Cobb salads, it was apparently time to pull the plug on this fiasco of an evening.

When we got into the car with me as the designated driver, my father burst into tears.

Thinking perhaps I had misread the depth of his feelings for Emmy, I patted his hand and said "I know, we miss her, too".

He sobbed, "I don't have any friends. She's the one everybody liked".

I couldn't argue with that.

Merry Christmas!