We had some fun today attending the Long Beach Model T Club Christmas party at Recreation Park Golf Course. Frosty was driving... Santa was a passenger. He must be resting up for later this month
70 Club members and their guests dined on steaks and chicken breast, veggies with roasted potatoes, a nice green salad and decadent chocolate moose cake.
I had a Christmas party ...I drove my car in a circle around my frozen driveway and went inside and had weenies & beanies.
I visited southern California one Christmas season and for this lifelong Noo Yawka, the experience was a little bit jarring. The juxtaposition of plastic snowmen and reindeer on front lawns that would never ever see a single snowflake definitely caught my attention. So did 75-degree, shirt-sleeve weather combined with sunset at 3PM, followed by complete darkness at 4:00. Sunbathing at the beach and hearing countless battery-powered radios playing Christmas music was also noticeable.
Then, there was New Year's Eve. On television, we watched the usual Times Square celebration and witnessed the year-changing ball drop—an event which took place several hours before the stroke of midnight in California—normal for a Los Angelite, but a little disorienting for a kid from the Big Apple.
Now, these Noo Yawk eyes have seen some unusual things in California—like bumper-to-bumper traffic that always flowed at 65 MPH, and that siren-screaming ambulance with the roof-rack and surfboard and flames painted on the side. And then there was that shopping-mall funeral home with the flashing neon sign in the window which read, "Nobody does it better!" The crowning glory was the border patrolman who pulled me over and said, "Okay, let's see your green-card, Pedro." I looked up at him with my big, brown, Italian-American eyes and said, in my best Brooklyese, "Waddya tawkin' about?" He blinked a couple of times, shook his head and wordlessly waved me on. Perhaps the unusual feel of Christmas in California was perfectly congruous considering all that other stuff.
Merry Christmas guys! My visit to the Longbeach club was one of my Model T highlights for the year.