THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 1, 1997 TAG: 9612310067
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: 93 lines
FOR SEVERAL HOURS I've been sitting before the typewriter wondering what to write about New Year's, sifting through all the stories I remember.
There are thousands of good Christmas stories drifting around out there, but one about New Year's rarely surfaces.
The only one I know is true, but I've hesitated to write about it before because the folks involved are still living. So I'm going to change the names and a few of the particulars, but it is essentially true.
Back during the Depression years of the '30s, when times were harder than a steel bolt, an open house eggnog party was essential in the Richmond neighborhood where the O'Rourke family lived.
Mr. O'Rourke was a streetcar motorman living on a street with other Irish folks in a neighborhood where the sidewalks and windowpanes were often webbed with cracks.
It was a section of the city where hard-working people did the best they could under severe hardships, wearing old clothes, saving balls of string and going without desserts so that a coin or two could be dropped into the offering basket at church.
One indulgence was an eggnog bowl at New Year's. It was custom for each family to have a bowl of nog on the dining room table for guests on that day.
Many, like the O'Rourkes, could barely afford such a luxury. The nog bowl was, well, a status symbol, before that phrase was in use.
As Maggie O'Rourke told her husband: ``George, we have to have one. Think of the children. We simply must.''
So George worked overtime during the Christmas holidays on the streetcar to pay for the ingredients: the fifth of brandy, the quart of cream and the several dozen eggs required.
In the O'Rourkes' neighborhood revelers trooped from house to house on New Year's Eve, drinking a glass of eggnog at each before moving on. On the 31st of that year, Mrs. O'Rourke had all the children up early for chores. There was furniture to be polished, eggnog glasses to be cleaned, rugs to be swept as the house was made ready for visitors.
And, of course, a marble-topped table moved from upstairs to the living room so that one leg would cover the burn hole in the carpet caused when aging Uncle Alf had dropped an ash from his cigar.
The eggnog itself was not prepared until the last moment when the children were all bathed and in their Sunday best and Mr. O'Rourke had lit the living room fire.
The flop, flop, flop of an egg beater could be heard in the kitchen as Mrs. O'Rourke - with a glass punch bowl on the kitchen table - carefully whipped the eggs into a froth, folding in the cream, then the gurgling brandy. The last step was a sprinkle of brown nutmeg, which covered the surface like tiny bits of brown tree bark in the snow.
Urging the children to ``stand back, now'' Mrs. O'Rourke carefully carried the heavy bowl and its contents to the dining-room table, covered with a cloth, placing it exactly in the center, beside a cluster of holly. Then she slid in the ladle, exactly so.
Pleased with the result, Mrs. O'Rourke smiled. She then removed her apron and climbed the stairs to her bedroom to finish dressing. She stood before a full-length mirror adjusting her skirts when her daughter Anne rushed into the room.
``Come quick, Mama,'' Anne said.
She quickly followed her daughter to the dining room where her youngest daughter stood staring frozen beside the punch bowl with her hand over her mouth.
Mrs. O'Rourke first thought the small gray shape near the sunken ladle was a scrap of cloth.
But as she leaned over for a closer inspection her heart sank. It was not a scrap of cloth floating in the creamy whiteness of the 'nog but the stilled, partially submerged body of a gray mouse.
Guests would be ringing the doorbell at any moment, and the punch was ruined. And no more brandy, eggs or cream to be had.
``What are we going to do, Mama?'' Anne asked.
``I'm going to pray,'' her mother replied.
``Pray?''
``Yes, pray nobody finds out,'' Mrs. O'Rourke said, reaching into the bowl and removing the drowned mouse by its tail, carrying it to the kitchen and dropping it into the garbage pail. Then she cautioned her husband not to drink any of the 'nog, telling him she'd explain later.
No mention was made of the mouse when the guests arrived wishing the household greetings for the new year. Mrs. O'Rourke smiled sweetly as she poured every guest a glass of the 'nog. The guests pronounced it delicious.
``Oh, do have another,'' she urged, graciously. And they did.
Oddly, none of the guests complained of illness next day. Mrs. O'Rourke said it was tribute to the splendid medicinal quality of the blessed brandy.
To this day the O'Rourkes' children go over that story for the benefit of their grandchildren, laughing at the recollection until tears roll down their cheeks. Their former embarrassment had been transformed over time into a family treasure.
Well, that's the story. As you begin 1997, I hope all your problems work out just as well. ILLUSTRATION: Cartoon
JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot