Auld lang syne, indeed. Old acquaintance be ne’er forgot around here; it’s in the nature of the writer’s life that the past is recurrently being "brought to mind." Rummaging around in my archives, for example, I came across a yellowing manuscript containing the following true story, concerning myself and a woman I was keeping time with back in 1978. She lived in Boston then, while I was based here in Stapleton, so we traveled back and forth every few weeks to visit each other. Drafted on a shuttle flight coming back from Boston a day or so after New Year’s, this was the very first piece I wrote in 1979. It’s never been published, but it seems a fitting way to close out this past year and ring in the new. -- A. D. C.

*

The champagne cork was not about to go back into the bottle. That was clear.

We’d decided to do New Year’s right. None of your cheap champagnes for once; we’d gone out and spent more than eight bucks for the bubbly with which to toast the year. Barb and I being frugal types -- with good reason, our incomes hovering as they then did somewhere around the U.S. government’s marginal poverty demarcation line -- this was our attempt at a class act.

As a gesture of major decadence, it couldn’t really hold a candle to the night before. Unbeknownst to me, Barb had made secret arrangements with an old friend or hers who, at the ripe old age of thirty, managed one of the oldest and classiest hotels in Beantown. I thought we were just going to a small dinner on the house. It turned into a six-course, two-wine feast; he was a gourmet chef himself, and had written the menu for the hotel’s restaurant. Then coffee and liqueurs. Then to the bar for some brandy, and a quick listen to jazz immortal Teddy Wilson, who was the house pianist. (Imagine being able to sit across the piano from Artur Rubinstein and you’ll have some sense of how that felt to a lifelong jazzaholic.)

Then this sweet and charming man -- who would have been all of that even if none of this had happened -- took us on a brief tour of the hotel. He even let us take a peek at a suite named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence whose name is a nickname for signatures -– the very lap of luxury, two bathrooms, two color tv sets, an enormous bed, a sitting room with leather chairs and sofas, a kitchenette, a dining table that seated twelve . . . and then he dropped the keys into my hand and said he’d meet us for brunch the next morning.

That was the night before New Year’s Eve. Then, for something completely different, we had New Year’s Eve dinner with some friends who were boat-sitting for the winter on an old sport-fishing hulk that was moored in Boston Harbor. Small, funky, creaky -- a complete turnabout and no less amazing. We talked and laughed and ingested delicious home-made spaghetti and salad and wine and other substances controlled and uncontrolled while the tide came in. Finally, at about 11 p.m., already looped and very silly, we wended our way home to Barb's Cambridge apartment, turned the tube on to Times Square and found Guy Lombardo’s son, on electric guitar, striving valiantly to get the Royal Canadians to rock out . . .

Ah, yes -- the cork. Well, you know, when you buy a bottle of champagne like that (more than eight bucks, I mean!) you get a real cork. Not one of those molded plastic jobbies with the ridges that don’t change their shape, but the genuine article -- the kind that grew on Ferdinand the bull’s tree. And when you set one of those free from the glass where it’s been encased, it has no intention of ever returning. Force won’t do it, and cutting it down defeats the whole purpose while simultaneously jeopardizing your fingertips.

So, having thought the whole thing through, I decided to solve the problem another way. (What was the problem? To keep the champagne from going flat, of course.) It didn’t have to be a long-term solution, I knew, since we’d certainly kill the bottle that night. Just enough to keep most of the bubbles in until we drank it up.

I went to the cupboard, got a piece of plastic wrap, folded it over and over until it made a small thick square, placed it over the mouth of the bottle, took the wire dingus that had held the cork in, slipped it back on, and tightened it up until it gripped the plastic wrap and held it on firmly. Voila!

I picked up my glass. Barb walked in, took a look at the bottle, and said, "That’s not an airtight seal. We should get the cork back in."

Patiently, if tipsily, I retraced for her the entire chain of logic that had brought me to the course of action I’d taken. She was forced to agree, and we started laughing. Then this voice came from somewhere inside of me and said, "Life is too short for us to be second-guessing each other. Let’s just ride with each other’s decisions and learn from the right ones along with the wrong ones."

We both stopped laughing. "Where did that come from?" Barb asked. "Was that you?" "I don’t know," I answered, and it was true. "Write it down," she ordered; "I want to pin it up right there on my bulletin board where I can see it every day." So I did, and she did, and she could, and there it was: a quotation from Chairperson Al for l979. Then we watched the ball come down and got back into the bubbly. It was full of fizz to the last drop.

*

(Postscript: Barb ended up moving down from Boston and living with me and my son here in Stapleton for several years – then headed across the water to Manhattan, where she’s lived ever since, pursuing her work as a free-lance photographer. We’re still in touch, and still good friends.

Just a few years ago, another woman with whom I was briefly involved taught me the smartest champagne trick ever: just stick the handle of a silver or silver-plated fork down into the neck of any open bottle of champagne or sparkling wine, and it’ll keep the fizz in for a good long while – even overnight, so you can use the hair of the dog to make mimosas for brunch on New Year’s Day. I’ve no idea why this works; let me know if you can figure it out. It ain’t rocket science, to be sure, but as far as I’m concerned it’s magic.

Everything else notwithstanding, these remain "days of miracle and wonder," as Paul Simon sings. My holiday good wishes to every reader of this column; may 1998 treat us all well.)