My Jack Finney Moment- A New Year's Resolution

What exactly is it about the imminent arrival of a new year that inspires edginess all around? Resolutions designed to keep the unknown at bay- a sort of bargain with the vagaries of the future? The uncertainty of it all was most evident at the turn of the millennium, with its Y2K predictions of planes falling from the sky and power grids shutting off at the very moment of the Great Twenty-first Century Computer Glitch; and so here are some thoughts on that time that still resonates.

1999 

Central Park on the afternoon of the eve of the last day of the second millennium was where I wanted to be. I had chosen this as the last memorable place wherein to plant my twentieth century footsteps.

I entered the park at 81^st and Central Park West and headed east. The afternoon of December 31^st seemed more autumn than winter with fewer leaves and a light scrim of a fog. Sunlight fell on lawns in gold sepia shades reminiscent of the nineteenth century as seen in photographs. I stepped purposefully, taking in the landscape and noticing that the park seemed near empty. This scene would have been natural after dawn but appeared anachronistic at two in the afternoon. In some strange way the lack of crowds did not seem unusual but felt almost familiar. I soon realized I was in momentary flight to the 1950’s where there were fewer people, a significant lack of information and more patches of treetops and sky. Jack Finney’s classic about Central Park as eternal vehicle for time travel popped up. Perhaps his insane, fantastical theory really worked! Think hard enough in the right setting and there you were somewhere in the imagined past, interacting with it, drinking it in with your senses and not just your reading mind. . . . I was far enough into the park so that traffic and cars were no longer visible or audible and it could easily have been half a century back. I slowed my walk, reluctant to leave the scene. Romeo and Juliet embraced in front of the Delacorte and kept company with the ghosts of riveting Shakespearean heroes and a classical pas de deux, acted and danced by the best of them at the free performances of Papp’s cozy outdoor stage, under stars, moon and occasionally rain. The castle looked peaceful across its newly refurbished lake, serene, timeless, perfectly placed. These were the pictures of the twentieth century I wanted to keep. 

I exited the park at the museum, climbed the stairs and spent a few minutes gazing at the angel tree. Back home, safe in my apartment with the long, expectant night of an unknown millennium ahead, I made my first resolution. Not usually given to flights of self-improvement fancy or making promises I may not keep, I vowed only to do as much laundry as possible before midnight in case of a Y2K blowout. This was my resolve.  If it was back to the stone ages then it would be with snowy white t-shirts. When I arrived at the basement, washing in tow, I discovered that other people had come to the same idea; the laundry room was jumping- it was the happening place. There was a convivial feeling, not the competitive machine-grabbing air that sometimes prevails during peak hours. I talked with neighbors I had only passed in the halls when everyone was too occupied, or stressed, or hurried to make conversation. There was a feeling of community as the machines pounded and lurched away, cleansing us for the next two thousand years.

Later that night Dick Clark, guru of an earlier, simpler, 1950’s media encounter viewed through smaller, fuzzier screens helped lead us through another rite of passage with his retro, weirdly unchanging Dorian Gray-ish demeanor. The New Year came and went and flashed its pictures-  spectacular global fireworks, mountains of confetti in Times Square, helicopters circling above, an entire police force below, people giddily sporting silly, oversized “2000” eyeglass frames and nothing much else out of the ordinary. Later that night a few car alarms went off, as they usually do on New Year’s Eve, and as I wrote about it I had to stop myself from unconsciously trying to replicate the studied folksiness of the narrator from Our Town. When it became evident the world was still way too much with us, it was comforting to realize that during this awe-inspiring transition to the next thousand calendar years-or perhaps the next twelve months- whatever future sci-fi transformations or earthbound boom and bust experiences lie ahead, at least for a week or so I would not have to worry about doing the wash.

I know, I know-  it was not all that earth shaking. . . .