New Year's Eve ala Palmdale RV Resort

“The Office” is the building at the center of Palmdale. It consists of a small lobby with the business office to the right. On the other side is a small library with a jigsaw puzzle on a table, shelves of books and the mail boxes. A short hallway leads to the “poker room” on one side and the rec room to the left. The poker room is somewhat of a mystery. It appears to be the inner sanctum for men playing serious card games. One woman reported being yelled at when she attempted to return her seat cushion to the cushion cabinet that is in the back of the room. I have never seen anything taking place there any of the times in which I have picked up or returned a seat cushion. The rec room is the heart of the park. It resembles fellowship halls that exist in most churches. About 20 rectangular tables with chairs are set up down both sides of the room with a wide center aisle that provides enough room for 30 couples to comfortably dance. A large kitchen to the side has the equipment needed to prepare and serve large groups. Having never actually been in the kitchen, I can’t say much about it. On one end of the room is a stage with a big screen television on the wall and a screen that can be pulled down to project movies. The other end of the room has a lighted Christmas tree that continuously revolves next to the bingo board. Presumably, the tree will be taken down soon. This room provides the setting for line dancing, aerobics, bingo games, card games, potlucks, regular movie showings, the holiday celebrations and whatever else takes place. On one wall is a large white board on with the regular weekly schedule. The windows at the back of the building overlook a large swimming pool, a hot tub, shuffle board and a large barbeque grill. So far we haven’t had many activities centered there. I hope that changes when we get some warm sunny days.

How do you keep a bunch of old people awake and ready to welcome in the new year complete with party hats, noise makers and champagne at midnight. When the evening started I could not imagine that we would still be there let alone our 80+ year old friends, but we were all there along with about 80 out of the 120 or so that started the evening. The secret was our entertainment for the night, a man named Ralph Kuster. He appeared to be in his late 50’s. He is a pretty good singer and had a stereo system in which he played recorded music to accompany his voice with periods of time when he functioned as a dee-jay. He started singing ballads at about 6:30 PM shortly and continued until 1:00 AM. Dinner was served at 6:30 with a salad we served ourselves. After the salad, plates were assembled in the kitchen and we each went to the window to pick up our meal, chicken cordon bleu, twice baked potato and mixed vegetables. After the tables were mostly cleared we were served a piece of angel food cake with raspberry sauce, fresh strawberries, blueberries with whipped cream. When dinner was finished, Mr. Kuster took a short break and put on some recorded music to dance to. He had a mixture of old rock and roll along with country. He changed to a red dinner jacket and continued himself singing some of the time. We have some pretty good dancers who stay here and I love watching old couples who have danced together for years and are good at it. I am a little jealous because I wish we could do that. We did join them for several dances. At about 10:30, Don suggested that we might go home. Thank goodness I told him I wanted to stay a little longer. Eventually, he decided to make the treacherous walk through huge puddles in cold rain to get some beer for himself and our friend Ray. I managed to make one bottle of wine last most of the night even sharing a couple of glasses. At about that time our entertainment made some changes – I think to keep us all awake. He had a variety of dance contests in which he selected a winning couple for a prize. He gave our old friends their choice of a CD for being married the longest – 63 years. They are still “full-timing” spending half the year here and the other half up in northern Minnesota. Later our host had a twist contest – which I joined but didn’t win. I didn’t see the winner but Don said she was the most intoxicated. It could be that she was least inhibited though I didn’t see very much intoxication or inhibition in anyone. I thought the winner should have been the woman next to me who twisted like she was still 16 years old. She could “go round and around and up and down and go again…like she did last summer.” Later our host switched to an Elvis jacket and came out into the audience and sang to different women who played their part wonderfully making everyone laugh and before you knew it a table full of hats and noisemakers appeared and we all picked out whatever we wanted. Champagne came out and was in the process of being distributed when the countdown to 2015 commenced. Everyone made blew their horns, rattled their noise-makers, hugged, kissed and celebrated another year in which to play.

I think here we can play with the innocence of children but with the wisdom from having lived a long time. That is what makes these kinds of communities special. It feels like a safe place where a person can just be themselves. I hadn’t expected this.