It was the 1960s and music was blaring from the Zenith Hi-Fi. My parents were having another party! It might have been their party, but it was sheer entertainment for us children to watch them get ready before the doorbell rang. The recreation room was decorated with balloons and crepe paper (it sounds kind of tacky, but it really wasn’t for some reason) and my father would dance with each of us girls before everyone arrived. We learned to dance the foxtrot while we were still in grade school! Then, my mother would swish into our rooms to show my sisters and me her dress before she went downstairs to greet their guests. I vividly remember how beautiful she looked in a dress that was aqua chiffon with a crinoline that gave the dress “the look” along with her black high-heels, of course. I was fortunate in that my mother and father hosted these kinds of events quite often and I could hardly wait to grow up and have parties of my own.
As I look back on it, except for how the women dressed, everything was quite casual. Although, I think the men did wear ties. The drink glasses had a strip of masking tape on them with the guests’ name written in ink. Then there was the long buffet table where hot dishes and other snacks were placed. It was all very exciting listening to the sounds of the party through the heat registers in our bedrooms, and sometimes the last guest didn’t leave until 4:00 in the morning! It sounded like everyone was having a lot of fun – it was certainly loud enough. The best part came, though, when we woke up in the morning and, in our pajamas, ate and drank whatever was left from the night before. How come we didn’t get sick, I will never know! We ate “Naomi’s Chow Mein Hot Dish” (I can’t imagine how long the hot tray was disconnected) and drank the mix (Tom Moore’s Lemon Sour was our favorite) that was still on the bar. It was so much fun and still a warm memory after all these years.