Published Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:53 AM
Updated Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:54 AM
It turned out to be one of the most rocking parties Fort Bragg had ever seen.
Not too long ago, my mom and her best friend – known to all as Auntie Fran – were holding forth one evening when the infamous ’54 Christmas Party came up in the rotation of tall tales from years past.
Most people who know my mom know what a gracious, lovely, polished hostess she is. Auntie Fran is the same way. Either of them can put on elegant memorable affairs for hundreds at the drop of a hat. But back in the day, when they were new brides of up-and-coming second lieutenants, well, let’s just say they were a bit unschooled.
For anyone who has partaken of the delights of my mother’s table in the past forty or so years, the very idea that there was ever a time when she could not cook is inconceivable. But before she married Dad, she had not ever so much as boiled water in her life.
My dad, of course, found humor in every situation, including starvation. One evening, he took a gander at what Mom had put on the table and remarked, “Sweetie, you must worship the very ground I walk on.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Every night you bring me another burnt offering.”
Ducking flying objects during those first years of marriage probably helped save his life in Korea and Vietnam a few years later.
Despite their profound lack of domestic skills, Dad and Auntie Fran’s husband, Uncle Ed, decided that these two beautiful flowers of the south could handle a cocktail party. A little punch, a few hors d’eourves, and they’d be golden.
The day of the party, Mom and Auntie Fran noticed the Christmas tree. Mom had set it up a couple of weeks before but never watered it. It hunkered in the corner, ten feet tall against an eight-foot ceiling, not a single needle on it, randomly festooned with these frayed fuzzy Christmas balls. They couldn’t stop laughing at it.
Then there was the food. Mom had bought this monstrous frozen ham, maybe 25 pounds, but didn’t try to cook it until the day of the party. So as this frozen pork boulder slowly burned – ranging from candle grease black outside to cold rubbery pink inside – it dripped ham grease and water onto hot oven coils, causing this noxious ham-funk cloud to envelop the entire building. Most mustard gas attacks don’t produce fogs that thick or last that long.
By party time, the entire apartment complex smelled like the ghost of Porky Pig had just enjoyed a high colonic atop the nearest radiator.
The apartment itself was about the size of a large hall closet yet some 250 soldiers and their spouses were invited to the party.
Meanwhile, as the ham squatted truculently in the oven, Mom and Auntie Fran busily cut tiny squares of cheese and adorned them with cocktail olives. This took about five minutes per square, so by party time they had almost a dinner plate and a half of these things. This was all the food they planned to serve.
Beverages? Sure. They had borrowed someone’s sterling punchbowl and mixed up a single batch of champagne fruit punch, figuring so many servings per bottle, so many drinks per guest. The problem was, they were figuring on serving three little cups of this wimpy, high tea punch to a bunch of guys who willingly jumped out of airplanes every day. Within ten minutes the punch bowl was empty. And the soldiers, including the regimental commander – if one can excuse a Navy quote in an Army story – “had not yet begun to fight,” as it were.
By now all liquor stores were closed. Dad and Uncle Ed frantically raided liquor cabinets all over the apartment complex to keep that punch bowl full, with innovative, often ghastly results. At one point they served a tasty concoction mixed from two half-gallons of bourbon, what was left of three ice trays and a package of frozen strawberries.
The guests kept on coming. And drinking. And staying. At the height of the party Dad could have poured Vitalis in the punchbowl and they wouldn’t have known or cared.
In spite of everything, everyone had a blast, especially the regimental commander, who drank everyone under the table except his wife. They were the last to leave.
No one ate the ham, though. Not even severely inebriated paratroopers would do that.