It IS a new year!

The new year always brings hope, hope that we will have world peace, hope that no one in our family passes away, or gets seriously ill, and hope that all will be right.

I grew up in Napa, well really east of the City Limits, in Coombsville.  We had a modest home of just over 1,100 square feet for five people. We weren't wanting for anything.  My mother always said that as long as we had a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs and a good pair of shoes, we were doing all right.

Napa, at least our part of it, was not a big party town. We didn't have any big hotels that would host 8-course meals and a live orchestra to ring in the new year.  Yes, many people had their private parties, but that in no way was or is unusual. 
To follow, I was not a big partier, even when I left town and got to college. Most New Year Eve's, I would get together with some friends and play a board game, or just sit around and talk, or watch one of the then just four or five bowl games. (There are 37 this time around.)

I do remember one particular NYE, when a friend and I drove around just looking for rumored parties.  Finding none, who drove back towards his place.  We were on the 'little' Trancas Bridge.  A car comes careening, at a fairly high speed, onto to Silverado Trail from Monticello Road.  Thinking for sure that were going to be in the middle of an accident, we waited.  The car bounced off a power pole, settled back onto to the road way and continued on.  Probably no one was injured, but the car certainly took a beating.

Almost every time I went by that pole, I examined it.  It was more than 35 years that the scars on the pole existed.  It was replaced within the past five years or so.

Tom Ontis is a Napa ex-patriate, now living in Contra Costa County, with his wife Shelley, also from Napa and four darling and hilarious kitty cats: Daisy, Lucy, Cookie and Buster Bright Eyes III.