Daniel Marsula, Post-Gazette illustrations

By L.A. Johnson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Aaaaah, New Year's Eve.

It can be a most joyous or melancholy holiday.

Thoughts of New Year's Eves past can bring a smile, smirk or grimace to one's face, a romantic flutter of remembrance or pang of regret to one's heart.

	Click photo for larger image. Related story: City won't drop the ball on New Year's, but see what others drop

Most people have enjoyed glorious New Year's Eves and endured depressingly dud-like ones, too.

Some Post-Gazette readers have been kind (or insane) enough to share with us some of their New Year's Eve tales. We couldn't fit them all in, but thanks to everyone who responded.

A sip of bubbly and pooh

Laurence "Carter" Pash fondly recalls the unbridled joy of his childhood New Year's Eves.

"I remember when New Year's Eve was a great celebration -- your parents always went out, you had friends (or stuffed animals) over for your own party, and your parents would let you have a sip of their Cold Duck!" says Mr. Pash, 41, of Oakwood.

Of course, as he matured, so did the breadth of his New Year's Eve festivities.

What happens in Minneapolis ...

On Friday, Dec. 31, 1993, Mr. Pash told his then-roommate, Pam Watson, he was taking her to a friend's house for cocktails in Moon near the airport before a party.

Since it was pre-9/11 and they could, he suggested they stop by the then-still-almost-brand-spankin' new Pittsburgh International Airport on the way, just to see what was going on.

"Let's go watch the planes take off," he told her.

She thought it odd. They were supposed to be going to a party, but then thought, "He really kind of does unusual things."

So, she went along.

With two cheap Italian hoagies and what he termed the "obligatory" New Year's Eve danish pretzel hidden in a bag, he drove her to PIT, whistling "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" theme song the whole time.

"I really didn't suspect anything," says Ms. Watson, 44.

At the airport, he told her he had two $142 round-trip airplane tickets and they were heading to ... Minneapolis.

"I thought he was crazy," she says. "Why would we go to Minneapolis?"

Still, they did. They walked around the terminal for a while.

A la Mary Richards, "She took her hat outside the Minneapolis airport and threw it up in the air," he says.

Back in the terminal, there were only two departure options and neither was Pittsburgh. One was Sault Ste. Marie -- she doesn't recall whether it was Michigan or Ontario. The other was Las Vegas.

They headed to Sin City, which was his plan all along. They celebrated New Year's Pittsburgh time in-flight on the way to Vegas and shared the New Year's pastry with other passengers.

They landed sometime after 9 p.m. Vegas time. They didn't have a hotel room. They didn't have a lot of money, either, but they had a good time. She called friends and family back home to tell them they were in Vegas, but no one believed her. He called his family, too, and of course they didn't doubt him because, as Ms. Watson says, it's well known "He really kind of does unusual things."

Barbra Streisand was opening at the MGM Grand Hotel. They took a picture together in front of the marquee and rang in the Vegas New Year jammed into the Strip with more than 50,000 strangers.

"We walked around Vegas all night," she says.

They visited casinos, saw the sights and drank Irish coffee until it was time to catch their 7 a.m. flight back to Pittsburgh.

"I remember being exhausted," says Ms. Watson, who's now married and lives in McCandless.

"It was great" he says. "It was one of those things you could do when you're young and you didn't really have commitments."

"That was the only time I've been to Las Vegas," she says, adding she's never seen Sin City in the clear light of day.

Waiting for Mr. Right?

On Friday, Dec. 31, 1982, Beverly Hoffman nervously awaited the arrival of a blind date at her best friend's party on the South Side Flats.

"I was whippin' something up in the blender," recalls Ms. Hoffman, 51, of Sheraden. "It was like milk and this chocolate liqueur and ice and I was having a good time of it."

Time passed and no blind date. She was nervous. He was late. She kept drinking. Still no blind date.

Well before midnight, she'd had too much to drink and was escorted upstairs to the spare bedroom.

She awoke, not to the ringing in of the New Year, but the sound of a deep voice saying, "Beverly. Beverly."

"I opened one eye to see my blind date stooped on the floor looking at me!" she says. "Only thing between me and him was a bucket."

He proceeded to ask her all kinds of getting-to-know-you questions.

"I'm thinking 'Who is this? How can he talk to me? I'm so deathly sick.' ... He just kept talkin' like I wasn't sick. ... and I'm like nodding and thinking, 'Oh, I wish you would leave.' "

He kept talking and asked her out, though she's not sure why.

"I wasn't lookin' too good," she says. "Maybe he saw something in my 'pillow head' look."

On their next date, they both were sober, but he was tired. He started snoring at the movie theater.

"That was my last blind date," she says. She met the man who would become her husband a short time after that and got married. "My best friend and I still laugh about it."

Bridge jumpin'

Dante DiMarco vividly recalls Friday, Dec. 31, 1999.

It was an ice cold night. He and his then-girlfriend had a good meal at Jimmy Tsang's in Shadyside, then did some synchronized bouncing with 2,000-plus other people in the middle of the Roberto Clemente Bridge to The Clarks' "Help Me Out."

"I just remember the bridge bouncin' up and down," says Mr. DiMarco, 44, of Pitcairn. "I never equated human beings with making a bridge flex."

The rock group's drummer, Dave Minarik, was an old friend of his. That's why he decided to check out the band's Millennium celebration concert Downtown.

"It was uplifting to me because you always think that Pittsburgh is dead and to see that many people down there," he says. "It was just cool."

A night in Vienna

One New Year's Eve sometime in the mid-'80s, Tom and Nancy Fralic took their son, Burke, who then was about 10 or 11, to hear mezzo-soprano Mimi Lerner perform in "A Night in Vienna" concert at Heinz Hall.

"We wanted to give [Burke] something that he'd never had before," says Mr. Fralic, 58, of Mt. Lebanon. "Mimi Lerner was wonderful; she was in excellent voice."

Mr. Fralic and Burke wore black tuxedos and matching red bow ties and cummerbunds. The evening was magical; Burke was enthralled. After the concert, the audience moved into the Great Hall, where a sumptuous dinner buffet had been laid out for guests.

Being a spirited boy, Burke ran around the table looking at the spread, then yelled down the table to his parents:

"Mum, Dad, the ham's gone bad!"

As startled guests began looking about and eyeing the food, the major domo came flying out trying to calm everyone, saying simply, but firmly, "It's salmon. It's salmon."

Young Burke, unfamiliar with salmon, mistook it for "bad" ham and gave his parents quite a chuckle in the process.

"Aren't you embarrassed?" a woman standing next to Mr. Fralic asked him after Burke's outburst.

"Hell no," he said, with a smile. "I'll be telling this story until the day I die."

And so he is.

Mr. Fralic had forgotten the story until his wife suggested he share it with the Post-Gazette.

"With everything that goes on in your life, those beautiful moments you forget, but the minute somebody brings them up, they come back to you and stay forever," he says. "I was real pleased my wife gave that memory back to me."