Millennium Cringe

In late 1999, as the new century approached, there were two main concerns: Y2K crisis and New Years Eve planning.

A bigshot at my work had researched time zones and was spending a week on the island of Fiji so that he could be among the first people on earth to ring in the new era. There was a sense that the night should really stand out-- one’s whereabouts would hold historic and social significance.

A bunch of couples decided to plan a getaway. Our criteria: cheap price, open bar, not too far away from home. New York City was outrageously expensive. So, the Poconos, an area marketed to me in commercials throughout my childhood, “Have a fine winters’ time in the Poconos…”, would do. We would party and ski. It sounded promising.

I found a place called Shannon’s Inn and Pub. I ignored the fact that the website featured no photographs. There was an artist’s sketch of an Irish cottage, and a row of shamrocks surrounding information on a special “Millennium Package.” I focused on the terrific deal: two nights lodging, all meals, OPEN BAR, live Irish music, and two lift tickets at a local slope for under $350. per couple. I enlisted one of Marty’s friends who lived near the Delaware Water Gap to check out the place for me. Kieran is an Irish guy, who loves his ethnicity, and I believe my mention of the open bar and Irish band left him biased. He told me that he knew of the place—that it had a great, big, lively bar—and that it would be fine. His one caution was, “the place doesn’t look like much from the road.”

From the road turned out to be the main interstate that runs through the Poconos. The Shannon Inn looked to be a former Howard Johnsons located at the end of an exit ramp. The perch gave an excellent view of speeding eighteen-wheeler rigs. Kieran was being truthful about the bar. It was large and comfortable and they served Guinness and Harp on tap. The band was setting up when we arrived, with plenty of room for dancing.

The rooms were dated but clean. The group of us sat, sipping beers, and relaxing before the big millennium dinner party. We were laughing, and my friend Mary snapped a picture of us piled on the worn dresser next to rabbit-eared television set. We all look very YOUNG and cheerful in that photo. None of us had hit thirty yet.

When we entered the bar that night for the celebration, our youth was notable. The entire crowd consisted of guests in their late seventies, eighties and possibly nineties. Great grandmothers wore sequined gowns and great grandfathers wore suits that most likely had handkerchiefs tucked in pockets. It looked like a Christmas party at a nursing home. The AARP had definitely posted this great deal in their flyers. We youngins’ stood like stones, jeans-wearing stones.

“Oh my God,” I heard Mary say before she erupted into laughter that shook her entire body. It was awkward laughter that she couldn’t stop—and it was loud and hearty. I wasn’t able to laugh—my body was readjusting from the quake-like cringe that had just run through it. Our inability to move left us wedged in the queue of senior citizens waiting to sit for dinner. Cafeteria tables had been set up in the pub with place cards. The Ryan party was seated in between old people and the only other anomaly in the crowd, an Asian couple named the Hui’s with their pre-teen children, who all spoke little English.

The band played Irish music and a selection of tunes like In the Mood by Glenn Miller and Hey Good Lookin’, Whatchya Got Cookin’? I recall looking across the table at my friend Chris, as he miserably blew into a whistle streamer. An older lady had come by and put a plastic top hat on his head.

Dinner included grey meat, mashed potatoes and creamed corn. The octogenarian sitting next to us leaned over and whispered that she just loved creamed corn, but couldn’t digest it any longer.

We all had the impulse to head back to our rooms, and maybe even to leave the state of Pennsylvania that night. We tried to embrace a positive attitude—even understood that this would, someday, be an amusing story. But in the millennium moment, it was not so funny. The men in our party bellied up to the bar and took advantage of the premium pours. I joined the conga line with Mr. Hui at one point. Then I danced next to the corn lady for the Macarena. The band leader called out to congratulate couples on fifty, sixty, and even sixty-five years of marriage. The midnight countdown finally came; Auld Lang Syne played as the crowd exchanged chaste pecks. The guys approached the bar for one last beer before we ran back to our rooms. They were intercepted by a group of mature ladies. I watched one of them wrap her arms around Marty’s waist and stand on tiptoe for a kiss on the cheek. Maybe she was a bit tipsy and he reminded her of her husband fifty years earlier?

I went to use the ladies room and noticed that Mary had written Marty and Tracy Ryan on a bulletin board in the lobby. It was a sign-up sheet for The “Not-so-Newlywed Game” being held the following morning at 10 a.m. I scribbled over our names and then added hers with their room number.

The younger generation moved back to the rooms with the plan to continue drinking like twenty-somethings. But we were done. Smiling through the fossil hours had been exhausting. We started this millennium by turning in early, as spry older folks danced and sang along to the Unicorn song downstairs. I could hear it as I drifted off to sleep on a lumpy pillow.