Favorite Holiday

New Year’s Day has always been my favorite holiday. It has no religious, gift-giving, or patriotic duties. It used to have drunken revelry and football, two of my favorite activities. Alas, my advanced age now limits that revelry to watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve With Ryan Seacrest and having no idea who those musical acts are. Also, Dick Clark has been dead for twelve years now. No one under age 50 has any idea who he was. Isn’t it macabre that his name (or his ghost) returns to network TV every New Year’s Eve?

The worst of my 77 New Year’s Days was 1971. LT Dufton spent the last week of 1970 at the frozen mudhole that would eventually become a Korean Army helipad. The Koreans were responsible for providing our accommodations. Those accommodations were flimsy tents with fuel oil-fired space heaters. My Korean Army counterpart skimmed fuel oil from each drum and filled it back to capacity with water. He sold the pirated fuel oil on the black market and made a nice buck on the side.

A cold front descended from Siberia on New Year’s Eve. When the temperature dropped to zero, the watery fuel oil in the lines feeding the space heaters froze. We woke to no heat and no electricity since the watery fuel to our generators also froze. Putting a blowtorch to thaw the possibly-leaking fuel oil lines was dangerous but necessary.

We had not yet restored heat and power when LT Dufton had to hustle back to Camp Humphreys in a Jeep (with no heat) for the Commanding Officer’s New Year’s Reception. Attendance is mandatory for all officers even if they are coated in oil soot, had no time to shower or shave, and are frozen to the bone. Colonel Miller understood. “Dufton, come back when you are presentable. Have a shot of brandy first though.”

New Year’s Day remains my favorite holiday.

By Ed Dufton