My husband, Bob, who claims to being more organized than I am, always leaves Christmas shopping to the last minute. The afternoon of Christmas Eve 1975 was no exception. He was, as usual, off amidst the last minute shopping crowds.

                Since I hate crowds I usually have my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. This Christmas Eve I was in our thirty-sixth floor, lakeside apartment in Hyde Park, Chicago, getting a head start on the next day’s feast. Early in our marriage we established the tradition of inviting for Christmas dinner friends who also were away from family--singles, empty nesters, people new in town. This year we were expecting eight or ten including a couple new to our gathering. Sasha and Marian Trifinac, both chemists, worked at Argonne National Labs where Bob also worked. Marian was Jewish. Sasha was Serbian but had lived in the United States since his college days.

                About four o’clock, as I was shelling chestnuts to braise, our buzzer rang from the lobby. It was the Trifinacs. I buzzed them in, and then opened our door to greet them. Soon I saw them striding down the long hall corridor, smiling, carrying a package, and all dressed up. Oh, dear. What could have happened?

                 It soon became clear they thought the invitation was for Christmas Eve, apparently the traditional day for Christmas feasts in Serbia. I was dismayed knowing that they had just driven close to thirty miles to get here. “Come, have a sherry, before you head back,” I said.  We sat in our living room, which had a gorgeous view of Lake Michigan, chatting and laughing. Then we heard a key turn the front door lock, and Bob walked in laden with packages.

                Sasha greeted him with, “Bob, you told me the wrong day!” 

                “No, never,” Bob protested.

                After some further male sparring, they both calmed down and Bob suggested, “As long as you are already here, let’s go to Chinatown for dinner and we’ll see you again tomorrow.”

                I put my partially prepared dishes in the refrigerator and we all bundled up and took the elevator to our building’s garage. Marian wondered out loud it she should go to their car to get her boots. (She had changed into open toed pumps in the car.) “Don’t worry,” Bob told her. “If we can’t park close by, I’ll drop you at the restaurant.”

                Bob headed to Lake Shore Drive, the scenic highway, which hugs the shore of Lake Michigan. In those days, there was an off ramp near McCormick Place, the convention center, which sits right on the lake. At the top of the ramp, we would drive west over an overpass and proceed several blocks through a poor Black ghetto to Chinatown. But not this day. About three fourths of the way up the steep ramp, Bob’s Valiant sedan sputtered and stopped.

                “Are you out of gas!” Sasha said.

                “No, no. I’ve got plenty of gas.” Bob replied. He and Sasha got out of the car, peered under the hood, wiggled a few things and generally did the sorts of things that men do in those circumstances. To no avail.

                Darkness had fallen and the night sky was clear, but several inches of snow from a snowfall earlier in the week still covered the ground. Since we were so close to the lake, a wind made it feel even colder than the usual Chicago December evening. “How are your toes?” I asked Marian.

                “Well, I do wish I had changed into my boots.”

                Having decided that they could not get the car started, Bob and Sasha pushed it to the side of the road then Bob tramped off in search of a phone. While the convention center was closed, there was a hotel at the top of the ramp a block or two away. The other three of us sat in the car and shivered. “A repair truck is coming,” Bob announced when he got back, relieved to have found one on Christmas Eve.

                After about twenty minutes, a stocky, middle-aged man arrived in a tow truck. Hopping down from the high cab, he asked, “Are you out of gas?”

                “No, I have plenty of gas,” Bob said.

                After poking around under the hood a bit, the man announced, “I’m not sure what’s wrong. I’ll have to tow you to the station.” Then looking at the four of us he said, “I can only fit two of you in my cab. We are not supposed to tow with anyone in the car, but I can’t leave you here. You’ll have to bend down as far as you can, so a policeman can’t see your heads.”

                Bob grandly waved Sasha and Marian into the truck, “You are our guests.” I was secretly wishing he’d decided both ‘ladies’ should ride in the truck, but kept my mouth shut. We scrunched down as far as we could below the dashboard as the car was tilted up and towed. Further west the tow driver turned onto Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. While we were stopped at a traffic light I craned my neck to look out the window and saw a whole line of faces staring down at us from the windows of an adjoining bus. Some people were pointing, many were smiling and some were laughing. I nudged Bob and pointed. “Oh, woe!” he said, “My poor car. The humiliation.”

                When we arrived at a large service station, the driver told us we could wait in the office where it was warm. While we stood chatting and thawing out, Bob said, “It’s a good thing I still have my triple A membership. I’m planning to drop it the first of the year.”

                “Why?” I asked, surprised.

                “I read that a large percentage of their calls are for dumb folks who run out of gas. I don’t see why I should pay the premium for that!”

                After a short time the tow truck driver walked into the office and announced, “It’s fixed.”

                “So soon. That’s wonderful!” said Bob. “What did you do?”

                “Put some gas in the tank.”

                We decided to proceed on to Chinatown after our considerable delay.  Bob suggested a recently opened restaurant whose menu we had looked at the last time we were in Chinatown. “I don’t care where we go,” I said, “as long as I can have a drink.”

                “Remember, they had a fancy drink menu,” Bob said, and we all agreed to go there.

                After we were seated, I let the other three argue over what to order for dinner. I concentrated on the drink menu and decided on a Caribbean rum drunk. Surely, that would warm me up and make me feel better. When the waiter came, I spoke first.

                “Very sorry,” he said. “We have our liquor license very soon. But, not now. Very sorry.”

                None of us felt like braving the cold to go to another restaurant and we had a decent dinner there. After we got home and the Trifinacs had left, I poured myself a stiff bourbon and finished shelling the chestnuts.