The Magic Hours

The Magic Hours

It was a term that I had coined to explain a rather unique phenomena regarding the rapid passage of several hours of time in certain circumstances, while engaging in a ritual of my younger years that entailed spending most of the evening hours with friends in certain smoke filled and boozy environments. The British call it pub-crawling, the Americans, saloon sliding or tavern tromping.

We would be engaged in animated conversation about sports, politics or the local scandal or cause de jour, while clutching the neck of an amber filled beer bottle. Casually, you would glance at your watch. It might read ten P.M. Then, seeming a few minutes later, you would look down again and find that mysteriously the watch now read Two A.M. The intervening hours had vanished in a fog of conversation, as if by magic. I could never quite determine where or how those hours had so magically disappeared. Einstein may have described it in terms of relativity. We just hoisted another brew and let it happen.

This evening was another such episode. Classmates, from our high school graduating class of 1967, had labored mightily to bring together about one hundred of us in a small tavern, Charlie O’Brien’s” on the banks of the Buffalo River, in South Buffalo, N.Y. As usual in these events, you walk into the place unsure of what you will find. It had been 45 years since I had last met some of these good people. We each of us looked and in fact were different than those starry-eyes, gamin-faced youths of so long ago.

I needn’t have been apprehensive. The easy camaraderie and comfortable acceptance of people whom I had known for over half a century welcomed us back into their lives. Amidst a blizzard of “Hi, How are ya’s” and “what have you been doing with yourself?” we became reacquainted with people whom we had known so well, so very long ago. Time and nature had been very kind to some of us, some others less so. There were winners and losers in the game of life and the broad spectrum was present here tonight. I have always felt proud of their individual successes when I became aware of them. These were all blue- collar kids who scaled the very difficult ladder of life to reach some pretty impressive heights. Many looked happy with themselves and their lives. They had retired from good careers to enjoy their children and grandchildren. Others appeared to stoically endure what lay ahead of them. God bless them every one.

We laughed at each other’s silly stories and the remembered goofy actions of our youth. It didn’t seem like it had been so long ago. Perhaps there is an equivalent “magic years” phenomena that applies to the days of our lives. We were so focused on children, jobs and families that the years had vanished while our attentions were elsewhere.

Several of my colleagues, I had kept in touch with over the intervening years, meeting them in the parks, beaches, restaurants and gathering places in and around Buffalo New York. We talked with them of our lives and times over the last half-century. It was a wistful and pleasant voyage down the moving river of time.

Some few had fallen over the years. Illness, war and other calamities had claimed them in mid-lives. We raised our glasses in a tribute to “absent friends” and remembered the laughter of living that they had brought to us. Reunions all bring out the half-sad nostalgia in all of us. It is perhaps the realization of our imminent mortally and distant remembered, full bloom of our youth long past. The mood well suits several glasses of mind-altering liquids. I looked down at my watch. It read Ten P.M. “ Uh oh I thought, here we go!”

We talked and laughed and enjoyed the company of some of the finest people that God had put on this earth. And always, you could hear the whisper ” Who the hell is that again? “ Or maybe” wow, she looks pretty good for her age.” It was a universal construct to see and observe the passage of time amongst those of your own age. It’s a good thing that there weren’t any mirror present to remind us of our own status.

Loud music and some “mood enhancers” had prompted several to dance, lost in a happy fog of memory and the enjoyed company of friends made so many years ago.

And then, I looked down at my watch. It was 2:00 A.M. It had happened again, that rapid and eerie passage of time I call the “magic hours.” By this time, I had a death grip on my fifth bottle of Heinekens and was beginning to elide the final “G sound of my gerunds. Though not a beer drinker in practice, I knew enough from past meetings that if you try to drink wine or “rocket fuel“ at these marathon sessions, you would soon be running half-clad along the river bank and howling at the moon. I In any case, we decided t was time to saddle up and head on back to the ranch.

We made a round of pleasant good-byes and exchanged contact information with some classmates, asking that they call or visit us here or in Florida. Others, we wished a “Vaya Con Dios” and hoped that their golden years would be good to them.

As we drove the 25 miles homeward to Amherst, we reflected on those that we had met and talked with these last few hours. It was a happy event amongst some very special people and we were glad that we had come. Now, all we have to do is wait for the next experience of the “Magic Hours” to carry us on home.

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Joseph Xavier Martin