[NoelW]

Back in the 1980s, I was friendly with an older man named Henry, who told me a strange story about something he experienced on New Year’s Eve, 1957. It was an experience, he said, he would never forget.
In 1957, Henry was living in Taunton, Massachusetts, but had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s house in Chatham, Massachusetts, which is located on Cape Cod - a distance of approximately 70 miles East of Taunton.

The local radio station had been threatening a coastal snow storm all day, so Henry decided to leave for Chatham as soon as he got out of work at 5 o’clock and also thought he would stop for a bite to eat somewhere along the way.
It was already dark outside when he left Taunton, but he had driven as far as Wareham before it began to snow. By the time he approached Sandwich, the snow had begun to accumulate on the road and it was coming down so hard and fast that he switched his windshield wipers to high.
He had hoped to find an open restaurant or diner so that he could stop to get something to eat and to also take a break from the stressful drive. But, being New Year’s Eve, most businesses were closed and the only place he had seen open was a gas station he had passed a few miles back.
He had no choice but to carefully forge ahead.
After he had driven for about another fifteen minutes, he was relieved to see a restaurant off to one side of the road, which had a neon sign on its roof that read “Darla’s Place.” It had colorful Christmas lights strung in its windows and he could detect the movement of people inside. He eased his car carefully into the parking lot and parked next to an old Ford Coupe, which reminded him of the Ford his father used to drive.


He noticed a couple of other snow-covered cars that were parked to the far left of the parking lot.
Once inside of the restaurant, he noticed an elderly couple seated at a table next to a wood-burning stove and a young man seated by himself at the coffee counter. He decided to sit at the coffee counter, too, so he maneuvered himself onto a stool, but leaving the space of two stools between himself and the young man. The young man smiled at him and said “Happy New Year,” so Henry returned his greeting.
A pretty blonde waitress appeared from out of the kitchen. She was wearing a white uniform and a blue & white checked apron with a matching cap. She wished him a Happy New Year as she plopped a menu on the counter in front of him. He returned the greeting and then asked her if he could have a cup of coffee, which she turned around and placed in front of him as quickly as if she had read his mind. A moment later she took his order and shouted over her shoulder “Clam Chowder, Fish Sandwich” to whomever was doing the cooking in the kitchen.

Henry sipped his coffee and decided to smoke a cigarette while he waited for his food. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, but had apparently left his matches in his car, so he asked the waitress if she had any. She reached into the pocket of her apron and tossed a book of matches to him, to which he replied, “Thanks, sweetheart.” She apparently took offense at his familiarity and with a definite tone of indignation in her voice said, “The name is Millie, thank you very much!”
Henry noticed that the cover of the book of matches was whimsically designed with a cartoon caricature of a waitress struggling to balance a tray of food above her head and in red italic letters read “Darla’s Place.” And then in bold, black lettering below was a telephone number. He lit a cigarette and then stuck both the book of matches and his pack of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket.
A moment later there was a commotion heard outside and Henry turned to see that a bus had pulled up and parked in front of the restaurant. Another moment passed before a uniformed bus driver with a group of six or eight people clamored inside. They all seated themselves at tables and Henry listened while they talked about the snow storm and how treacherous the roads had gotten.
The waitress scurried from table to table with a pot of coffee and then over the next few minutes shouted more orders back to the kitchen. She finally brought Henry’s food to him and then refilled his coffee cup.


He was going to ask for his check when he finished eating his sandwich, but he noticed the young man eating what appeared to be the largest piece of chocolate cream pie he had ever seen in his life, so he ordered himself a piece, too. He decided what he had heard about roadside types of restaurants serving good, home-cooked meals at super-cheap prices was true.
With his appetite satiated, Henry paid his check and then took a few moments to freshen-up in the mens room. As he returned from the mens room, the group of people were putting on their coats and making their way back outside to climb aboard the bus. The young man who had been seated at the counter had joined them. It was only then when Henry noticed that the group of people all seemed to be wearing old fashioned coats and hats. The uniformed bus driver had gone outside to start the bus, but had come back inside one last time to ask “anyone else on this bus?”
The elderly couple seated by the wood-burning stove shook their heads no. Henry replied that he was driving his own car, but asked him in which direction the bus was headed. The bus driver said he was headed to Yarmouth and then onto Harwich, Orleans and Wellfleet. Henry knew that Orleans was close to Chatham, so he asked the bus driver if it would be okay to tag along behind him. The bus driver answered “not at all” and then said “let’s get going.”

The snow had turned to sleet when Henry pulled his car up behind the bus. It was when the bus driver was revving the engine of the bus that Henry noticed how old the bus appeared to be. He remembered thinking to himself, “where in hell did they dig this old tub up from?”
But, he was grateful to have the bus to follow all the way to Orleans, which he thought would make the remainder of his trip a lot less stressful.
The bus pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the road. Henry followed a close, but safe distance behind. With his defroster and windshield wipers both running on high, there was still a certain amount of ice building up on his windshield. Visibility was poor, but he was glad he could at least see the tail lights of the bus ahead of him.
It seemed to Henry to take forever to arrive in Yarmouth, where the bus stopped only briefly for the bus driver to kick some ice from its fenders and for the young man to hop off. Henry watched as the bus driver climbed back up into the bus and at the same time couldn’t help but notice that his uniform and cap looked as old fashioned as the coats and hats the group of people aboard the bus were wearing, and for that matter, as old fashioned as the bus itself. He reached under his jacket to retrieve the cigarettes and matches from his shirt pocket and thought a smoke might help to calm his nerves.

The bus lurched forward and headed down the road again. The young man waved as Henry passed him by. He remembered feeling relieved that the young man hadn’t been wearing old fashioned clothes, too.
Down the road it seemed to Henry that the bus was picking up speed and he recalled thinking that the bus driver must be out of his mind to be driving so fast on such slippery roads. He tried his best to keep up with the bus, but its tail lights seemed to get smaller in the distance until at last they disappeared into a blur of white. In hopes to catch up with the bus, he accelerated, but after driving another ten or twelve miles, there was still no sign of the bus. At first he wondered if the bus had made a turn or had slid off the road, but he hadn’t noticed a turn anywhere and he was sure he would have seen some tire tracks if it had gone off the road. But, there was nothing to be seen or noticed, except the snow and sleet pelting his windshield and the road before him. He said a silent prayer for the passengers on the bus to safely reach their destinations. And then having decided it was better to be safe than sorry, he slowed his car down to a crawl.
It took him another 45 minutes of stressful driving to arrive at his friend’s house in Chatham.
His friend, Dave, met him at the door and expressed his concern about him having made the trip in such dreadful weather, but also expressed his relief for his safe arrival.

Once inside of Dave’s house, Henry saw that several other guests had arrived and were already merrily engaged in laughter and cocktails. The expected holiday greetings were exchanged by everyone and then Dave’s mother, Sylvia, took Henry by his shirtsleeve and said, “Oh, you must be starving, poor darling,” as she ushered him toward a sideboard that was laden with silver trays of hors d’oeuvres.
“Actually,” said Henry, “I stopped to get a bite to eat along the way.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m surprised you found a place open on New Year’s Eve.”
“Well, there was this neat little roadside joint called Darla’s Place up by Barnstable,” said Henry, “where I had a bowl of chowder, a fish sandwich and a gigantic piece of chocolate cream pie.”
“Oh, ha ha, very funny,” said Sylvia, but her laugh was insincere.
Henry thought her superficial laugh was an odd reaction, so he asked, “Why is that funny?”
“Because, “said Sylvia, with a look of ‘now don’t try to pull an old lady’s leg’ on her face,” Darla’s Place burnt to the ground about twenty years ago.”
“That’s not possible,” said Henry, “I just ate there tonight.”
“You must be mistaken, dear,” said Sylvia quite matter-of-factly. And then she turned to her husband who was standing on the opposite side of the room and shouted, “Fred, when did Darla’s Place burn down, was it 37 or 38?”
“New Year’s Eve, 38“ came his answer from across the room.
The blood rushed to Henry’s head and his ears began to ring. Suddenly he remembered the book of matches in his shirt pocket, but before he pulled them out he thought to himself, “if these don’t say Darla’s Place, I’m going to be in desperate need of psychiatric help.”
He slowly lifted the book of matches from his pocket, looked at them, and then with a sigh of relief handed them to Sylvia and asked,” Then how do you explain these?”

Sylvia first studied the book of matches with a look of disbelief, but then she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and with a burst of triumphant laughter said, “Oh, you naughty boy! You must have gotten them at an antiques shop or flea market.” And then she playfully shook her finger in his face and said, “This is New Year’s Eve, darling, not April Fools’ Day. Now c’mon! Let’s have a drink!”
And drink they did.

Fast forward to the 1980s -

Henry told me that after the New Year’s Eve party of 1957 he had made the trip from Taunton to Chatham many times. Along the way he always looked for Darla’s Place, but of course, he never found it. He said he might have chalked up the whole experience as a hallucination “if” it weren’t for the book of matches and for a couple of older people at Dave’s party who remembered a blonde waitress named Millie who had worked at Darla’s Place.

© T.N.W.