One year draws to an end as another enters the scene. It’s a time for looking back and a time for gazing into the future. The month beginning tomorrow is well named. It honors the Roman god Januarius, a god with two faces, one in front and the other in back, enabling him to look both into the past and in the future.

It also is fittingly named for many of tonight’s celebrants, toasting the old year with a “Good riddance!” and the new with “Hey kid, lotsa luck to you!”

Of course there are those who will dip their noses too deeply in the cabernet tonight and wake up tomorrow feeling just like Januarius — except they’ll feel more like they have two entire heads rather than merely a pair of faces.

I’ll just say been there, done that (but not recently) and change the subject.

 

•    •     •

Then there’s the retired gang-banger, now retired from both gangs and banging, who has some facial tattoos to remind him of his past every time he looks in the mirror. However, there are a couple tattoos he has never seen — never will see … actually never be able to see — I mean regardless of how good a mirror he gazes into.

How’s that? Good question. When he closes his right eye, there on the eyelid is the word “GAME.” And on the left? Another four-letter word” … “OVER.” Boy, won’t some undertaker be in for a surprise some day.

•    •     •

I see where the state and the old SP rail yard buyers have reached an agreement to save a couple of century-old shop buildings to convert into a world-class — maybe even universe class — railroad museum. I find the idea appealing and wonder if, maybe, one of those structures is the site of my grandfather’s fatal fall from a locomotive under repair in 1933.

But I’m glad I won’t be stuck with the task of retrofitting them. I doubt those old brick shops erected nearly 150 years ago would pass a building inspector’s suspicious eye today.

•    •     •

I mentioned at the outset that this a time for looking both back and ahead. It’s a matter that has been occupying my thoughts personally.

It was just about 30 years ago when Tom Arden, recently deceased at age 94, and “Tom Arden’s Town” retired from the Sacramento Bee. Tom had been an institution, and I recommended a talented colleague as his replacement. Frank McCulloch, then the managing editor, thanked me but said he was already thinking of me for the job. I immediately told him to forget my colleague; that I’d take the job.

Thus “Stan’s Sacramento” replaced “Tom Arden’s Town,” and I churned those columns out five days a week (frequently six and occasionally seven times a week) until I retired in 1989.

I figured that was that and did absolutely nothing for a month. At some point I realized I could easily become absolutely and totally useless, so I accepted an offer from Steve Chanecka, who had recently begun publishing Senior Spectrum, which had been born sometime earlier at the Senior Citizen News.

I didn’t really plan on becoming a permanent fixture, but through Steve’s ownership, then McClatchy Newspapers and finally through Grace Communications, I kept at it.

As nearly as I can determine, I’m on the downhill side of 19 years at this without ever having missed an issue. Oh … there was one. During a change of ownership, the new editor didn’t realize I had a column in the hopper. It didn’t appear that week, but it was written.

What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that enough’s enough. There are times I think I’m plagiarizing myself half the time. So this is farewell, goodbye, adieu, au revoir and, lest I forget, Happy New Year.

This time when I type a “30” at the end of this column, I’ll really mean it.

—30—

After retiring from a long and respected career with The Sacramento Bee, Stan Gilliam found that he just couldn't stop writing. So he brought his "Stan's Sacramento" column to the Spectrum, where it has been a favorite of readers for almost 20 years.