Compared to today's New Year's Eve celebrations, with blaring televisions showing the ball dropping in Times Square, those in the 1940s were simple.

TV was still a few years off back then, so there were no TV extravaganzas with celebrities regaling viewers with all of the excitement of welcoming in the New Year at whatever city they happened to be in.

If you were around in Napa some six decades (plus) ago, you didn't really care about New Year's in New York City, St. Louis or Denver. You only cared about New Year's in Napa.

Keep in mind that key to everything for the first half of the 1940s was World War II. We were short a lot of things due to the war effort and the related rationing, so there were limits on how lavishly we celebrated. But we still did a lot of celebrating.

On New Year's Eve, if you were at a private party, at about 11:55 p.m., the hosts might turn on the radio so you could follow the countdown to midnight on the West Coast. That was the extent of the use of "mass" media to celebrate in those days. Radio or not, just before midnight, someone would get the attention of the celebrants and initiate a countdown from 10 to 1 and everyone would join in the count. When the count reached one, everyone would yell "Happy New Year" and then, depending on the gender, hug, kiss or shake the hand of all within reach.

In the old days, anytime people went out to celebrate an occasion or just go out on Saturday night, they got dressed up. Men wore suits with ties and women wore their best dresses with high heels and stockings. On New Year's Eve, most people got especially dressed up -- some of the parties were even formal events with men in tuxedos and the ladies in evening gowns.

Most of the Napans who celebrated in those days did so at local fraternal organizations or private clubs or some of the more active watering holes. All of the venues had live music of some sort. The Elks Club was one of the favorites. It was then downtown, on the second floor of a building between Main and Brown streets.

Other parties that were popular were: Napa Valley Country Club, still in its same location today but with a new clubhouse; the Eagles Lodge on Second Street, now site of a parking garage; the Native Sons Lodge, still in the same location on First and Coombs streets, above what is now a doll store; the Moose Lodge ,which was and is beyond Westwood in Browns Valley; and Hermann Sons Hall, which was also out in Browns Valley. (Hermann Sons Hall was the site of a lot of other activities during the year: most notably an annual stag "smoker," with gambling tables and strippers! As a teenager, it was fun to bluff your way in and have fun with the older guys.)

If the celebrants chose to celebrate at a night club, they could go to the Napanee, which was a very popular place. It was at a location that is now the site of a See's Candy store in the shopping center at Jefferson and Trancas.

Another popular club was the Christmas Tree, which was on the old Solano Avenue (before the 29 freeway was in place), close to the railroad tracks that now carry the Napa Valley Wine Train. It burned down sometime in the late 40's.

The Soscol House, south of town, was also popular. Then, Highway 29 was two lanes and there was no Butler Bridge. When Highway 29 became four-lane and the approach to the bridge was put in place, the building housing the Soscol House bar was moved to its current location, now Villa Romano.

If you wanted to share the evening with buddies at a neighborhood bar, you could always hit the bars along Main Street -- and there were a lot of them. As I remember, there were at least six between First and Third streets. Other popular choices were the Gem, on Coombs Street, Corsetti's on First Street and the bar at the Plaza Hotel at Second and Brown.

Regardless of where people chose to celebrate New Year's, when the music stopped and the bars closed, the place to go was Terry's Coffee Shop in what was then the Conner Hotel at Third and Main (now the site of Veteran's Memorial Park). The place would be jam-packed and it was like a big reunion, with everybody knowing everybody else.

Except for the worries of the war, whether it was New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July, celebrations in Napa in those days were great times. Life then was simple and it didn't take a whole lot for people to have fun. Maybe it's my advanced age, but in today's complex world, it seems to take more of everything for people to have fun.

(Napa As It Was appears every other Monday, alternating in this space with Betty Rhodes' Senior Corner.)