LEWISTON — I don’t care how much ice you had on hand for your New Year’s Eve party. There is just no way you had as much as the guys out on Randall Road.

Just after sundown, a group of men and a team of boys were out for what may become a New Year’s tradition. With a little ingenuity and a lot of water, a fenced-in area that surrounds tennis courts in summertime suddenly looked a lot like a hockey rink.

“We just put a liner in there,” David Toussaint said, “and filled it in.”

As the final hours of 2010 counted down, Toussaint and his friends — old hockey buddies from back in the day — were gathered around a barbecue grill with drinks and burgers. On the other side of the fence, the kids played hockey.

Real hockey, with regulation nets, a heated locker room and a scoreboard.

“You can have a great game out here,” John Labbe, one of the men who helped transform the tennis courts into a 120- by 60-foot rink, said.

The men figured they’d hang out and socialize until the boys got tired. Then they’d go celebrate in adult ways somewhere else. 

By 6 p.m., it didn’t seem likely to happen any time soon.

“The kids love it,” Labbe said. “We usually have to pull them off the ice.”

There was ice at the Holy Cross Senior Center on Lisbon Street, too. But these were tiny cubes to keep drinks cool. There were no skates or pucks in sight.

The center opened for celebration at 6 p.m. Within minutes, nearly a dozen people were there. Whether they would still be there when 2010 faded into 2011 remained to be seen.

“We’re not going to be going until midnight,” 49-year-old Claire Durgin said. “We’re old.”

Then she leaned in with a sly smile.

“Not here, anyway,” she said. “We may have other places to go.”

For the time being, it was a light celebration. There were board games like Mad Gabs and Catch Phrase that might come out later. First, there was mingling to do. 

“Usually there are more women to men, but you never know,” Paula Masselli, who decorated the center for the gathering, said. “You just never know. It doesn’t matter. We’ll have fun no matter what.”

Yvette Marcoux, a teacher and sponsor of the celebration, said the center opens its doors to anyone over 35. Widows, the divorced and singles, mostly.

At the start, most of the men huddled on one side of the room. They talked about careers, fishing and other manly things. 

On the other side, the women fussed over decorations and the food supply while reflecting on another year gone by.

“It was a good year,” Durgin said. “With the economy and all that, I fared well. I’m happy about that.”

She planned to get healthy in 2011, Durgin said. She said it with a wave of the hand. She makes the same resolution every year.

Masselli, too, was looking at new year plans that are reasonable instead of fanciful. No big career moves — she’s an accountant — or exotic lifestyle changes.

“Just keeping at it,” she said. “And paying my taxes on time.”

At the senior center, the revelers downplayed the level of excitement at their gathering.

“Surely,” one woman said to a photographer snapping pictures, “there’s got to be something bigger than this for you to do.”

But the Holy Cross group had something going on that few others did — they had their celebration under way while many others were still eating dinner or arguing over plans.

At bars and clubs across the Twin Cities, crowds were sparse in the early evening. The real bashes, most said, don’t even get started until after 10 p.m.

The Knights of Columbus on East Avenue also got an early start. There, Vintage was playing, and folks started wandering in around 6 p.m. Within two hours, just about every table was filled with 120 people who had come to usher the old year out and the new year in.

No dinner was served at the K of C shindig this year, according to Grand Knight Leo Baillargeon. That meant people could save a few bucks, but also they could come through the door ready to dance.

By 8 p.m. Vintage was playing and more than a dozen couples were spinning together on the floor. It was still four hours until the new year. Would this crowd make it until midnight?

“Oh, yeah,” Baillargeon said. “We’ll be here.”