The Moose Club

There were a lot of things "new and different" about my life when I started attending tech school at Keelser AFB in 1973... The main one was that I was finally on my own which meant that for the first time since I was 12 years old I didn't need to worry about having a roof over my head and food to eat at the end of every month... As a matter of fact, the 8 months I spent at Keesler was the longest I had been in one place since 1968 (having moved 14 times in the interim)... Yeah - being away from the constant stress and never-ending chaos and drama of life with my mom and sis was huge.

It was also the first time in my life I had been around so many people who reminded me of myself... To wit: All the airmen in my squadron had scored 80 or higher on the electronics qualification exam, which implied they had unusually good math and science skills, and yet (for whatever reason) weren't going to college and had (furthermore) decided that enlisting in the military would be a good idea... In other words, it was not your typical group of guys :-)

Of course, there were some "nerds", but not as many as you'd think. Most of my peers would be better described as "delightfully eccentric". The whole experience caused me to reconsider all my notions about intelligence... I couldn't help but think back to those kids in high school who always seemed to know all the answers. I had always figured they were the smart ones (at least that's what the teachers seemed to think), but now I was beginning to suspect that they simply lacked imagination. By contrast, my "bay mates" at Keesler were anything but conventional thinkers... In other words, they were a lot like me :-)

And that brings me to the F*ckey Moose Club:

One Friday evening shortly after I got to Keesler I was invited to one of the dorm rooms for a meeting of the aforementioned club, which was regularly attended by a number of airmen (and myself later on)... The festivities started off with a modified version of the "Who's the leader" song from the TV show featuring a rodent whose name I shall not mention for fear of triggering a copyright infringement takedown notice :-)

The rest of the "meeting" was mostly a way to welcome the new guys into the fold (and an excuse to drink a lot of beer).  But it was also an opportunity to mess with their heads a bit... Some of it was brain teasers like "If your house has southern exposure on 4 sides and a bear walks past the window, what color is the bear?" (White, obviously)... But the best part was the "telling of the jokes". Here is one example (there were many others):

 A polar bear and a penguin were taking a bath. And the polar bear turned to the penguin and said "Would you please pass me the soap?" And the penguin replied "What do you think I am, a faucet???"

Exactly... At this point all the "old timers" would be in stitches because it was excruciatingly funny watching the new guys (fresh out of basic training) try and figure out why everyone was laughing at a joke that didn't make any sense to them... (I swear it got funnier every time.)

But that wasn't the end of it... Eventually, someone would admit that they didn't get it, which was the cue for the punchline: "Well, of course not! That's because polar bears live at the North Pole and penguins live at the South Pole, so they couldn't very well be taking a bath together now, could they?"... That was a perfectly true statement, but as an explanation of the joke it made even less sense than the joke itself... Yeah - maybe you had to be there :-)

I'm not sure how long the club existed before my arrival or much longer it lasted afterward... It was in the section of the dorm where the "basic electronics" trainees were housed. Nobody stayed there for more than a few months before moving to one of the "Cody Hall" bays so I doubt the "tradition" survived for very long, but I'm sure it was replaced by something equally odd...

Yeah, definitely good times :-)