The Moo

Well…we did it, we joined The Loyal Order of Moose.


Two things had stopped us before…the smoke and ‘club requirements.’ Gary and I aren't ‘clubby’ people, even though we are members of three dance clubs. Dance clubs are mostly about dancing…if you want to be more involved you can be, but extra participation isn’t required.

We love our clubs but wanted some more dance venues, and there is nothing better than a good old fashioned Moose club for that…they usually have dancing at least two nights a week, sometimes more.

We’ve seen quite a lot of Moose clubs over the last few years, because one of our dance clubs, Indy Dancers, uses the facilities of two of them. We really like it there…the Moose people have always been friendly and welcoming. The interior is a little dusty, a little retro, and until recently, a whole lot of smoky. The clubs are in the process of choosing if they want a smoke free space (a private club can do that), but the tide is turning, and many of them are now smoke free, including the venues we dance at. So the smoke problem is eliminated, or soon will be.

For the ‘club requirements’ issue, we knew the Moose wasn’t much on secret handshake stuff…they originated as a men’s social club and never went in for much of that. I had read somewhere that they do require you to believe in a ‘supreme being’ which as Gary said that could be anything, but I don’t like be told I HAVE to, whether I do or not.

Nevertheless, last Friday we made our way to the local Moo, having decided that we really did want to join. My plan while acknowledging a supreme being would be to have one of the Muppets in my head just to be ornery. I think Gary was going to contemplate some kind of spaghetti monster during his moment. But we didn’t have to. We were met at the door by a very nice man who simply said wanna see the place? We did, and he gave us a brief tour. Bar, check. Restaurant, check. Pool tables, bingo room, check, check. Dance floor, yeeha! It was huge! After that he said do you want to be members, we said yes, filled out a short form that had our address and phone number on it, paid 90 bucks for our yearly fee, and that was that.

No supreme being question or anything else…just nice friendly folks, like what we’ve come to expect at the Moose. And while we did join to dance, there are other benefits as well. Lots of discounts, a wonderful kid charity called Mooseheart, and an old folks home in Florida called Moosehaven. Gary and I will probably never use it, but it’s nice to know if we wanted to we could don antlers, kick the ‘real’ old people off the dance floor, and cut a rug.

And we get to call each other Moosies.