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in the days of my younger years we used to call Whiskey TARZAN juice.

Lipton Black Tea, iced, unsweet

choir practice at a local park after night watch, beer was our drink of choice

As an industrial electrician it was boilermakers..

moonshine

Rocky, the O club stag bar at Korat always got interesting when the Wild Weasels landed. Party time! On one memorable occasion they declared it to be "Weasels Only" night- - - -and used a 6 foot tall potted palm tree to sweep everybody else out the door! Of course, a guy had to be certifiably nuts to strap a blowtorch onto his butt (2-man F105) and play bumper tag with surface-to-air missiles! Us poor NCO's didn't have nearly that much fun- - - -on of off the ground!
Jerry

i had to quit the moonshine wife said i was a butthead when i drank shine and Whiskey,mainly because i forgot i was married . NASTY GRIN

Yup, unfortunately it was the Navy and Marine Corps that ruined the O Clubs for all the services. I was just starting flight school when tailhook happened and changed everything. By 1994 we were being "strongly encouraged" to patronize the clubs because they were failing. We junior guys would show up for the mandatory fun hour, have one beer and make sure we were seen, then beat feet out the door at the first opportunity. Nobody with half a brain would let loose in that environment any more, one wrong move after a few beers could be a career ender. The witch hunt that followed tailhook destroyed a culture.

Gone. All gone. First, it was a quiet disapproval of drunken rowdiness, then an overt recommendation/near order to avoid drinking. That closed the Stag Bars, and that in turn bankrupted Officers' Clubs everywhere. Today's Air Force might as well be Baptist or Mormon. No drinking, no carousing, no horseplay, no bars. [/quote]


Yup, unfortunately it was the Navy and Marine Corps that ruined the O Clubs for all the services. I was just starting flight school when tailhook happened and changed everything. By 1994 we were being "strongly encouraged" to patronize the clubs because they were failing. We junior guys would show up for the mandatory fun hour, have one beer and make sure we were seen, then beat feet out the door at the first opportunity. Nobody with half a brain would let loose in that environment any more, one wrong move after a few beers could be a career ender. The witch hunt that followed tailhook destroyed a culture.
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yep our watering hole after a day of climbing poles all day,management figured out a way to get rid of that bar too. also started hiring different type of people for line work and these boys were not that good of workers and kind of lazy. one foreman said this i would rather hire a guy who drinks alot,his reason he would always show up for work,because he needed money for more Whiskey.

Pretty much. Tailhook 91 was a hell of a good time and it came right after we had returned from our first combat cruise. We had stuck our nose into the largest array of SAMS since North VN and come away ahead. Even when they had told us plan on losing 50% of the Prowlers on the first night we all wanted to fly the first strike. We were damn proud and more than a little cocky that not only did we get home but every airplane we escorted did too. Tailhook was a place to revel in that greatness, reconnect with flight school classmates, Air wing buddies and the great community that was Carrier Naval Air Aviation.

There were no doubt some things that were improper but the VAST majority of us didn't see anything or do anything wrong but it was just the ammo that the socialist representative Pat Schroeder from Colorado and her DACOWITS "cultural warriors" (and that is where this all started) needed to slap every vestige of the services esprit de corp down and open the way for today's PC armed services. The women they cultivated into being first into operational aviation were pretty evenly split between those that wanted to be there and be part of that esprit de corp and those that saw opportunity as "special". The latter won and set the tone for the changes and tried to shame the one's that were there to fight and fly.

The club at NAS Whidbey then pretty much self-destructed. The base cops started staking out the parking lot and following folks leaving and they put two cones at the gates and kept moving them closer and closer together over the evening. Hit a cone? Time for a career-ending "safety check". The club got to the point it was open for lunch 5 days a week and the bar on Friday and now I see the whole place is open only 3-6 on Fridays. It was a bar rich in history from WW-II and PBY's and PV-2s sinking Japanese subs and doing patrols that took them to Adak and back to VN and Cold War cruises and current day. The walls are covered with plaques and cruise memorabilia and that just won't do to be reminded that we were part of a rich lineage of gold wing wearing aviators who would willingly do whatever it took to get the job done.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not disparaging the folks out there today. It's simply they don't know what it was like and the tightness your squadron had. I still follow some places with AD Aviators on it and the vast majority all believe "it's a job" and for them when they walk away at the end of the day they go their separate ways. The one's that don't believe it's just a job and that it's a mission with tradition and warrior culture and dare try and change the PC culture get drubbed out. The social aspects of the cohesive warrior culture are done and that was an important part of maintaining that cutting edge.

Whatever Rick Bin recommends, I’ll go with that.

Bin for the Win

Great post from Pugs & Crow, but I'll also add, this was nothing more than part of the "communization" of the Officer Corps and of course with an equal dose of emasculation of the "Warrior Culture" because females can't play in that league. When I was in Pensacola, we (the leadership) were given a song and dance about supporting the Clubs, so we did. Topgun Night, fliers around town inviting women to attend and we filled the O Club. Then the base CO started parking DoN (civlian) police across the road from the club to catch possible DUIs. End result? they became ghost towns and how now become "metroplexes" where anybody can go. Same for the old BOQ ( O standing for officers) and I'll be damned if I was going to share a common area with an E-5. It's all part of becoming more "corporate" and "inclusive". Glad I'm long gone..

Logging equals cold beer after work..On Friday we would put a cold pack in the creek on the way up to the job and pick it up on the way home and enjoy..