Air Force Tradition

The Mess here is a really neat place steeped with tradition.  The building it's in is WW2 era and has a neat old feel to it.   It consists of 2 parts, both the place we eat every day on the top floor, and down below a bar and lounge type set-up with couches, tables and ping pong.   Every Friday the Air Force has beer-calls, which is a chance to get together and have a few drinks at the end of the week.  They say a lot of the old traditions are dying out in the Air Force,  however the Commanding Officer of the flight school here is a fan and trying to resurrect them.  This past Friday it was a special one called the Bengal Beer-Call.  I'm not exactly sure what the origins of it are, but it was a Friday night I will not soon forget.  With all the negative publicity surrounding hazings (rightfully so), it wasn't really that.  In a nutshell, it was an initiation welcome night sort of thing for us new arrivals to the school.

It was set up council meeting style, with a "mayor" sitting up at the front of the room with 4 goons/enforcers to his left and right and a big Bengal tiger head hanging above him.  His "excellency" was seated in the fancy yet intentionally cheesy tiger apolstered ejection seat that I described in the last post, wore his flight suit and a big goofy Canadian flag top-hat.  He had a gavel that he wasn't afraid to make a ruckus with and a set of mandatory rules: He could be referred to only as your worship, your highness etc. and made it very clear that any other nomenclature used would be severely punished.  The punishment?  A disgusting mix of various hard alchols from the shot glasses literally covering the large table in front of him, administered by his assembly of goons.  

The proceedings started by introducing all of us poor sods and  sitting us up in front of everybody.  Two guys from my class were 10 minutes late which is a big no-no when the Commanding Officer is there waiting.  They were punished "accordingly".  Next came the introduction of the beer girl, who as luck would have it was one of the guys from the course ahead of us, dressed in fishnet stockings, and a mini skirt.  He/she was our server for the night.  Following our introduction came the confessions, stories and "instant- justice" portion of the evening.  It was a chance for any and all to get up and tell goofy stories.  Following each, the story teller and characters would take a shot.  Before drinking however the words "Primarus Fuga" had to be bellowed and if they weren't the goons were right there to administer.  As you can well imagine the stories became more and more outlandish the higher the blood alchol levels rose.  One guy was "instant justiced" by another guy for cutting him off in the traffic pattern that day.  The late comer from my class provided an explanation/confession for his tardiness.  He explained that it was his childhood dream to be a pilot and since arriving here in Southport he has been stressed to the max.  Unfortunately for my star struck colleague, this nervousness has impaired his ability to go to the bathroom.  I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say he was stuck in the bathroom, enjoying the fruits of his x-lax consumption and as a result couldn't make the meeting on-time.  He told the story well, and the whole room including the CO howled.  Of course things continued to go downhill as the night went on.  The next day there were the telltale signs of people having had way too much to drink.  Again, I'll leave it to your imagination.  Suffice it to say, it looked like Picasso had been by doing abstract art in the snowbank.

All in all it was a lot of fun.  If you didn't want to drink you didn't have to, the punishment could be passed to someone else.  And, after a while I discovered there were shot glasses of Kool-Aid at one end of the table, so the 150lb lightweights like myself had an out if we wanted it.   

Now it's back to the books (aerodynamic theory), emergency procedures and  simulator tomorrow.