Ordering anything other than a Coors in much of Colorado is considered suicide for chickens.

A late member of your mother lodge was #2 at a division of Coors, answering only to Joe himself, for years.

Pete Coors in fact bought me my first carbonated soft drink when I was 4 and he was 8. We were guests of our dads at the Golden bowling alley.–>

And there were 55 words in the previous paragraph, not counting the “33″ – 5 being a number with great important Masonic significance.

And with the above paragraph (including the numbers), there are 77 words, 7 being the deepest and most mysterious Masonic number of all.

I know. I thought I was joining your fraternity, not the Southern Baptist-Klan hybrid that passes for Freemasonry in the South.

Here’s an interesting webpage that talks about various possible reasons for the 33 on Rolling Rock. None of them seem very magickal; I wonder if any of them are true.

Widow’s Son

WS – Even though Denver is Coors country, make mine a Rolling Rock. Hint: 33 is a number with deep meaning in Masonic ritual majick.

Again, I have to say that your experiences are so different from my own that it’s like we’re not part of the same fraternity.

Thanks for another enlightening and entertaining post. You’re blogging some of the most humorous-with-a-point Masonic stuff in cyberland these days. Next time I’m flying into Denver on the Masonic One, please meet me at Sub-Level 23, Blue section, for a secret handshake and a cold brew.

You make a good point, that each Mason has his own internalized image of what a Mason is, and how he should act. Sometimes those two images — what a Mason is and how a Mason should act — are at opposing ends of the spectrum.

Or a Brother has blocked off in his mind certain actions as unMasonic, and others as okay. For example, he may be high-and-mighty moral about and against, say, pre-marital sex but wholeheartedly support race segregation (these are real examples, by the way — one brother was almost blackballed when he first petitioned because he lived with a woman he wasn’t married to, or so a PM un-Masonically shared with me one day).

Here’s a funny — sad but funny — tale about, hmm… it’s about the guy in the previous paragraph, actually, and another PM as well. If you’ve read the BT article called “The Masonic Ambush,” you’ll know what I’m talking about. After that bizarre episode, an angry Worshipful Master summoned all involved to a Saturday morning meeting.

At that meeting, the above-mentioned PM stated, “If he speaks [referring to the Junior Steward, who'd been a Mason less than a year but had more Masonic qualities IMHO than any other six men in our lodge, who attended this meeting] I’m leaving.”

Then, another PM on the ambush squad, a title-chasing know-it-all 25-year career Mason in both the Blue Lodge and the Royal Arch, condescendingly said to the Junior Steward, “You don’t know what Freemasonry is all about.”

The junior officer began to reply, and when he did so, the first PM stood, slammed his metal chair against a table (we were in the dining hall), and stomped out.

I guess we all defined what we thought Masonry is that day.

Widow’s Son
The Burning Taper

Geography; their friends, sometimes they just enjoy it.

There those that seem to have a “volunteer gene” of some sort. (ie: “Joiners”)

Those with a high enough activity level will notice some of the same people at multiple functions in a year. There’s substantial overlap between fraternal groups, churches, politics, etc.

The whole thing can be easily witnessed at the Southington Apple Harvest Festival where one might see someone working one booth on Friday, helping set up the parade Saturday and working another booth on Sunday. It’s quite common actually.

The above withstanding, Masonry is different; it’s deeper, older and difficult to otherwise quantify. While it might appear to be similar to other fraternal organizations it just isn’t.

Masonry tends to become part of who the individual is as opposed to what it is he does.

I suspect most Masons would know what I mean, while the average onlooker would be baffled.

I think that the culture of our lodges tends to exemplify PMs as men who have some authority, if only because they’ve been there and done that.

ACR – I dont’ belong to any other civic or social group. I can barely answer why I decided to become a Mason; I don’t really know what makes people join the other gourps, much less what makes them devote time or energy to one of more of the others.