Allegany County has its fraternal and civic organizations, the Shriners, Lions, Moose, Redman and others, but none was quite so unusual as those fraternal groups from the early 20th century.

In 1909, John Rhind of Cumberland told a group of men in Lonaconing who were members of The Only Great Club about a new fraternal group in the county called the Veteran Bachelor’s Association founded in November 1909. Jerry Kean served as president.

“The club is not a month old yet and I am the father of it,” Rhind said in The Evening Times. “No man is admitted who is less than 70 years old. We want no young bucks. We want season(ed) veterans, who have reached the age of discretion, and who are no longer in danger of succumbing to the wiles of the artful widow or the desperate old maid. Our membership at present is 37, and we are not anxious for a large membership.”

The motto of the club was stated to be “We hate them,” though it remained unclear as to whether that referred to wives or women in general. The members pledged themselves to discourage matrimony in every legal way possible.

This pronouncement of the Veteran Bachelor’s Association caused one person in attendance to compare it to another unusual Allegany County club called the Misfit Club.

“No, there is only one Misfit Club, and the capers of that organization would make a horse laugh,” Walter Clark said in The Evening Times.

As an example of their hi-jinks, Clark said that the club had planted a barrel of clams at the bottom of the canal with the hopes of raising them. However, when a diver went down to check on them later, it was discovered the clams had all migrated to an empty beer barrel and the crop was a failure. Presumably, the clams must have gotten drunk and died.

This led Semmes Devecmon, who was in attendance, to proclaim that “Cumberland was full of freaks, individual and organized. The Misfit Club was composed entirely of loons; the newly composed Bachelors’ Club was composed of sour old cranks,” according to The Evening Times.

“I can name you half a dozen societies in Cumberland in which there is not a single member who is all there, mentally,” Devecmon said.

However, almost as if to show that Cumberland did not have a lock on slightly daft, Harrison Fazenbaker of Lonaconing stood up a short time later and recited a short poem about complainers.

“When things get all kertwisted

An’ the wrinkles on your brow

Makes you look as sour as thunder

An’ ye can’t tell why or how

Jest remember fret an’ stew

Has laid some good men on the shelf

An’ ye’ll join ‘em if you worry

So wake up and hump yourself.”

“That’s all I’ve got to say this evening,” Fazenbaker said.

But he wasn’t done. Following a poem by another member about dry towns in West Virginia, Fazenbaker got up to share another poem about the North Pole.

One can only assume that while the towns in West Virginia may have been dry, these club meetings certainly weren’t.