The current VFW's and AM Legion, perhaps even the AmVets is discouraging. When I was a boy, my uncle - a pilot in WWII - would take me along with him to the Am Leg and the VFW. I would get an orange pop and wander around the club. My memory is that there was more to those clubs than a bar with less expensive booze. There were locations set aside where members and guests could sit in comfortable chairs and read the news papers, or just sit quietly. It was a place JUST FOR VETERANS. In my adult life these clubs have permitted so-called "social members" to crowd in for the bar. No more exclusiveness for veterans who earned the right to have their own club. It has been years since I was in any of them. By the way, I am retired military. Marines in the early 60's with a year at Danang, later 3 years as a weapons instructor for a Navy Seabee Bn, some years in various Nat'l Guard units, I retired when I came home from Desert Storm/