NEWPORT BEACH : Goofoffers Live Up to the Club’s Name

Between them, Viggo Meedom and Glen Thomas can draw from 198 years worth of memories.

That kind of life experience makes them perfect candidates for the Goofoffers Club, a loosely knit social club that meets every morning at the Chester Drawer’s Omelete Parlor in Costa Mesa to drink coffee and recount the tales.

On Monday, Thomas, 99, sponsored Meedom, also 99, into the club, which was founded in the early 1950s in Newport Beach. Not five minutes after being initiated in a brief ceremony at The Cannery Restaurant, Meedom started “goofing off,” which, by club standards, simply means telling stories not bound by the constraints of nonfiction.

Meedom, who was born in 1894 in Denmark, came to the United States in May, 1913. He remembers that the boat ride across the Atlantic took 12 days but cannot remember anything about passing through the immigration checkpoint at Ellis Island. After spending two years “driving 12 mules” on a dairy farm in Illinois, Meedom headed for California in 1915.

“I came for three reasons,” he said Monday. “I wanted to see the city of San Francisco. I wanted to see the big trees (California redwood trees) and the Yosemite Valley.”

Meedom and Thomas, who was a fashion artist for the old Saturday Evening Post and other publications, have official coffee mugs with their names on them to prove their membership. Thomas still contributes artwork to the Goofoffer’s Gazette, the club newspaper.

Bill Huscroft, the editor of the Goofoffer’s Gazette, quickly admits that most club members possess better than total recall.

“There is a lot of bull flying every morning,” Huscroft said of his fellow members who inhabit the corner booths at the Omelete Parlor.

The club got its start in the 1950s at Richard’s Market, which used to stand on a site across the street from City Hall near Lido Island. The market was the place where yachtsmen went for coffee in Newport Beach.

There are no membership dues and attendance is sporadic, at best.

Its membership has boasted some prominent people over the years, including John Wayne and Richard Nixon.

One of the club’s greatest legends belongs to Wayne.

Bill Hamilton, owner of The Cannery Restaurant, said that the club’s ceramic coffee cups used to hang on the wall at his restaurant. But when John Wayne’s cup was stolen, the actor dropped his membership.

“He was so ticked off that somebody took his cup,” Hamilton said, “that he left the club and never came back.”