WASHINGTON D.C.-

Army Colonel Henry Moak, Jr. loves pound cake. He loves it made from scratch and he loves it in the canned variety. In fact Henry Moak will take pound cake just about any way he can get it. And when it came to his retirement party from the Army, guess what Henry Moak ate? You guessed it, pound cake. But this pound cake was not your ordinary garden variety pound cake, this cake was very special.

Knowing that Henry Moak could have had just about any pound cake in the world, that his little heart desired, he elected to go with his favorite……canned pound cake. For simplicity you wonder? Nah! Colonel Moak went with the canned cake because of nostalgia. This can of cake was very unique and dated back quite a while, 36 years to be exact.

Colonel Moak took possession of the can back in 1973 when he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. At the time he vowed to hold on to the uneaten can until the day he retired, and that’s exactly what he did. So on the day of his retirement, Colonel Moak took the can and, hoping it would not explode, cracked it open. And to the disbelief of many party goers, Colonel Moak sniffed it and said, “It smells good,” and followed up with a bite. Jokingly he acted as if he were staggering backward and someone in the crowd muttered, “Eeww, gross!” But Moak professed that the cake was, “Good and still a little moist.”

Either being very generous, or wanting someone else to share in his potential stomach-ache-to-be, he offered some of his cherished cake to anyone who was gutsy enough to try it. And that’s when retired Lieutenant General Paul T. Mikolashek stepped up to the plate and hit a home run by taking an even bigger chunk of the canned cake and said, “Tastes just like it always did.”

A spokesman for the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia said that the military discourages people from eating overly aged rations because of the risk of mold and deadly botulism if the sealing on the food has been broken, which is not always visible. A 36 year old ration is too old? Awwww come on, it’s not old until at least 40 years have passed.

Over the years Colonel Moak allowed his children to eat some of the rations he had kept, but he always warned them to never touch his precious pound cake.

The moral of the story: My guess is any canned rations over 10 years or so could have some adverse affects on a person’s health. Who knows what sort of metal seepage occurred over a period of 36 years in a ration can produced in the 1970s. Personally, I’d have to pass.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

 Print This Strange Story