Here’s my application to be Moola Moola

I gave the woman I’m married to ample warning during our courtship that I’m a weirdo.

I didn’t want her to suffer like the wife of Ed Wood, the infamous director of bad movies in the ’50s whose old lady found out the hard way that he secretly enjoyed strutting around in her angora sweaters and undergarments.

So I tried to be true to myself at every opportunity while we were dating, like when we once stopped at the old McDonald’s in Carroll on our way back to Morningside College and I insisted we sit in one of two booths — the one directly under the plasticized bust of Mayor McCheese or the one directly under the plasticized bust of Officer Big Mac.

There could be no compromise.

Those of us who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s were the intended audience for the McDonald’s commercials featuring their McDonaldland cast of characters.

The thing is, I never grew out of it.

I guess my future wife apparently decided that if sitting near a fiberglass bust of the Hamburglar well into adulthood made me happy and kept me out of her underwear drawer, that was the least of her worries.

So imagine my dismay when, back from Ohio visiting family a few years ago, we saw the Carroll McDonald’s being torn down to make way for the new one.

“The busts!” I shrieked in horror.

I entertained the thought of calling McDonald’s and offering to buy the busts for our home.

My wife, although tolerant up to a certain point, is really the only thing stopping me from turning our home into the Midwest equivalent of Neverland Ranch.

We won’t talk about the one time I went to a flea market while she was at work, and she came home to our one-bedroom apartment to find a full-sized, coin-operated “Space Invaders” arcade game in the living room.

(I eventually sold the game on eBay, but, swear to God, if I ever come across a “Donkey Kong” machine or the “Star Wars” game made by Atari in ’83, they’re mine.)

Needless to say, then, I still also have an affinity for my time in Home State Bank’s savings club for kids, Moola Moola and the Money Minders.

The concept of a McDonaldland-esque cartoon character inhabiting the local bank appealed strongly to me and my generation’s thing for mascots that looked like they were derived from a Sid & Marty Krofft acid trip.

Home State unveiled Moola Moola — a Grimace-like purple blob — to the youth of Jefferson 30 years ago come August.

Moola Moola — along with his other pals in the Land of Lotta Loot — was supposed to teach good savings habits to kids.

Every deposit was accompanied by a chocolate coin.

The funny thing is, when I stopped getting chocolate, I stopped saving money.

But Moola Moola himself would host free matinees once a year at the Sierra Theatre for kids in the club. That first year, 125 of us crammed in to see “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” (I had to look back in the paper’s archives to get the attendance; this might be hard to believe, but I’m not actually Rain Man.)

Flash forward three decades.

I was at Home State the other day, working on some home loan documents with my old classmate, Amy (Walker) Milligan.

She’s now an assistant vice president at the bank.

I’m now editor of the newspaper.

Look at us, all grown up.

Well, at least one of us.

I couldn’t resist asking — “Do you guys still have Moola Moola?”

Her answer of, “Kind of,” stirred something in me that I haven’t felt since McDonald’s got rid of McDonaldland Cookies and replaced them with cookies that are purported to be “fresh-baked.”

“We’re trying to figure out how he fits into the era of social media,” is basically what Amy told me.

Oh, so kids today are too cool for Moola Moola, is that it?

McDonald’s officially abandoned McDonaldland in 2003, so I guess it’s par for the course.

Actually, come to think of it, I think I was more excited at the sight of the Root Bear on opening day this spring of the local A&W than my son.

He’s 5.

But what Amy said next, though, has fueled my imagination ever since I left the bank that day.

“We still have the costume,” she informed me. “It’s in a box.

“You could see it some time.”
To me, that was almost akin to her saying, “Oh, when Duane Ellett died, he gave us the Floppy puppet. It’s somewhere in the back room. Wanna check it out sometime?”

But more than that, I saw myself in the costume — and, no, this isn’t some bizarre fetish thing — single-handedly leading a Moola Moola renaissance in Jefferson.

If Home State needs someone to don the Moola Moola costume, oh, say, for the Bell Tower Festival parade, I’m only an email away.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

And, somewhere, my wife is reading this, shaking her head.

Then again, the warning signs were always there.