Let’s see … is it the Post Prom Party I enjoyed the most, or those father-son bus trips to Red Sox games? Perhaps it’s the Senior Cookout at Holman Stadium. Or, more recently, helping to install smoke detectors in the homes of people who had none.

Wait. I just remembered. My favorite Nashua Exchange Club memory is the October day I went down to the old Central Fire Station, climbed into a heavy Sparky the Dog outfit complete with the stifling rubber muzzle mask, and boarded a flatbed trailer-turned-float for the city’s annual fire prevention parade.

Indeed, for a guy who never became a bona fide dues-paying member, I have oodles of great Exchange Club memories, largely because I was fortunate enough to be an offspring of a man who did in fact become a bona fide, dues-paying member – and stuck around for something like 50 years.

Pop wasn’t a charter member (he joined shortly after coming to Nashua in 1952), but it seemed like he and guys like Nate Talbot, Lou Dube, Fran "Hap" Hapner, George "Gig" Marineau, Charlie Farwell, Bob Lavoie, "Bucky" Snow, Willy Vermette, Al Dionne, Howard Wegener, Bob Weisman and a few other mainstays had been around since Day One.

Tons of Exchange Club memories bubbled to the surface this week with the announcement that time has finally caught up with the good ol’ Exchange Club, news at once understandable and rather sad. But, as they say, we’ll always have the memories.

As for that fire prevention parade, I think I was around 11 or 12, and might have been tapped to be Sparky at the last minute after someone failed to show up. Either way, I remember hauling my costumed self up onto the float, which consisted of a cage-like structure draped in streamers and whatnot, and holding on as it started to move.

Getting teased in school the next day wasn’t a concern; who could recognize me in this getup? I waved a lot and was told to toss handfuls of candy into the crowd.

But what I didn’t see coming was the sudden barrage of projectiles bouncing off my mask-turned-safety shield – launched by a couple of juvenile delinquents armed with pea-shooters.

No candy for them.

Father-and-son outings were always big with service clubs back in the day, and to me, Exchange had the best one going.

Every summer for years, we’d gather at the old Howard Johnson’s on Daniel Webster Highway and watch for the bus that would take us all down to Fenway Park.

What a treat. Box lunches, a cooler of soda and a much bigger cooler we kids were told to stay away from. "Man talk," "kid talk," with nary a "mind your manners" or "stop swearing" warning to be heard.

The ’67 trip is my most memorable, for two distinctly disparate reasons: We got to be part of the Impossible Dream season, but we happened to choose the game in which then-California Angels pitcher Jim Hamilton lost a fastball and beaned promising young slugger named Tony Conigliaro.

I’ll never forget the collective gasp bounce around Fenway and the deafening silence that followed. It was the first and only time nobody in our group was chatting or laughing.

The Post Prom Party was a hoot; we kids with Exchangite fathers thought we owned the place, which was the old St. Stanislaus Hall on Pine Hill Road. I’ll stop short of comparing how underage-drinking laws were enforced then vs. now, but suffice to say it was a tad looser back then.

I remember a bunch of us guys blazing up nice, fat cigars we’d brought along, a nod to the tuxedo-wearing mobsters in newly released blockbuster "The Godfather."

The scenario prompted the late Constantine "Charlie" Caros, a charter Exchangite who just happened to be my real-life godfather, to pat me on the back and remind me, "Just don’t forget who the real Godfather is."

I could go on. I mean, for a long time. But alas, the "there’s only so much space" factor always wins.

A shout out to everyone who made the Exchange Club what it was, from one of many former kids whose lives are better today because of his ties to a great bunch of unselfish humanitarians.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.