THE FUN IN BEING SURPRISED

Now, I think I am a reasonably well-read person, fairly knowledgeable and clearly in charge of my marbles, but sometimes I am shocked to find out there is something I probably should have known about but don’t. So it’s with a little bit of embarrassment that I tell you that until yesterday I had never heard of a “hoo-hoo.” And to make it a little worse, I not only had children with “hoo-hoos” but also my granddog Libby had them.


None of my kids had much more than a modicum of hair when they were born; it didn’t matter so much with my son Sean, but to make sure my girls would be identified by passersby as females, I started by scotch-taping a little bow to the top of their head. Once they grew enough hair that could be constrained by a barrette or a ribbon (usually by their second birthday!), I arranged what I now know to be a nice decorated “hoo-hoo” on their head – not what I called a palm tree or a pony tail. No, a real, honest-to-goodness hoo-hoo.

It’s the Kewpie look, that’s for sure!

The other thing I didn’t know is that presently, and there has been for a long time, an organization called The International Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoo. It originated in Arkansas before the turn of the century (the 20th century, that is) and its roots, pardon the pun, belong to men in the lumber business. Seems that the traveling lumber salesmen kept meeting each other at trade shows and conventions and decided that they needed to have some kind of loose-knit fraternal organization made up of lumbermen and only lumbermen.

These early folk searched for just the right name for their organization. They wanted it unique, so chose “concatenated” which mean “unite” and “Hoo Hoo” after one of the lumbermen whose odd hairstyle – a long tuft of hair on top of his balding head which he greased and twisted into a spike – caused much joking among his friends. The spike was called a Hoo-Hoo, and the term quickly was added to finish off the formal name of that organization.

The Order still exists today and while perhaps not world-wide, it has expanded into Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Who would think of such a fraternal order? I suspect the answer is a few lumbermen with more than a few beers at a trade show. Maybe I had never heard of this strange organization with the funny name because the closest I ever get to lumber is at my local Home Depot. They may have a local chapter there but I’ve never noticed a logo. I shall look next time I’m nosing around there for a dowel for something or other, and if I don’t see a logo, perhaps I’ll ask the department manager if he is a Hoo Hoo.