As the story goes, a journalist in the timber industry named Johnson was describing a most peculiar tuft of hair, greased and twisted to a point atop the otherwise bald head of a man named McCarer. Using a phrase of his own concoction to describe Mr. McCarer’s signature coiffure, Mr. Johnson pronounced it to be “Hoo-Hoo.”
The phrase caught on among Johnson’s lumbermen friends who began using “Hoo-Hoo” to describe anything that was unusual or out of the ordinary. A good poker hand was a “Hoo-Hoo hand.” A strange hat was a “Hoo-Hoo hat.” An unconventional choice for dinner was a “Hoo-Hoo meal.” Today, the slang definition of the phrase “Hoo-Hoo” has come to mean something entirely different than it did in Mr. Johnson’s day, as you will see in this week’s Stories of Atlanta. Be forewarned though, this week’s tale is a little, well…Hoo-Hoo.
