Hooligans - Momma told me not to grow up and become a hooligan

Now I don't know about you but when mom told me not to be a hooligan I knew it was something important and I did not even know what a hooligan was. Surely you were like me and you sensed that it was something bad the first time you heard the word. Isn't it funny how you knew you could know something was good or bad depending on mom or dad's tone of voice.  If I heard dad say "shit", I knew it was not the time to ask a question or disturb his thinking.  And back to hooligan, I never have looked it up but I assumed whatever it was had to be as bad as a bank robber or thief or other horrible person.  I wonder if I have ever met one?  

Thinking back I guess when David or Bob Harris or Eddie Harris or Jay Olsen or I turned over Raymond Dale's outhouse during the Halloween festivities we could have been called hooligans.  Or maybe it was the time that Eddie Harris and I shot up the signs on the McConaghy Ranch and got caught that we could have been hooligans.  Come to think of it there were a lot of times hooligans might have applied.  Maybe when Eddie Harris and I went fishing with dynamite or when we dipped all the tools in the barn in Alice Chalmers orange paint or when we killed Eddie's favorite cat (accidentally of course) or when we buried all of our trucks in the garden to see if we could grow more toy trucks.  Maybe it was when Jon Tanny Olsen and I were seeing how fast you could drive a pickup on ice?  Or was it when we shot all the insulators on the high line wire posts?  Or was it when we were hunting coyotes from the road at night?  Could it have been when Denise Logue's dress got ripped during a volley ball game?  Or Cathy Eaton getting a haircut at the 4-H livestock show in Pawhuska with sheep sheers?

You know for a pretty good boy I sure could have been called a hooligan at times I suppose.  Luckily I made it through.  HUMMMM?  Now what is a hooligan?  I don't think I want to look that up.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• You only live once, so pack in those good old days
• Hooligans are for city kids, cause us country kids were always good
• Thankfully His grace is sufficient and even a hooligan can get to heaven

Thanks for listening,

gary

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