Hooley’s eyes gleamed
mischievously.
'A little country
humor there...’
s the way it used to be with
tley said. "Nobody ever took a
he vet to get his tail cut off.
kids watched the local pastor
le congregation in the river, it was
■rail[that they would go baptise
sr in the sewer," he continued,
see fny kids today, with their
Kies and ray-guns, I'd kind of pre-
ley'd baptise some old yellow dog.
lave a couple candidates."
■ranted equal time to cats. "The
|ut cats," he said, "is that they're
Bestructabie. I remember watching
ite cat walk under the wheel of a
Iractor. Dad was plowing and I
lor him to stop. He did -- right
at. But when my dad moved the
lead the cat walked, no, staggered
if our favorite pasttimes when we
i was dropping cats out of the hay-
le down, to see if they'd land on
■They always did," Hooley said,
end of mine told me recently that
la visual bearing on a fixed object
v're falling," he continued. "I guess
Iropped them next to a staircase
ind on their ear or something."
Chorus:
But the cat came back;
Very next day, the cat came back.
Thought he was a goner but the
cat came back
'Cause he couldn't stay away.
Gave it to a little boy with a dollar
note;
Told him for to take it up the river in
a boat;
Tied a rock around its neck it must
have weighed ten pounds;
Now they drag the river for the little
boy that drowned.
Chorus
Took it to the shop where the meat
was ground,
Threw it in the hopper when the
butcher wasn't around;
The "at disappeared with a blood
curdling shriek --
All the town's meat tasted furry for a
week...
Chorus
But the cat came back, etc.
I CAT CAME BACK
I Mr. Johnson had troubles of his
n,
[had a yellow cat that wouldn't
Biome.
I and he tried to give the cat
I"
■it to a man that was going far
k
Clackamas Community College
"Wild Uncle John was a really strange
character," Hooley said. "One time he and a
few friends went hunting in Eastern Oregon.
They were in the back of a pick-uptruckand
when they went through one little town
they saw a stuffed elk in a small store. Well,
Uncle John shot the stuffed elk. It cost him
several hundred dollars to get out of town.
"John's son, Joe, carried on in the
family tradition," Hooley continued. "One
time he went over to a friend's house to
help mow a field. The man's chickens had
gotten loose in the field, so Joe mowed
them too."
Hooley's eyes gleamed mischievously. "A
little country humor there," he chuckled.
"Now Joe's a counselor in the Beaverton
School District."
One of the better known songs that
Hooley performed was Roll On, Columbia,
He had his own rendition. The song, written
by Woody Guthrie, is a celebration of man's
struggle to dam the Columbia River. Hooley
wrote a new ending for the song:
At Rainier the Trojan rears up to the
sky,
Built with our money and PGE's lies.
One nuclear slip-up and the whole
river dies,
Roll on Columbia, Roll on.
"I wanted to do something clever with
the word Trojan," Hooley said, "in ter—s
of how we're all getting screwed by it."
Hooley thinks the next song should be
sent to Penthouse Forum.
THE MULE IN THE MINES
My sweetheart's a mule in the mines.
I drive her without reins or lines.
On the bunker I sit, and I chew and I
spit
All over my sweetheart's behind.
The humor was entertaining. The signifi
cance of the stories sneaked up on you later.
"I didn't realize until the next day, how
much I'd learned about the way things were
in old Oregon," one student said.
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