Posted on by Phil Strawn

The West Texas Wooly Booger


My grandparent’s farmhouse front porch was made for storytelling. It wrapped around half the old home and was covered with a sturdy roof so we could sit out during any weather. Summer or winter, after dark, under the moonlight or stars, it was fertile ground for swapping yarns.

My two long-deceased uncles, Bill and Jay, were the best liars and yarn spinners I have known. I am proud to have inherited, to some degree, their ability to recount and or mold loads of total chicken crap into something believable.

Christmas Eve of 1957 found our family visiting the Santa Anna, Texas farm. The weather that day was mild with thunderstorms expected in the evening. In Texas, Indian Summer often shows up at Christmas time leaving us kids sad because Santa won’t have any snow for his sleigh. We assumed he could still land on rocks and hard dirt, or we wouldn’t get any presents while at the farm. My grandfather cut down a small Cedar tree in his pasture, and my parents brought some of our home ornaments, or we would have been treeless and nowhere for Santa to put our gifts.

After supper, some of the family would gather on the front porch to listen to our two Uncles spin their eloquent yarns of life growing up on a farm in rural Texas. Uncle Jay carried the metal Coleman cooler full of ice and Pearl Beer to the porch, and Bill rolled some cigarettes and brought out a pack of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. The stories wouldn’t start until the third or fourth beer was consumed. Uncle Bill said beer is a required fuel for any storyteller to practice his craft.

The lightning to the Northwest was flashing behind the Santa Anna mountain. Uncle Jay remarked that it reminded him of shells exploding miles away at night while he was onboard a battleship in the Pacific. That was the first time he mentioned his time in the war to us kids. We wanted to know more, but he changed the subject. We were years away from him sharing those times with us. The conditions on the porch were perfect. My cousins and I sat around our uncles in a circle, waiting for the first word.

Sitting at the opposite end of the porch, my granny piped in, ” Jay, did you ever tell the kids about the Wooly Booger’s?”

“The what boogers, “my cousin Margurite squealed. No, they had failed to mention them.

Uncle Jay took a swig of Pearl, looked at the lightning, and in a hoarse whisper said, “We got West Texas One-Eyed Wooly Booger’s right here in Santa Anna, and they are partial to eating kids.”

There, it was out. First, it was Pole Cats, then Coyotes, Bobcats, Feral Hogs, Rattle Snakes, Copperheads, and the giant Mountain Boomer, and now One Eyed Wooly Boogers. Sum bitch, everything around this farm wanted to kill us kids; no wonder we were a nervous wreck and lost weight every time we visited. At that moment, I was ready to go back to Fort Worth. At least there, I only had to worry about getting smacked by a car while riding my bike to school.

Uncle Bill chimed in: ” I saw one about forty years ago. I was sleeping on the screened-in porch with my dog, Giblet when one of them got through a hole in the screen and jumped on my chest. It was the size of a house cat with one big red eye in the middle of it’s skull. I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move; I guess the big red eye hypnotized me. Old Giblet killed the critter, and Granny took a picture of it with her Brownie camera. Then, we buried the little demon in the back pasture. I hear tell that they are attracted to the smell of nose boogers, which kids usually have a lot of. They go for the nose and chew it right off of your face, then the ears and eyeballs if you don’t die from the nose wound. I happened to have a cold that night, so that’s why the creature tried to get me.”

My cousin Jerry, even in the dark, was pale as a baby’s butt; he had a winter cold and a big-time snotty nose. He was a goner, and I had to sleep beside him on a pallet on the screened-in porch. I would be the second to get it.

I slept with my Daisy BB Gun and Cub Scout camping knife for the next few nights. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

16 Replies to “The West Texas Wooly Booger”

  2. Good read. Completely unrelated, kudos for Texas lawmakers. Somebody getting it right. Got anybody there willing to leave Texas for 4 to 8 years in Washington, Distritc of Corruption?

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  3. Your Uncle Jay’s and Uncle Bill’s yarn about the one-eyed Wooly Boogers was great! Kids love scary stories and the ones created and handed down by family are the best. I learned about the “Green Man” when I was a child and shared his story with my kids when they were at impressionable ages. He had been electrocuted and it turned his skin green like a lizard’s, so he walked the streets only at night-but sometimes he’d scale telephone poles or TV antennas. Muhaha!

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  4. We had Wooly Boogers south rural San Antonio too. When I first heard Sam the Sham and the ? sing Wooly Bully, I thought they were singing about that. It kind of substantiated they were real. That was a fun read.

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  5. I think Giblet was more of a security asset than a Daisy BB Gun and a Cub Scout camping knife. A Wooly Booger knows better than to tangle with a fangorian dog. It has no inherent fear of either a barrel or a blade.

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  6. Ha. My father would tell stories about Wooly Boogers. Not sure how he spelled it. He never really SAID it but I somehow got some kind of racial slur out of it. Could have been in my own mind. It was definitely a big scary monster out to get us. I can’t remember specific stories, though, just references to the menace if we didn’t tow the lines. My dad admitted to being racist though I thought he was just more honest–that most of us are afraid of cultures we don’t understand–because he was always taking the part of some black person at his office and loved Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Treated everybody well he actually knew. He told racist jokes, though I can’t remember them being about “Wooly Boogers.” Well, and blonde and Pollack jokes, Jewish jokes, Italian jokes. English jokes, Scottish jokes, Swede and Norwegian jokes–we Yoopers still tell them. Hilarious. Can’t tell jokes anymore, it seems. Anyway, your story brought all that to mind.

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    1. Yeah, my family in the 1950s, the south, Texas, all that too. Non of us cousins ever encountered a Wooly Booger, but we feared them non the less. Right, folks don’t tell jokes anymore..no one can laugh at themselves…no one is happy, it’s a sick circle we are caught in. Did you hear the one about the….

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