When I was growing up in the fifties in East Dallas, we used the term "hood" to refer to adolescent boys that were on the edge, i.e., engaged in various juvenile delinquent activities such as Elvis hairdoes, drinking, smoking, having sex, riding motorcycles, carrying firearms, drag-racing, using marijuana, or vandalism/gangfights/crime.
The origin of this term distinguishes it from the later slang term associated with "neighborhood."
Check these links:
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010327
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=hoodlum
http://www.answers.com/topic/hoodlum
http://www.answers.com/hood
1 comment:
I always wanted to date a hood, but my parents would have shat hot bricks first.
Hoods were sorta exciting to white-bread girls like me. They seemed so on the edge, so daring, so unconfined by expectations, although they fit their own sterotype pretty well in retrospect. Motorcycles were unacceptable to my parents, too, along with the smoking and drinking, and god forbid someone in a leather jacket with 4,000 zippers, a ducktail hairdo, and lightning bolts on their shoes should come to the door calling on me. I, of course, fantasized about it often.
I did go out with a preacher's son a few times who probably qualified as a hood. He smoked, talked about drinking, necked really well, and felt me up several times. :-O Perhaps fittingly he died in another man's bed when said man came home and found him with said man's wife.
Ah, hoods. Once in a while, my husband and I talk about the hoods we knew in school. He always aspired to be a hood, but his parents would have none of it and refused to buy him the loafers with the lightning bolts down the sides or let him cut his hair in a ducktail. Maybe that's why I love him. I finally found my hood-at-heart. :-)
Post a Comment