The old Family Story of “Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes” comes from Africa.
When I was a little boy I used to wonder off a lot. My mother would get aggravated with my wondering away, and started using stories from her childhood to “scare me” and keep me close by. Her stories came from “Lena”, her family’s Nanny, who was a descendent of a Morgan slave family freed during the Civil War.
Lena had been the nanny to our grandfather, William Sanford Morgan in the late 1890’s. Lena would tell stories about the “awful and terrible” Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes that would do terrible things to little children that misbehaved… When W.S. Morgan married Maggie Belle Ford in 1921, Lena stayed with them and became the nanny for that new Morgan generation... complete with stories. Mother remembered those stories and said they worked on her, so she decided to use them on me in the 1950's.
My earliest recollection of having the wits scared out of me by Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes was at the Shreveport Veterans Hospital around 1954… Grandfather William Sanford Morgan (Mother’s Daddy) was in that hospital, and children were not allowed in. I would stay outside with Mother while the rest of the family was visiting… The Hospital had a parking lot in the center, with a large Hospital building on the right and a grassy area, picnic tables, and ravine & small creek on the left. I would want to wonder off to the Ravine… and play. She would say, “Jimmy, you can’t go there – Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes will get you!”. My 4-year old mind could only wonder at the terrible things that would happen if I got caught by Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes… needless to say, I stayed close to Mother.
Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes also lived at Spring Lake Park in Texarkana, Texas… and at a little picinc area that Mother favored up around Ben Lomond, Arkansas. Mother was right… I stayed close and I never got caught by the terrible and awful Bloody Bones and GooGoo Eyes!
Note: Our Grandfather, William Sanford Morgan was severly wounded in WW1, being shot and gassed in No-Man’s Land during an ‘over the top’ attack against the Germans in 1918. He was left for dead until a group of Nuns from a nearby Convent picked him up from the battlefield and nursed him back to life. He was disabled out of the Army and eventually died from these wounds in 1954.
Source:
Oral History - Provided by Mary Morgan LaPeer, Elizabeth
Morgan DePaul, and Maggie Belle Ford Morgan.