Saturday, March 21, 1998

Mook, mook, mook ... or marmaduke?

By Bob Greene

MANITOWOC, Wis. -- This has been driving me to the verge of insanity.

I think about it while I'm trying to fall asleep, I think about it while I'm eating dinner, I think about it while I'm working. For days now, I can't get it out of my head. I'll tell myself to concentrate on something else, to focus on a television show or a song that's coming out of the radio. Anything to take my mind away from this word.

But the word won't go away. It has begun to dominate my every waking moment.

I have been up in Wisconsin to cover a most unpleasant story, and while I've been here I've been reading the local newspapers. And it was in one of those papers -- the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter -- that the word came into my life.

It was in an editorial -- an editorial expressing the newspaper's disapproval toward the behavior of the United States men's hockey team at the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. The editorial made the point that the hockey team brought little credit to the U.S., and compared the team unfavorably with the "Miracle on Ice" U.S. team that provided proud moments in the 1980 Olympics.

The key paragraph in the editorial was:

"Instead of 'Miracle II on Ice,' we should tab this bunch 'Mooks on Ice.' "

I read the paragraph. I read it again. And again and again and again.

"Mooks"?

I had no idea what a mook was.

I thought perhaps it was a Wisconsin term -- a derogatory word Wisconsin residents use to deride one another, a sort of North Woods insult.

Or a hockey term. Perhaps hockey fans and hockey players use "mook" all the time, and I was just dim for not being aware of such a well-known phrase.

What if it was just an eloquent, top-shelf, rooted-in-fine-literature word? A word any self-respecting, civilized person is aware of -- but that I had somehow missed?

Mook, mook, mook.

I couldn't shake it from my mind. Mook. Mook. Mook.

I began to ask every person I met whether they had heard of it. Waitresses, desk clerks, people on the street. I would approach them and say, "I'm sorry, but I'm not from here, and I have a question for you."

They would wait patiently.

"What is a mook?" I would say.

No one knew. Several people walked swiftly away, looking back over their shoulders with worried expressions.

Finally -- sleepless, bleary-eyed, on the edge of slipping from lucidity -- I knew I would have to go directly to the source.

I called the offices of the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter. I asked to speak with the editor. He is Jerry Guy.

I asked him if he wrote the newspaper's editorials. He said he did. I referred him to the editorial in question. And then I popped the question.

He acted as if the answer was so obvious as not to require explaining.

"A mook?" he said. "A mook is like a gangster-type bully."

It is?

"Yes," he said. "A mook is a bully."

Is it a Wisconsin word?

"No," he said. "I'm from Ohio, and I've known the word for a long time."

When would one hear this word?

"In the movies," he said. "There was a movie on TV just the other night. My wife and I were watching it. They used the word 'mook.' Like what you'd call a gangster."

A gangster? Was he sure the word wasn't "mug"? As in, "Shut up, ya big mug"?

"No," he said. "The word is 'mook.' "

His paper, he said, has a circulation of 17,800. I was the only reader who had asked what a mook is. "The other staff members here read it, and they didn't ask me," he said. "Our publisher read it, and he didn't ask me."

Out of compassion, he tried to help me out by further defining it.

"A mook is kind of like a marmaduke," he said.

"A marmaduke?" I said, fading fast.

"Yes," he said. "You'd call a person 'a mook' the same way you'd call him 'a marmaduke.' A marmaduke. Like a big goon."

A marmaduke. A marmaduke. This is going to be a long and fitful night. Marmaduke, marmaduke, marmaduke ...

Chicago Tribune