OogaNooga Cookie Factory

The history I'm about to give of the OogaNooga Cookie Factory is going to be very vague, as I think the place shut down in the early '80s, when I was about six. What I do know is that is was indeed a cookie shop on the Oregon coast, near Agate Beach. I think. And that about sums it up, end of history lesson.

To be honest, I don't know if I ever even physically set foot in the place, but it was somehow meaningful to my family. Perhaps they had great cookies, maybe only because of the funny name, but somehow the OogaNooga Cookie Factory created my nicknames for life. Where, one might ask, was the relation between a factory and me? I wasn't that portly a child, despite my first nickname being One-Ton Rock, my second being Two-Ton Rock. (Shocking how I wound up with neither an eating disorder nor a self-esteem problem. Thanks, mom and dad. But mostly mom.) I don't have an answer for that, other than we're a nickname kind of family and we're all a little crazy.

If memory serves, and it often doesn't, the start of the cookie factory nicknames was OogaNooga. The following are what, well, followed:
Cookie
Cookie Toots
Toots
Tootsie
Tootsie Cakes
Tootsie Kuchen (German, for cake, began circa 2002 when I was living in Germany and ma came for a visit)
Kuchen

Every email, card, or written correspondence since has involved one of those. I'm saved in my mom's phone as Tootsie. In public - and at business functions no less - mom has let any number of these fly.

The OogaNooga Cookie Factory hasn't been in operation for more than two decades, and mom has years since moved on from the original nickname, but when it came time to think of a name for blogs and ebay, this was it. No one else in their right mind would think of it, other than the cookie shop owner, and something tells me we'd get on a-OK.