Barbershop

I go to an old fashioned barbershop.   My mother and brother go to a hair salon.  They pay $75 for the two of them to get a cut.  I pay $13. The sign in the window says "proudly serving our customers since 1967."  Amazing.  I was a junior in high school then and went to a neighborhood barbershop in New Orleans.    Who can ever forget the sights, sounds and smells of those old haircutting emporiums?  I remember the magazines (Field and Stream, Argosy, Saturday Evening Post,  Look and Life).  Seems like Patsy Cline songs were playing on the radio all the time, as well as Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra. Maybe some Wayne Newton and Dean Martin.   I used to get a crewcut when I was a kid in the 50s, but by high school it was cut very 60s style — short on the sides and longish on top with the front hanging just above the eyebrows.   Stylish.  That and my Madras shirts and khakis.

Today I went in for a pretty close cropping.   I now want my hair as short as possible.  It’s all gray, just about, and I’m fortunate not to have lost any of it.  Full head of hair.   But it’s summer, and I want to be cool, or rather, keep cool.   I went in and my usual barber, Roger, was ready for me, having just finished with a customer.  Roger is quiet, steady, sure, and must be in his early 70s.  I am guessing he was one of the original barbers who started there in 1967.   

As I sat down, he asked me what I wanted, and I told him to cut it as short as he could.   Out came the electric clippers and I was on my way to a much better appearance.

I gazed around as I always do at the stuffed deer heads with antlers on the walls, the glass case with hair tonic and various barbershop  knick-knacks including a beer can sculpture, and an old cash register next to the modern one.   There used to be an old rotary phone in there, believe it or not.  The head barber is "Bubba" and he’s got a gruff, deep Southern voice and a mop of silver hair.  He’s probably been there since the70s or 80s.

Today, I had a special treat.  First for the first time, that I can recall a small TV was set up next to the cash register and to my astonishment an ancient episode of Bonanza was showing.  How old?  Well, there was Hoss, and of course,  Little Joe looking like the kid that he probably was then in the earlier years of that long-running Western.  As was often the case, he was wooing some beautiful woman in that inimitable Little Joe way.   There was good-old family patriarch Ben Cartwright, too.  He wasn’t too old when he played that role, not much older than his TV sons.  Never really thought about that way back then, but now it really stands out.    That brought back some memories.  I used to watch that show all the time.

I’m always amazed when men come in to have a haircut, and I swear they don’t in the least bit need one.  What a waste of money to trim nothing that was there in the first place.   Now me, I go in when I usually can’t abide a day longer of my thick hair  feeling and looking just miserable.

I like that barbershop very much.  Sitting in the chair while Roger snips and clips away, not saying anything, but just daydreaming of the good old days.   I do some deep relaxing in that barber’s chair.   One of the few places I can say I do that.