It was the first time I was ever last.
Almost always I’m here before 8:15 in the morning, a full fifteen minutes before they open. Usually I’m first, maybe second. In a rare occurrence if I’m third in line and the other two guys have very little hair then I will wait my turn.
But you know me. I hate to wait. So, for me to pull into the barbershop this late in the day, close to closing time in the middle of the workweek was very odd indeed.
The sign still read, ‘Open’, no cars in the lot, so I thought I’d take a chance.
When I walked in someone was already in the chair, but not much hair.
I took a seat to wait. And then for some reason I began to think about how I got there in the first place.
A really good haircut takes time, which means just a regular old haircut can sometimes take almost a half hour, easy. In the City Central this is fully understood. The barbershops that enter the Downtown market and don’t understand this will fail. Far less is acceptable at the barbershops on the parameter and in some instances exponentially less has become commonplace.
That’s why way out here in the country Bill’s Barbershop is such an exceptional prize. The standard of quality found in the City Central with the convenience of being nearby.
Over the years I had been through many different hairstyles. As a kid in the City I grew up greaser, the dry-look in college and then with the ever-so-short military style.
Swimmers tend to prefer these shorter haircuts. Either that or wear a rubber head cap. Most people don’t understand that distance swimming is not physical exercise but rather a daily mental ritual. Every mile is a spiritual event that promotes each day with a greater appreciation for Life, allowing the Maker of Life to see one’s aspiration, one’s commitment to the next one, the Great One.
So perhaps this favored style of hair for swimmers is more representative of one appearing monastic.
Old Friends, …. In Search of a New Friend
My old barber was Paul who worked out of Louie’s barbershop up on the northern parameter. I had been going to Paul for many years. Louie had a tiny shop in a cluster of similarly small retail stores across from the train station in town. This made it easy for me when I would visit my sister’s family, a convenient way to tie in a necessary chore with a friendly visit, and one of those delicious family style meals.
Prior to Paul when I was in college I had Everett. I was a manager at the Boone Tavern Hotel and Everett rented a space from us in the basement which had an outside entrance.
College for me was at the height of the Disco era and I was in full groom with the ever so popular dry-look. This style was befitting the youngest of greasers, a style we had gravitated towards once the wet-look was officially ‘out’.
Berea college is in small-town-rural-Kentucky where the military cuts, the crew cut and the high and tight, are fairly standard redneck or not. Summers get steamy hot and very humid in the hollers and ravines of the Appalachian Mountains. Even the backwoods hippies visit Everett once a year for a decent trim.
A great barber, Paul was, and I miss him. Everett, too. Both were authentic ‘greasers’ from the old days, something that I could easily identify with.
Everett, a Treasure of a Man
Everett stood stout and chunky, a very light skinned Irish blonde with a bright pink freckle face. He had that straight over-the-top Buck Owens country-look with a small wavy bubble mound front center. This hairstyle was very popular with Country Western guys long before they all became quazi-hippies, mixing the music with everything from rock to rap. That’s when they started growing bangs, locks and ponytails, complemented by an earring.
Everett drove a 1940’s pickup truck. He had lots of tools, all kinds for all the various trades. He did odd jobs for extra money. Or if you didn’t have the money Everett would ‘loan’ you the tools, and then he’d ‘help’ you do the work. He really didn’t need the money, or want it for that matter. Frequently he spouted about the evil money brings, having something to do with ‘the eye of a camel’, or something, I don’t recall. Anyway, he always gave it away in the form of food, shoes or schoolbooks to some family in need.
Everett just liked to keep busy. Even at the age of sixty-four.
“You can’t earn money with a car”, Everett often told us college kids.
The customer of the future was always in his sights. This I say, as he always had a deep pocket in his heart for the many poor Appalachian kids that wandered the hilly streets in front of the shop. He wanted to make friends with them and he knew that they would never be able to find their own way into his shop any time soon.
Their parents could never afford a barbershop haircut. That’s for rich people.
Everett would often ask these poor kids if they could help him out around the shop as he was so busy, by doing simple chores; sweep the steps, take out the trash, go to the store for supplies, the coffee, filters or cream. He taught the true value of work to these kids, in an attempt to keep them from the lure, the desire for money.
For the chores he’d give them some pennies and a Rainbow coupon. Even in those days you couldn’t do much with pennies. Everett didn’t want to spoil them with money, which could only bring them harm.
The coupon is what the kids really wanted anyway. It was good for a free ice cream cone at Everett’s sister’s Rainbow Cone ice cream shop down the street.
“You done a good job, a REAL GOOD JOB” he’d say,
“Now you go down to Rainbow Cone and get you a Rainbow Cone”
Sometimes a kid wouldn’t do such a good job, but Everett still gave the kid an ice cream cone coupon nonetheless. He knew there was a reason for everything in Life, even a tiny little kid’s Life. He realized that sometimes a seemingly ‘bad’ little kid could have ‘Adult’ size problems, which would often have an adverse affect on everything the kid did in Life, especially when the kid’s parents were the kid’s biggest problem.
But still, Everett would not lie. He’d just tell them that he’d expect a better performance for his pennies, the next time.
The next time, yes, Everett was the one to give anybody and everybody a second chance, and a fifth if you needed it.
I often treasured that fifth.
Paul, Cool and Easy
Paul was about my height, but spider thin. He had jet-black hair, slicked back with a widow’s peak in front, left of center. A wisp of a ducktail hung slightly over the collar. In his red blazer he was reminiscent of an aged James Dean, only with a gravelly smoke induced growl in place of that sniveling whimper.
And he was cool, real cool, something straight out of a 1950’s teenager rebellion movie. It was fairly obvious that in his younger days he was blazing the trail, a pioneer, one of the original rock-and-rollers, quite the dude. His walk had a certain strut, the gait of a proud stallion if you will, as if he’s still the chief roster in the bobbysoxer’s pen. Under his short-sleeve shirt he had a pack of cigarettes rolled up, folded into the T-shirt sleeve.
Confidence, this man oozed confidence.
Even in his sixties this coolness was not an animated illusion, this was real, this macho image. No longer a youthful smack’em around type tough-guy. As he aged throughout the years he was able to hold onto this image by molding, adapting the vintage, like a blacksmith pounding iron to perfection with graciousness, yet maintaining the strength.
It was real to the extent that in his prime you knew that he was the man-about-town, a ‘somebody’, everybody’s buddy, a chick-magnet, and a cool guy. You knew this antiquated machismo was not a put-on, and it wasn’t a show. This attitude of the dude in and of it self meant that he was definitely a cool guy.
Yes, Paul wasn’t playing, he was real, a cool guy, not an imitation.
I guess you could say that he was REAL COOL GUY.
A Ford-Mustang-man Paul was, whereas I had a Chevy Camaro. Not the new kind, but a real one, one of the old ones, the kind that didn’t require a doctorate from MIT. Carburetors, lumpy camshafts, cowl induction and four-speeds; No automatics with fuel injection, pretty stripes, and a throaty muffler.
You know, so you can ‘look and sound’ like you’re going fast.
We talked ammonia flamed tires, torque and shifting technique, not miles per gallon, GPS lane control garbage.
The first sign of my troubles began when Louie got sick. After a few months he went into a nursing home. A year or so later Paul told me in confidence that he wasn’t sure of the family’s intentions with Louie’s shop, and that at his age he wasn’t feeling so well either.
But I kept going back. He was so easy to get along with. A haircut from Paul was easy for me.
He was so much like me, or at least how I wanted to be.
Then one day the shop was closed. The neighboring retailers didn’t know if Paul’s intentions were to take over now that Louie was out of commission. They hadn’t seen Paul’s Mustang in quite a while. Nobody seemed to be sure just what would happen.
I keep forgetting, things will never be the same ever again.
Never.