When Falling Hair Wasn't So Bad

Little boys might cry the moment they are seated in the barber's chair. When they are very little that first trip for a haircut is terribly traumatic. The procedure has an ugly introduction. Here's a stranger dressed like the doctor who they remember sticking needles in their little arms. There's a suspicion that this man is going to do the same thing. But no; he puts a straddle-seat between the arms of his big white chair and little boys are hoisted up. I remember.

They're covered with a big sheet from the neck down to somewhere below the feet. A paper collar (too tight) goes 'round the neck and the sheet is secured (too tight) to prevent clippings from getting under their shirts. They're off to an uncomfortable start. Their eyes watch his hands that go into a drawer and scissors like they've never seen before appear. He takes a comb from a jar of juice that kills cooties and ringworms.

The man who moves so deftly with scissors and comb must be cautious and gentle as he plots his cuts and trims. Little boys are anxious. What's he doing?

Clip! Clip, clip.

Hair falls all over the big sheet...all over the floor. How much will he take off? Will he take it all? What does he do with all that hair on the floor? I figured he swept it into the cellar.

Some kids will see their ears for the first time and they aren't the prettiest part of the head. The hair was fine before he clipped it all away and the earlier fear that didn't have a whit of credence, that of physical torture, gave way to resentment. Crying moved to whimpering and eventually to sullenness and forevermore trips to the barbershops were always low points of childhood's obligations to our wider culture.

"Doesn't he look nice?" That's hideously subjective and all the answers are lies to keep peace.

What's worse: the pause before going into the barber's shop or the first step out of the shop and maybe the next two or three days?

When does a boy need a haircut? Moms seemed to think about it too often. (Mine was obsessive. "You need a haircut." I just got one this morning.) Moms were preoccupied with grooming themselves and perhaps they related their sons' heads with their own ideas about styling. Early on they would stand near to the chair and direct the sculpturing of little heads to their own satisfaction.

When the time came to go to the chair without moms, explicit directions would be sent along with their boys and upon their return critical analyses would be made that, if the work was passable, was dismal news indeed to them that left their best possessions on the barber's floor. It was gone and ignominiously swept into the hair-cellar. If moms didn't like what was going on it might mean a return trip with them in a temper that was bad for both kids and barbers. Enough of these disappointments and dad would get his own clippers, mechanical ones that hurt. When he got done a boy's head would be styled somewhere in the fashion of Moe Howard's and Adolf Hitler's, two guys who weren't exactly role models in nice circles.

I didn't like what barbers did to me but I preferred to have them cut my hairs over my pop who supposed he was their equal. He saved money and he did a lousy job so after one of his efforts the work was surrogated back to Frank, our local tonsorial specialist. Frank had a diploma and it hung conspicuously on a wall next to the rack of mugs and shaving soap. When I, and others, returned from our fathers' recent butcherings he would sigh in a way that translated to any language meant "What the hell did he (your father) do to you? But he knew. Frank's work was made harder; he had to correct damage.

Today's kids willingly mutilate their own hair and thrive on the notoriety that in our time elicited mocking from some quarters and pity from those who knew they were in danger of the same treatment by disgruntled parents — who by the way — were oblivious to how disgusting their imitation of barbering was. What the hell do these guys go to school for?

Frank was the first adult I was allowed to call by his first name. Janitors and garbage men, storekeepers and mailman would be called "Mister" whatever, but Frank was Frank. Maybe it was because his last name was too difficult to say. Maybe it was an appeasement in light of the agony of having to go to his shop. Getting friendly with him lessened the emotional stress.

Frank had pacifiers. The electric clippers tickled when he ran them from the nape of the neck into the area where he would begin his sculpturing. Freudians might want to ask deeper questions about that. He had bottles of colored alcohol that he soaked into my hairs and then massaged them. Anti dandruff! Nice sheen! Smell like a whore, that's what. Life, and luster and vigor. When he finished his craft he brushed away stray clippings with the softest brush in the world and dusted my neck with a pleasant talcum. At exit time kids got lollipops and set free.

I'm bald now and it might be due to all that shit Frank put on my head. Allies of barbers tell us it's genetic but I'll bet where baldness appears in successive generations the old man went to the same barber he sent his sons to and they. in turn, sent theirs to him as well. Vigor indeed! When my pop was young he went to someone else.

There was a pole outside the barbershop. Red and white stripes spun around on a bias. It was the symbol of the trade. The stripes were painted on a cylinder that was cranked up in the morning. Its spring ran for about eight hours. The stripes spiralled upward in an illusionary way that was fascinating. When we got older we found out that the red band represented blood from bad nicks and from accidentally amputated ears that incidentally were gobbled up (or down) by barbers' dogs who waited by their chairs.

The barbershop was a social place. Men liked to go to barbers and chat about common concerns. The barber was better than the guys who could chew gum and tie their shoes at the same time. He would grasp his client's head like it was a cantaloupe, run the razor meticulously over the neck area and talk politics, religion and baseball — ideas they say are discouraged in saloons. If a good game was being played, or even a lousy one, the little radio on the shelf would be turned on because everyone liked baseball.

Before your turn in the chair and your turn at personal conversation, the rite between barber and customer (who might be an old man or a little boy or one of the barber's pals), those waiting had reading material: barbers' journals full of ads for bottles of colored alcohol that would reduce dandruff, save hair and make you smell like a whore, Police Gazettes that were the poor man's National Geographic and Tattler combined and had at least three stories revealing where Hitler was hiding, and an assortment of older magazines that had already turned yellow in some doctor's office and were dumped at the barbershop the last time the doctor came by to be clipped. Some of them might go back if the barber needed a shot or a check-up.

There was a handle on the side of the chair. Frank could crank his customers up or down according to their size so that he could work comfortably on their heads. On the other side of the chair was a fat leather strap. Shaving, front and back, was done with great straight razors fetched from a cabinet and stroked with brute effort on the fat leather strap before so gently applied to the customer.

A rite of passage fell to me when Frank went to the steam cabinet and gave me the treatment that men got: hot towel, lather, a razor trim, a mirror to reflect his work. Wow!

I was a little afraid the first time the razor was stroked on the fat leather strap for me. ("Wadda you gonna do?") It would be all right, though. A quick glance around and my courage was fortified. He didn't have a dog sitting by the chair.