Where the hair hit the floor
I got a haircut yesterday. That normally isn’t an event so noteworthy as to be committed to digital print, but because the barbershop was packed with old fellas getting a pre-Christmas trim I had an hour to stroll down memory lane, recalling all the places in life where my hair has hit the floor.
I have no memory of any barbershop before age seven or so. Photos of me from before that age prove that I got haircuts; I just don’t recall any of them. But when I was six my family moved to Frankfurt, Germany, and I remember getting haircuts in a building called the Casino, on the grounds of the I.G. Farben Building — the headquarters of American military operations in Europe. About the only thing I recall is that I hated the itchy feeling of trimmed hair on my neck and back. What I later learned is that a few years after we returned to the U.S., the Casino was bombed by German radicals known as the Red Army Faction.
As an adolescent, I got my haircuts at the barbershop in Pinetree Plaza, in suburban Atlanta. I would ride my bike there and occupy myself by reading Sgt. Rock comic books until it was my turn in the chair. I always got a crew cut, under protest but also under orders from my mother. On more than a few occasions I had to ride back to the barbershop for further trimming after she decided I was still too shaggy.
When I was old enough to be in charge of my own hair, I discovered the stimulating world of salons — specifically, those places where I would be tipped backward over a sink to have my hair washed, then carefully trimmed with scissors rather than clippers. Did I mention that the person doing the washing/scissoring was always a comely, twenty-something female graduate of the local beauty college? For the next 10 years or so, I loved getting haircuts. I was the best-groomed guy in town. If I could have afforded it, I would have gotten two haircuts a week.
For a while, when I lived in the North, I reverted back to old-school haircuts. There was a classic, three-chair downtown barbershop across the street from the paper where I worked, operated by an old gentleman who, once I was established as a regular customer and had passed some unwritten test, would give me his hidden copy of Playboy to read while he cut my hair. He always called me by the wrong name, but I never corrected him. His version was close enough. A mentally handicapped man named Gordy also worked there, shining shoes in the back, and it was in that barbershop where I developed my fetish for well-polished footwear. I would visit Gordy two or three times a week for a shoeshine. He charged 75 cents, but I never accepted change for my dollar, which made me a valued client. On my last visit to the barbershop before I moved away, the old barber inexplicably hailed me by my proper name after getting it wrong for years, and I gave Gordy five bucks for a shoeshine. It was a great day all around.
Later, after I’d moved to Miami, I got my hair cut by a Cuban woman whose young son occasionally brought his pet ferret into the barbershop. Weirdly, she called me the same thing the Cuban women at work called me: The tall American.
One day, on a whim, I spent $35 for hair clippers of my own. For the next decade, I got my hair cut in the shed behind the house. I saved a lot of money on haircuts during those years, but I had to shine my own shoes and nobody gave me a Playboy to read. Also, there were no ferrets around the shed, but plenty of mice and the occasional snake.
Now I’ve made a full circle. These days, I get my hair cut in a barbershop that feels like it was lifted out of Pinetree Plaza in the 1960s and dropped into small-town North Carolina. It’s much too proper a place to have girlie magazines around, and I haven’t yet seen a Sgt. Rock comic. But fathers bring their young sons in for a trim, and it’s even close enough to ride my bike if I wanted. Funny thing, though. I’m getting crew cuts again, although nobody makes me.