Ah, thank you Lord, for the advent of unisex hair salons.
Not only has my aging mind become broader with my body, so have the minds of us all. Growing up, it did seem unfair to me that males were allowed to “do” women’s hair, but the fairer sex was not allowed to legally lay hands on men in a non-healing way. Of course, the way hair grows on some of us members of the uglier sex, it looks as if it could use “healing.”
Finally, society saw fit to allow women to cut, or as we now say “style,” men’s locks as well. For years men have been allowed to style women’s hair, but the opposite is a relatively new development, a few decades old compared to centuries of the chauvinist way.
Now, this is not to disparage barber shops or even male stylists in unisex salons, but my stylist is the only female other than my wonderful Life Mate Julie that I allow the distinct privilege of running their fingers through what is left of my hair.
As a kid growing up, I got those raggedy soup bowl trims country boys get, all “gapped,” so that the sides of my head look like a pair of white sidewall tires and the rest of my head like Buster Brown, the shoe kid.
When I was eight years old, I was finally allowed to get a “town-bought,” barbershop haircut.
We approached the front of the shop and I marveled at what appeared to be a huge peppermint stick whirling to beat the band, but you couldn’t see where it began in the bottom of that tube, nor where it was whirling to out the top. “Gee whillikers,” I thought, “I wonder if they’ve got a littler one of those for me if I’m a good boy.”
As we entered, on the left was a black man everyone knew as Fox. He was working his magic on a pair of shoes and making that shine rag pop like one I’d heard to “Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy” on The Grand Ole Opry via our four-foot-tall Truetone Radio the previous Saturday night. Fox was already a legend in Teague for his mirror shines and for his second job as a janitor at the First National Bank, both so he could support his family. All the barbers teased Fox and said he could be the bank because he had so much money.
I envisioned having a pair of fancy dress shoes with a Fox Mirror Shine and with taps on the heel and toe sections of the sole so I could walk down the sidewalk and, as Bro. Dave Gardner used to say, ‘make the sparks fly so people would marvel at me.’
“Wow, this is some place,” I thought.
Then I saw the barbers. There was Doyle Taylor with his ample middle sticking out just a little further than the huge cigar in his mouth, as he buzzed away with the clippers on what was becoming a young boy’s burr cut.
Manning the second chair was a tall, dour-looking man who resembled the pointy-haired man in today’s Dilbert comic strip. Towering (to me) Sam Moncrief had a device strapped on top of his hand, which was on a man’s head. The buzzing and vibrating said the customer was getting a soothing head massage. That is supposed to help the blood flow which makes the hair grow, much to a barber’s poetic delight. It benefits customer and purveyor.
A third barber was giving a man a shave with a straight razor. Those things have always made me shudder, but, as I often say, that’s a whole ‘nother column.
My turn came in Doyle’s chair and I nervously climbed up in it and was swallowed by the barber’s cloth. I suppose I was nervous and wiggly because Doyle grabbed my head with his huge hand and manipulated me through a haircut with only one minor nick.
That was my introduction to “store-bought haircuts.” They did a good job, following the regimen of the times, but I’m glad we now are in the unisex era. Buzz away, Darlin’.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
