THE HAIRCUT

Ever since I could remember my Pop Pop Herb took me for my haircut to an old Italian barber on High Street .  And no matter what you asked for – everyone got the same haircut.  No sideburns and short on the top.  But everyone in my sixth grade at Wood School was touting the merits of George’s Barber Shop on North High as the best flattop in town.  Pop’s haircutter didn’t even know what a “flat top” was – short on the top he said when I asked him.  

George R. was famous for actually using a “level” to make certain the flattop was flat. 

So I talked Pop into trying this new young barber that ever had a striped mechanical barber pole revolving next to his door.  Pop was dubious – but always aimed to please me in every way – spoil me my grandmother said, but Pop never paid much attention to her.

At the regular day and time we enterd the new shop on a Saturday morning in a warmer than usual spring.  There were three ahead of us – which was great as I got to look at the usual present pile of “men’s magazine” which were ubiquitous in all barbershops.  And this well thumbed pile was a great one.  Girlie magazines rather than old Popular Mechanics and Field and Stream!  This got a raised eye brow from Pop, but he didn’t intervene.  I guess he figured I was old enough to see some wanton flesh?

 

I flipped  through a two year old edition of  Men’s Digest and a tattered Esquire looking for the “pictorial”.  Then I saw for the first time a Playboy Magazine and the unbelieveable centerfold.  A publication I could never buy at the news agency on High Street for want of discovery as a perverted voyeur.  I immediately went to the centerfold that was always bantered about on the playground by my wiser chums – their lurid review always starting with “did you see Miss September?”

Now I could say YES.  And Miss October, and December.  Pop interrupted my lustful fantasies – “You go first and tell him what you want, he said,”

I got into barer chair with it’s interesting green leather head and foot rests.  George the barber then began his unending chit-chat which I now notice was laced with the F-word and all the other curse words known to kids.  I thought this was very funny for an adult to use the words we used everyday out of ear-shot of our matronly teachers, words that would always get us expelled for a few days if heard.

I caught my Pop in the big mirror wall and with every curse word his grimmace got darker. 

I asked for a flat top  and George the Barber put a giant flat comb on my head and to my amazement with one swipe of his whirring clippers I had a precise quarter inch of hair runway on my head that a Thunderbolt fighter plane could land on.  After a few buzzes here and there I was done.

“Next”, he yelled.   And Pop said no just the kid this time.  Pop paid him the three bucks and we left.

When we got in Pop’s big Buick I asked why he didn’t get his haircut?  He muttered, “Not from a foul mouthed jerk.”  Now Pop wasn’t a prude for sure, but I know now he must have been embarrassed that I was hearing these curses with him.  

For years I returned to George’s Shop and laughed at his antics. 

But Pop and I never had a haircut together again.