I would choose a barbershop over an off-Broadway play. I seek them out in little towns. Yes, metal spiders crawled all over me the first time I saw my bald spot in a photo, but that fear subsided. Now that I was going bald, I would have a legitimate reason to go to barbershops. The stories. I love the stories. I pretend to read, but I’m listening to the stories; stories about the high school football team, the crops, the mayor’s new motorcycle or the barefoot stranger carrying a trumpet and butterfly net that has been seen lingering near the dry creek behind the Methodist Church. I think I know the origin of my love of barbershops. My Brother Scott arrived one weekend with a boa constrictor. Mom locked herself in a bedroom and screamed demands from behind a poorly varnished door. Dad drank coffee, asked questions and hatched a plan. We were going to Big Daddy’s Barbershop with the snake. Dad entered first. As always, he had several ink pens in his shirt pocket and a small-spiraled notebook filled with math problems. Scott, at 6’5, with an impossibly deep voice and devious smile, was second. At 70lbs, I entered last, wrapped in a huge snake. It was a busy Saturday at Big Daddy’s. Most of the questions and statements were about how real the huge snake looked. Gradually, expressions started to change. Fear slipped into the crowed room. Big Daddy was dragging a razor across the neck of a patron. The sound of each stoke reminded me of air escaping from a bicycle tube. He watched the snake and tried to take breathes between passes of the razor across his throat. When Big Daddy turned to wipe the razor, the man jumped up and ran out of the barbershop covered in shaving cream. Big Daddy: “JB, get that snake out of here!” I put the snake on the front seat of Dad’s 69 Pontiac and went back inside. After all, we needed haircuts. Dad was partially through his haircut when I discovered the snake was missing. Panic. A boa constrictor could literally and figuratively strangle the economy of our little town square. Everyone ran about and looked for the killer. We found him under the seat, wrapped in the coils. The mechanic asked Dad to repeat himself twice before he would go look under the seat. The news spread. All of the mechanics were out taking a look. People walked over from a shop next door. Yep, Egbert had a boa constrictor stuck in his car. A few people asked about his partial haircut, but most were more interested in the snake. The front seat came out. Four grown mean struggled to pry the snake from the coils. We returned home with the snake. Mom hid again and started yelling. We put the snake away and went back to get haircuts. I think about that day every time I see a spinning barbershop pole. Those poles do not represent boxes to check off of a to-do-list to me, they represent story-time…
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 15:32:42 +0000
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