Tuesday, September 06, 2005
I went to get a haircut tonight, which is a frightening experience when you’re not in your hometown. I strolled into a local hair stylist here in Fairfax hoping to get an appointment. It was called “The Finishing Touch” and I could tell immediately upon entering that this was more of a place where ladies go, but they gladly put me down on their sheet.
Let me give an idea of where I’m coming from. For the first 18 years of my life I went to the same barber, Russ Carrithers. Russ was an old codger with overgrown facial features that men get as they get older. He wore plastic rimmed glasses and smoked a pipe, which was the cause of his gravelly voice. His barber shop had the traditional red-and-white striped pole outside and when you walked in you were greeted by a hearty “Hello!” and the aroma of pipe tobacco, and when you sat down in the barber chair – not one of those puny chairs you see in styling salons but an honest-to-God, 500-lb. chair made of sheet metal from Highland, IL that has a huge cushion, an ash-tray in the arm rest, a foot-rest that swiveled, and a big handle on the side for raising and lowering the hydraulic lift – well when you sat down in it, you knew you were going to get a real haircut. Now, there’s getting your hair cut – which involves someone taking scissors or clippers to your hair and eventually making you look less like a scrub than before – and then there’s a haircut. A haircut is an experience and Russ was a master at it.
He’d pull out his scissors, start snipping away and launch into one the many crazy anecdotes he had hidden up his sleeve. And boy did he have some doozeys. They ranged from stories about him chasing girls through the woods when he was a kid to how one of his customers lost his dog and spent two months looking for him, and when he finally found the mutt was chewing on a wad of $100 bills. Okay, so maybe I don’t remember the real stories anymore, but they were always seemingly exaggerated and when he got to the end he would step away from the chair slightly, point his scissors at one of guys sitting in the waiting chairs, deliver the punch-line and laugh a raspy, throaty laugh. Sometimes he would repeat the punch-line then bend over and slap his knee. He told actual knee-slappers! Then he’d segue into another story. And if he didn’t have another story ready, he’d comment on some current topic or comment on his beloved Kentucky Wildcats if it were sports season or just humming sound old-timey song. The whole time, he’s just going nuts on your hair, chopping away – and doing a good job of it, too!
Back at “The Finishing Touch,” I got put with a stylist named Rose. (Side note: the last time I encountered a woman named Rose in a public place, she was a waitress at Steak ‘n Shake and my friend AniMal asked her if she masturbated). Rose seemed a little put off by her job and looked like she could have been the Bride of Frankenstein had her hair stood 3 feet off her head. Luckily for her, her hair was pretty short and well-styled, as a stylist’s hair should be. She seemed hesitant, asking me if my previous stylists/barbers used scissors or trimmers for trimming the sides and back. She tried to initiate some small-talk but after the first five minutes she went silent. I guess that’s when I knew it wasn’t going to be a very good hair cut. She plowed away for a while longer, trimming and cutting very precisely. There was no finesse when she trimmed the back of my neck – in fact, she hit a mole with the trimmers which caused it to bleed. I didn’t notice until she said something about it and I could tell she seemed nervous about the whole affair. “I end up doing it to all the guys who come in; I don’t know why.” Guess it’s my own fault for going to a place where mostly women get their hair cut. Just when I thought she was done, she started trimming away again, trying to make it perfect. She must have gone on for another 10 minutes.
When it was all said and done, she did a pretty good job. I tipped her as I left (which I always do… always try to make friends with someone who uses scissors within inches of your head). My hair looked good but I felt kind of gypped. Thirty minutes of sitting in the chair and I had nothing to take away from it. I had to think a long time before I came up with that Bride of Frankenstein comment. One should come out of a haircut with a feeling of camaraderie and an over-all feeling of anticipation about getting to come back in a few weeks. Next time I’ll look for a place with the red-and-white striped pole spinning out front and an old codger of a barber inside.
p.s. - As far as I still know, Russ still lives in Crestwood, KY. He doesn’t have his barber shop anymore, but still give haircuts to his long-time clients out of the back of his house. He wrote a collection of his stories entitled “The Making of God’s Little Barber (and Life in the Barber Shop)” which you can purchase here: http://www.oldhamcounty.com/book/
Leave your response