I still get a haircut.
About every three weeks
a trim and a beard-shaping.
Another regular chore done
on a quiet day.
Business-like and professional.
No complaints, always the same
and just routine.
But it was not always like that.
With no effort at all I can
pull up the smell and sounds
of Greg's Barber Shop.
I guess the right name was
the Columbian Barber Shop
because it was in the Columbia Hotel.
It was right down town
across from George Heap's Cigar store.
In the old days good men gathered there
on a Saturday morning.
There were several bars close by
for the bad men.
The barber pole slowly rotated
when the shop was open.
The plate glass window front looked
out onto the busy street.
Two painted benches for seating
while waiting your turn
were separated by a table.
The table was piled high with copies
of Field and Stream, Colliers,
Life and Saturday Evening Post.
Someone may have read from that pile
on weekdays.
But Saturday was the day for the blue collars
to come in to talk .
They had no time to read when they could talk.
When clipped, combed and scented, men would return
to those seats to continue the conversation.
When there were boys with fathers
Greg had rule about language.
No swearing and girly talk!
The rules were so clean and strict
that it made the Hayes Office
look as if Larry Flynn were running it.
There was no war yet,
political talk was domestic.
Everyone was a Roosevelt man.
If anyone was a Al Landon man
he had his hair cut on a weekday.
Greg at his chair always had the center of the stage.
With his snipping scissors as pointers
he lectured like a professor.
His favorite theme was the wonder of the
Republican judge we sent to congress.
He sure was good at getting the Democrats
to send projects to the county.
The CCC camp on the outskirts of town
a fine example
and there was the Memorial Square
that as about finished.
Never heard it called :pork".
If there was a miner waiting,
he was sure to ask what the judge
had done for UMW.
Ludlow was always fresh for one of the waiting men.
Greg ended each hair cut asking:
"Bay Rum or Lilac?"
My father always was a Bay Rum man
Lilac was for sissies or courting gents.
When it was my turn I sat as quietly as possible,
not crying out when the clippers pulled.
I too selected Bay Rum
for who wanted to be a sissy?
There was no charge for the Bay Rum or Lilac.
It came with the haircut.
Two bits for the works,
35 if you got a shave.
And when I now see in a movie
the barber asking Clint Eastwood
if he wants Bay Rum for a dime extra,
I know it is not a Depression haircut
in Greg's Barber shop.
Doug Minnis
June 28, 2009