I need to get a haircut.

My hair is fairly thick (I know, I know, it’s a curse I’ll just have to live with) and so it grows pretty quickly.  The problem is that my hair will look fine, look fine, look fine and then I’ll wake up one morning with this giant puff of hair that has begun to curl back on itself and in one 12 hour period I’ve gone from looking like Brad Pitt to Bea Arthur.  (Ok, I’ve never looked like Brad Pitt, but the Bea Arthur thing is pretty spot on – God rest her soul).

So, much of my life had been spent feeling pretty good about myself and then waking up one morning and realizing that I had less than 3 hours to get a haircut before I start looking like I’ve been electrified.

Luckily, my hair is pretty easy to cut and my personal standards are relatively low.  I’m not looking for anything special; I just need it to be shorter.  So, this gives me the ability to go just about anywhere and so I tend to choose places based on one criteria: availability.  Are they close by and can they take me.

So, I’ve been to the hair cuttery in the mall.  I’ve been to women’s only beauty parlors where they always try to get me to “product” in my hair.  I’ve been to black barbershops and barbershops run by 90 year old white men.  I’ve gotten a trim at a men’s only shop that had a stack of playboys in the magazine rack and in an old lady beauty salon where Guiding Light blared at full volume.  I’ve had a pretty full range of barber experiences.  There was the lady who had no idea what she was doing who took over an hour to cut my hair and the guy who cut the whole thing in under 5 minutes using only a pair of electric clippers. 

I tell you this because I think that my wide range of barbering experiences gives me the right to tell you about the best Barber I ever had.

His name was Mr. Wilson and he was my next door neighbor when I lived in the small town of Itta Bena, Mississippi.

Mr. Wilson was a character.  He was in his seventies, if not older, but he still dyed his hair jet black with what, I can only assume was used motor oil.  He also dyed his little moustache, but never died his eyebrows which were bright white.  This led to an eerie effect that had you staring at his face, knowing that something wasn’t quite right, but not being able to figure out what it was.

One of my earliest memories of him was a few weeks after we had moved in.  One of my roommates was doing dishes when she looked out the window and called me over.  There was Mr. Wilson out in his backyard mowing the lawn, which was a normal enough thing to do, except Mr. Wilson was wearing a t-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and a sombrero.

This initially lessened my desire to have the man cut my hair, but eventually my hair grew to the point that I was starting to frighten small children and I knew it was time to bite the bullet and head down to Mr. Wilson’s barbershop.

He had been cutting hair for 5 decades when I went in for my first cut.  He sat me down in a chair that was somewhere between a gorgeous antique and a piece of junk.  He covered me with a sheet that might have been WWII surplus and pulled out a long tube that looked like something used to keep Darth Vader on life support.

This was his grand invention.  He had taken a pair of electric clippers and duct taped it to a vacuum hose so that as soon as the hair was cut, it got sucked out into his shop vac.  This process was loud and a little strange, but I’ll be darned if it didn’t work.  

He would turn the vacuum on and trim away, with virtually no mess to clean up and none of those little hairs falling down your neck and making you itch.  The man was a genius – a mad genius perhaps, but a genius none the less.

After the vacuum powered trim, he would get down to the process of doing the detail work of cutting your hair with the scissors and comb that had been sitting in that jar of weird blue liquid.  While he cut, he would tell story after story about his kids, his military service, or the time when the town had a pool before they filled it in to keep it from being integrated.

He loved telling stories and having someone to tell them to.  My favorite tale was when he talked about how the barbershop had once been used in a movie – “Ode to Billy Joe”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074995/

He was very proud of this fact, although I wondered if he had ever seen the movie.  We of course, went right out and rented it and I was very surprised to find that this little barbershop had actually been used as the front for a whore house in the film and that the film itself was about a Mississippi boy who kills himself after coming to terms with his homosexuality.

Not exactly the kind of film I bet this sleepy conservative town thought was being made about them.

After the conversation and the trim, Mr. Wilson would take an old metal cup, run some hot water in it and use a brush to whip up a lather of foam.

I had no idea what this man was doing.

I remember clearly the first time he did it.  He lowered my seat back, covered my neck in lather and pulled out a straight razor – you know, the kind Sweeny Todd used to kill people.  He sharpened it on a leather strop and then pushed my chin up.

I have to admit, my heart stopped for a beat, but a few seconds later I was still alive and had the cleanest shave I’ve ever had in my life.

Mr. Wilson sat me up, brushed me off and turned to an antique wooden cash register.  Above it was a sign that said:

“Haircuts $5.00” but the 5 had been crossed out and a 7 written over it.

I guess inflation hits everybody. 

So, I paid my $7.00 threw in a generous $3.00 tip (42%!) and thanked him for the cut.

After that, I never went anywhere else in Mississippi for a haircut and even after we moved away, I would stop by whenever we came back to visit. 

A couple of years ago, I stopped by and Mr. Wilson’s barbershop was vacant.  I stopped by his house and it too seemed empty.  Clearly Mr. Wilson had made his last cut.

Now, I have three kids and most of my haircuts take place in a children’s barbershop sitting next to my kids and watching Dora the Explorer.  I don’t really mind.  Like I said, my hair’s easy to cut and at this point, I’m just happy to find the time to get it done, but I sure do miss Mr. Wilson.  He was a living connection back to a different age, an age that for 30 minutes, was a wonderful place to visit.

I bet Bea Arthur would approve.

What's lef of Mr. Wilson's Barbershop  / Movie Whore House