Horse Hair

I got a haircut today. It has been quite a while since my last visit to Great Clips. I was starting to feel like the Wild Man of Borneo. I hate haircuts today as much as I did when I was little. Back then my dad performed the operation, usually on a Saturday afternoon. Whenever my brother, Steve, and I saw Dad get the clippers out of the hall closet, we high-tailed it out the front door to hide in the Russian Olive hedge that was in the front yard. By the way, the Russian Olive trees will soon be in bloom around here in Utah. They give off a sweet smell that immediately takes me back to my childhood. Their odor is magical stuff. But I digress.

At Great Clips this morning, and by the luck of the draw, I got Lillian, I think her name is, who usually does a good job. I saddled up in the chair, took off my glasses, and got comfortable. Lillian confirmed that I wanted a #4 on the sides and about half an inch off the top. Yes, that's great. Off she went, carefully blending with a #5 so I wouldn't have one of those Nazi-era ridge lines circumventing my head.

"Do you want it squared or rounded in the back?"

"You'd better make it rounded. I've got a couple of goofy cowlicks back there, as I'm sure you can see."

No kidding. Along my neckline on both sides in back my hair grows upward, while the hair between those two hairy whirlpools points downward with an odd duck-tail-like, pokey-out thing in the middle, hence the use of the #4 in the first place. I need to get it short enough to make all that mess disappear. I'd go for a full buzz cut except for the fact that I have this boney ridge running down the center of my head, front to back. If I got a buzz cut I'd look like a Klingon.

After some very skilled snipping and buzzing around the sides, Lillian moved to the top of my head and deftly lifted a line of hair pinched between her index and middle fingers. 

"Does that look like enough from the top?"

Now, keep in mind my glasses are in my shirt pocket. I'm nearly 55 years old, for crying out loud. I wear trifocals. I was sitting a good four feet from the mirror. That made my apparent image eight feet away. From that distance without glasses I could hardly tell it was me sitting across the way, let alone tell how much hair she was holding up.

"Yeah, that looks great."

I know exactly how people who can't read feel when they ask someone else to read a label for them at the grocery store because they 'left their glasses at home.'

All during the process, great tufts of hair fell onto my lap. Yikes! What's all that gray stuff? It looks exactly like . . . like . . . Flash back to when I was a kid. 

When I was four or five, my parents belonged to a square dancing club, or something. My mom got all dolled up in this puffy, turquoise colored dress, while my dad put on a western shirt and his favorite (only) Navajo bolo tie, which he still wears to this day at the age of 95. At the time, we lived in Window Rock, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. Well, back then everyone referred to it as the Navajo Reservation. It's still a reservation, but Navajo Nation sounds better. I remember clearly one night they dragged me along. Being a little kid, I was sleepy and whiny within minutes of arriving at the dance. Dad scooted six or eight old leather covered, padded folding chairs together, nose to nose, with a blanket over the top, forming a sleeping tent for me. It was real cozy. Besides that, it made a great fort.

This memory goes back to around 1958 or '59. Those padded folding chairs were ancient. I wouldn't be surprised if they were government surplus from the Spanish American War. I'm not kidding! I'm also guessing the old building where the dance was held was World War I vintage, maybe earlier. It was a rickety old barn-like structure made out of native stone. It's still standing, believe it or not. I don't know how. Even fifty years ago the old wooden floor bounced when the dance troupe really got revved up do-si-do-ing and promenading with great flourish. 

I clearly remember lying in my makeshift tent with my nose a couple of inches away from a hole in one of the padded seats. What's a little kid to do? Well, pull out the stuffing, of course. So I stuck my pinchy fingers in the hole and pulled out a big mat of this gray hair stuff. I popped out of that tent lickety-split as though I had pulled out a mouse. Dad was sitting right there, drinking some punch.

"Tommy, don't mess with that stuffing. It's old horse hair. Who knows how clean it is."

Today I was taken right back to that night long ago by the old gray horse hair looking fluff lying in my lap. Hmmm? I got to thinking. Maybe that stuffing in those chairs wasn't horse hair after all. Maybe some barber shop owner in Altoona had a stuffing contract with the Acme Padded Chair Company back in the day.