Month: July 2023

It’s Just Hair

/ ronnyjames / 2 Comments

It’s just hair. Is it? Is it really, just hair?

This morning I got a haircut at the same barbershop I’ve been using for the past three years. Invariably the first thing the barber will ask me is, “How would you like it cut, sir?” My answer is always the same: just a trim.

And yet…and yet, it’s never the same. Just about every six weeks I stop in at the same local shop, I take the first available seat, and the routine is always the same. A little small talk, generally about the weather; perhaps that I’m retired and can come in early in the day, oh? Your wife is still working?  how are your children—grandchildren, what do you think of this or that current topic? 

And then, always, every single time: your hair is very thick (meaning hard to cut). Yes I know, it’s a blessing, thank you Mom. But when we are finished, it’s always a mystery, a bit like Monty Hall and the reveal: what’s behind Door Number One? Always different. 

My older brother has sandy blond, curly hair. My younger brother has wavy hair, not blond but not quite brown, though all of us sport more gray these days. My hair used to look more like my late Dad’s, dark and full, though he wore it longer than I do and he styled it a bit like Elvis Presley, swooping it back with a generous amount of VO5 cream. I’m salt and pepper now, or “mostly gray” (it was a shock to see that on my drivers license description), and I keep it short. But I never know what it will look like on leaving the barbershop.

This morning I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation of the patron seated in the chair next to me. He carried on quite a dialog with the barber (stylist?) and it was obvious he wasn’t happy with the progress. Fearful of cutting it too short—she had been warned of that—it seemed now it wasn’t short enough. And uneven. He continued to guide and direct the process even after I had finished and was on my way up front to pay. But I noted that he let her know that he would be returning (this was his first visit) and that he expected they would get to know one another, his expectations, how best to achieve the desired goal. Looking good!

It’s been quite a sport of mine wondering what my haircuts would look like when finished. And really? I’m fine with however they turn out. Hairs grows fast and I generally wear a baseball cap anyway. My sympathies are with those guys who are follicularly-challenged: hopefully they aren’t paying the same amount that I do, or at least they get the hot towel and neck rub after the buzz cut. Where are you with your cuts? Very particular in how it’s styled or comme ci, come ca? Do you always make an appointment for the same stylist or do you take the next available chair? It’s just hair, right?

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

The musical Hair, 1967, lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni. Broadway poster from postermuseum.com

More Trees than Time

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Whether it was growing up in Nevada, or just that we always had a home with a fireplace, it seems our summers included cutting firewood. Not necessarily cutting down trees, but cutting downed trees into fireplace-lengths, loading them into our truck, and then unloading and stacking the wood alongside the house when we got back home. 

A cord of wood is measured 4 ft x 4 ft x 8 ft long. Dad liked to have at least two cord split, stacked, and ready for winter before summer ended. As I recall our chevy pickup could hold at the most, maybe one-third to one-half cord? Along with his chainsaw, a five gallon gas can, a wheelbarrow to carry the wood back to the truck and a tool box—that didn’t leave much room for wood. But with the sideboards fitted into place on the truck we could carry quite a bit. Nevertheless, enough wood for burning during the winter generally meant 5-6 weekends spent in the forests north and west of Reno during our school summer vacation.

Though my older brother was only a year older than me, he was larger. I imagine that is why Dad eventually let him use the chainsaw. My job was always to be the carrier, carting the cut pieces of wood back to the truck and “stacking” them so as to maximize what we could bring back. All the work and none of the glory of being a junior lumberman!

Last year we hired a crew to take down four very large trees on our cottage property. These were oaks, walnut, and poplar trees, dense hard wood. I’ve let them lie in place for a year as they dried out and I figured out how to best to deal with them. 

I bought a Craftsman ten inch electric chainsaw from Lowes in the fall and started cutting off the smaller limbs and branches and stacking them to burn in our fire pit. 

As one would expect, the small saw proved ineffective when it came to cutting up the tree trunks. I hoped to buy a larger gas powered saw through one of the estate sales we love to shop. That didn’t work out, they generally sold for more than what I wanted to pay for a used piece of equipment.

So this year I finally bought a new chainsaw. It’s 16 inches, not a beast but it can definitely cut through some wood! 

I came across an old photo of my niece out with her Grandpa cutting wood. I wasn’t surprised to see that Dad had continued to collect wood for the fireplace (which by then had been outfitted with a fireplace insert). The photo is likely from the late 1980s, Dad had to be in his sixties by then. It’s gratifying to see that he was still at it, though undoubtedly my brother was there alongside him to help load the truck. I think more than gathering firewood, Dad enjoyed spending time in the woods. It was rugged life that I didn’t appreciate at the time. But the longer I am out with our own small forest, delimbing fallen trees and clearing paths, the more I find I am like him. I still have more trees than time ahead of me and there is work to do. Time to get to it.