Haircutters and Me

My haircutter history

When a was a curly tow headed two-year-old my hair drew a lot of attention. I’m told I was not happy with my first haircut. I bawled uncontrollably when my father took me to his barber shop, which amused the barber.  They finally gave me a cookie to shut me up. No, I don’t remember it,. My father did what he always did; he took pictures.

My father recounted my inauspicious beginning haircut story at family gatherings. Then my mother told another “heartwarming” tale about a young boy’s first trip to the barber with his grandfather whom he idolized.

“The barber asked him how he wanted his hair cut and he said, ‘just like Grampa!’ His grandfather was bald as a cue ball except for a fringe over the ears. And the barber, the mean thing, did it”

Everyone thought this hilarious, but I became secretly terrified of barbers. I remember barbers asking me how I wanted my hair cut and my father saying “high up on the side and back with enough to comb in the front.” I either had no opinion or it didn’t matter much.

When I was about ten the flattop crewcut was in style. I tried and tried, but no matter how much Pomade I used, my head was too round and the front too curly to ever create the fresh-trimmed hedge look.

When I was a teenager Edd Byrnes played “Kookie” on the TV show “77 Sunset Strip.” “Kookie,” Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers had longer hair swept back on the sides into a “DA” in the back (a hair style named for a duck’s posterior). I so wanted to be Kookie. I’d let my hair grow until I got the “Alan it’s time to get a haircut’ from my parents.

The minute I was in the barber’s chair it seemed that no matter what I said I was still Ray’s boy, :”high on the sides and back with a little to comb in the front.”

I went to college in a small town in Kentucky. There was one barber shop on Main Street with two sixty-ish barbers.. When I first went It was a weird experience. It was a Saturday and there were men hanging around talking. I sat an waited. After several guys who came in after me were called to a chair, I asked how long the wait was and was told to “wait my turn.”

I learned that people in town didn’t much like the college kids. Dorm-mates advised me to go mid-morning on Tuesday. The barbers weren’t any nicer, but with no one else in the shop they didn’t keep you waiting.

Neither barber listened at all to what I asked them to do. It waws like being Ray’s boy all over again with one difference. My hair has always been thick and curly. One way to deal with that as a cutter is to use thinning scissors, a kind of scissor that has teeth like a comb that cuts alternate chunks of hair. That allows the cutter to make thick hair more “manageable.” The problem is that the hair is of different lengths so about a week later all these ends stick up and the haircut looks like crap. After a couple of these experiences I asked the barber not to use thinning scissors.

“Are you telling me how to do my job, son?”

“No, sir. It’s just that the thinning scissors cuts unequally and it grows out funny.”

“Then you should get your hair cut more often, son.” This cracked the other barber up.

But he didn’t use thinning scissors. He used a straight razor cutting diagonally to layer the hair, which turned out to be worse.

My sophomore year, I was cast as one of the knights who kill Thomas Becket in T.S. Elliott’s “Murder in the Cathedral.” I was required to grow my first beard.

My beard was slow in coming in  and I’m blond so it wasn’t noticeable at first, but one Saturday I went for a haircut, There were catcalls as walked in the door.

I said I was “growing it for a play.”

One of the guys hanging around started sashaying around with limp wrists.

When I finally reached the barber chair the barber pointed to the shaving cream and a straight razor to howls from the room. He finally cut my hair without thinning scissors, but it wasn’t a pleasant visit.

My sophomore roommate Jack, a lanky city kid from Covington across the Ohio from Cincinnati. listened to my complaints and next time took me to his barber shop. It was a black barber shop owned by E.O. Jones with the kind of atmosphere later portrayed in the movie Barbershop.

E.O. had no trouble cutting my wavy hair, listened and cut as I asked with no thinning shears or razors. E.O. told stories and everyone in the barbershop audience cracked up. He also played the drums at the Green Street Church of God, the Blues Brothers movie-like church where Jack took me to services. E.O. took Jack and me under his wing and cut my hair for the rest of college.

In the seventies I experimented with many different hairstyles -long hair down my back with-belly-length beard, tight curled BeeGee permanent to go with my plaid bell bottoms. Then I got “into business” and did the whole “Dress for Success” neat trim through business school. In London I went not to barbers, but to the same hairdresser as my wife.

I found that hairdressers who cut both women’s and men’s hair were

1. More likely to listen to what I wanted and
2. They were better at their job – better cutters.

When I moved to Pittsburgh I went to Mico, a guy who cut my wife’s hair. Mico was a really good cutter and we had lively conversations. Mico cut my hair for fifteen years and we still keep in touch.

Mico is a storyteller, and I found a common-sense wisdom in many of his stories. I wrote some of his stories down. Now forty years later, he has given me permission to publish some of those stories in my upcoming books.

I moved to New York and went to a guy who was a good cutter, but all his stories were about the celebrities he knew. It wasn’t the same experience.

When we moved to New Jersey, Billie and I tried different salons and finally decided a stylist named Maureen. When we first met, Maureen rereferred to herself as a “Jersey Girl,” I suspect that fifteen years later she wouldn’t use that phrase. We laugh and talk for the forty-five minutes. She knows all about the houses we’ve owned, my children and grandchildren. I’ve heard tales of her daughter growing from Santa letters to graduating from college, and her friend who is a stunt man and body double for a Hollywood star. Maureen’s husband is my optician.

When I had my fall in 2018, Maureen came to our house to cut my hair when I couldn’t walk and after the surgery gave me the tough love advice that got me to quit whining and refocus on physical therapy, “Alan, you’ve got one job right now. Don’t fuck it up!”

Lessons from haircutting

I have been blessed with good haircutters and experienced the other end of the spectrum for comparison. Haircutting is a personal service, a luxury. There have been times in my life where I didn’t have the money for it and cut my own hair . . . badly.

But I have had years where every three or four weeks, I saw the same haircutter. I developed a loyalty to him or her. I had a relationship that was more than a business relationship.

I’ve been thinking. What can I learn from these relationships that might apply, not just to luxury personal services like hair-cutting, house-cleaning, and tailoring, but also to professional services, like accounting, law, and consulting, to teaching, and even to managing people. How can being a good haircutter make us better at our jobs?

Here are my thoughts:

1. Develop capability: First and foremost you have to be good at your job. I had loyalty to Mico and Maureen because they were good cutters. That capability bought forgiveness if a haircut didn’t work out right.

2. Listen to what your “client” wants. Sure you can “recommend,” even forcefully explain what they might try, if you have a track record of listening.

3. Be authentic. Bring your whole self to your work. Tell your stories, ask about the clients stories. Put personal value into the relationship.

4. Have fun. There will be days when you won’t feel great about your work. There will be days when your “client” isn’t having the best day, but on average the sense of fun in your job, in the relationship adds value. Shared laughter is relaxing – a release.

It seems there are lessons everywhere, if we are open to them, and you can also get a good haircut in the bargain.