Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
I have learned during 44 years in the newspaper business that if I’m curious about something, the odds are good someone will eventually explain it to me without my ever having to ask.
Case in point:
I finally found out the other day that a buddy of mine’s hair looks like it does because he has decided to let it grow for two years. He has a couple of months to go, and his progress so far has been noticeable, but I had not asked about it.
One of our mutual friends said a bet is involved — $100 or $500, I forget exactly how much — but the guy denies that. So be it. It is what it is.
A lady friend of mine was complaining about her latest haircut.
“It’s a nightmare,” she said. “My bangs go in all different directions, and I have these swirls,” she said, twiddling one of them. They’re at the base of her neck at each side, and at first I thought she said they were “squirrels.” They did seem to be driving her nutty (or, perhaps, up a tree).
I actually thought her hair looked fine and told her that what some people consider attractive hair leaves me puzzled. They apparently want to look like they’ve just gotten out of bed after sleeping or whatever for 12 hours.
“Uh-uh,” she said, apparently knowing what type of maintenance is involved in that kind of look. “That takes too much trouble. I like wash, blow-dry, brush and go.”
A teacher friend of mine once me that in order to get to school at 8 a.m. looking properly coifed, she had to get out of bed at 3:30 or 4 in the morning to start working on her hair. Why? I haven’t asked, and she hasn’t enlightened me. I probably wouldn’t understand the answer, anyway.
I don’t have as much hair to contend with as any of the folks I’ve mentioned so far.
Most of what used to be on top of my head has migrated south for the coming winter to my ears, nose and chest. My ex-wife of 36 years ago used to be highly amused by the fact that she could find one hair, and one hair only, on the entire surface of my chest.
Back in 1970, I received what to this day remains the shortest haircut of my life, then decided to let my hair grow for one year. I made it nine months before giving up and having it cut again because I was unable to get even a brush through it.
Why, I have no idea, but neither my father, my mother, my grandmother, nor my uncle and great-uncle (both of whom were barbers) ever said a word about that. In those days, long hair was far more common among young men than it is even today.
I was present when another friend showed people his photo in his high school yearbook. One of them said, “She’s cute. What’s she look like today?” When he did have his hair cut to go into the Navy, his mother salvaged it, and it has been stored away.
Back in the day, my buddies and I used to frequent all of the area’s dance halls: the Sunset Lounge in Fort Ashby, the old Eagles home in Cumberland, the Knights of Columbus on Christie Road, the Stonehenge (Mack Smith’s place) up past Frostburg, the Ridgeley Fire Hall, the Attic in Keyser, the Blue Jay at New Creek ... you name it.
One of my friends was — and still is — of slender build and of medium height, and he had shoulder-length hair. One night, some guy came up behind him and asked him to dance.
My buddy turned around, gave the fellow a chance to see his fully-bearded face, and simply said, “No, thank you.”
That would have been OK, had it ended there. Only thing was, the same guy came back a half-hour later and asked him again.
To this day, regardless of where we meet, the first one of us to see the other always hollers, “Ya wanna dance?”
Oh ... and ... he invariably asks if I’m ever going to write about that episode. As I said at the outset, if you have a question, somebody will eventually answer it for you.
The same lady has been cutting my hair for a number of years now, and our routine varies little. I ask about her husband and daughter and grandkids, and a couple of mutual friends I rarely see, and we talk about golf and other things. It’s a pleasant 20 minutes or so.
After she finishes, she takes off the wrap, shakes it and asks, “OK, Jim?”
“Ruthie,” I tell her, “you’re a genius.”
Putting yourself in someone else’s hands for a haircut involves a certain amount of trust. I truth Ruthie implicitly to either “make me look human again” or “help me find my ears.”
But there’s another aspect to this sort of thing that most folks wouldn’t think of, right off:
A friend of mine said that when he was in Vietnam, the Viet Cong frequently tried to infiltrate their compound in the middle of the night. The troops had various ways of detecting and preventing this, and they usually worked.
“We heard them coming in one night,” he said, “and opened up on them with everything we had.”
They went out the next morning to survey the result and, “One of the VC we found hanging dead in the wire, naked as a jaybird, was our barber,” he said.
He explained that the Viet Cong commonly crawled through the wire naked. Any damage the barbs and hooks might cause Charlie’s skin was insignificant, regardless of the pain that might be involved, compared to the inconvenience of having his clothes hung up in it and the sounds that might cause.
“Day before,” my friend said, “I’d been sitting in his chair, and he had a straight razor at my throat.”
My buddy who’s gone nearly two years without a haircut is also a Vietnam veteran. As far as I’m concerned, he can let it grow as long as he wants, for whatever reason he wants, and I hope he wins his bet.
