The Barber and His Joke!

(Inspired by real events)(Summer of 1954)



Harry the barber, had a little shop down on Jackson Street, by the open market, in St. Paul, Minnesota, back in the summer of 1954, he was giving me a haircut (as often he had in the past), I was seven years old at the time, my brother Mike, two years older than I, was standing around waiting, he had just finished his. And the old barber liked playing jokes on boys—jokes like he was going to play on me.
He told me that he’d put some shaving cream on my face. Like men do, see how I looked, how it felt. And I let him do it. Then he said abruptly, with a sneer to his voice, “You’ll now grow whiskers.” Just like him. And he laughed half-heartedly, as I looked in the mirror and at him, and at my brother. And I didn’t laugh. It made me awfully worried, and I had tears in my eyes, yet he kept on with the joke— even so. And I got angry, and jumped out of the barber’s chair.
“It’s just a joke, that’s all it was,” said my brother Mike.
And now the barber acknowledged also, that it was just a joke, and no more than that. And insisted that it wouldn’t do, what he claimed it would do, make me grow whiskers (hoping I’d get back into the chair and let him finish with the haircut). And he quickly wiped my face clean. But I wouldn’t believe one, meaning, my brother or the barber—it would seem they worked together on this, although it was the barber’s joke, and Mike just went along with it, until he saw the tears. Nonetheless, I would not get back into the barber’s chair.
Well, I didn’t grow whiskers, and I didn’t die. And then I made up my mind I’d never get my haircut from him again, and I didn’t. (And he didn’t charge full price for the haircut.)


No: 536 (12-2-2009) SA