The Barbershop - Man's Last Refuge

By Emmett Burnett
I belong to an exclusive male only organization. It has a clubhouse where political issues are debated, economic problems solved, and deer hunting strategies exchanged. It is the Southern barbershop, man’s last refuge.

Sadly, the barbershop, with its icon barber pole of red, white, and blue stripes, is vanishing. Barbers are being replaced by la-de-da hair stylists. They wear smocks and give haircuts with hands softer then a baby’s behind. This hair technician works not from shops but in neat and clean “parlors.” Stay away from me.

Give me the barbershop. Where a man is still a man and flattops with butch wax rule. These guys are serious about your tresses or lack there of. A bald guy doesn’t just receive a haircut; he gets his head buffed. Feels so good on a crisp fall day. Want a shave? Lay back in the chair and stay very still, my barber’s shave is the next thing to surgery.

He uses a tool that may be banned in the Obama administration, a straight razor. First he stokes the razor across a leather strap rendering it sharp enough to slice a gnats’ wing. While engaging conversation with other customers, the razor master waves the deadly instrument through the air like a Jedi Knight in battle and effortlessly rakes it across your chin. One careless stroke could decapitate you. Only use an experienced barber for this shave. It’s easy to tell an inexperienced one, his razor is blood stained.

But haircuts and shaves are only part of this club. We come here to read the 1978 editions of Field and Stream. We gaze in amusement as the ceiling fan stirs fallen clippings of fluffy locks causing them to dance across the room like little bunnies. We gather with total strangers and discuss every topic under the sun as inhibitions and hair falls to the floor.

I always schedule my haircuts for deer hunting season. “How big was the buck you shot?” one patron asked another. “It was huge!” another replied. Others join in with reports of monster deer they too have slain. Each story gives a bigger and bigger antlered trophy. The exaggerations continue until we are no longer shooting deer but water buffalo.

“You should have seen the one that got way from me,” I tell the assembly from my barber chair perch. “It was so big, bullets wouldn’t’ bring it down. I used a bazooka.” I totally made that story up but if they can lie I can too.
As mentioned, barbershops will soon give way to the Fantastic Sam’s of the world. Barbers will no longer offer political advice, town news, medical diagnosis, and guns and ammo selections but will instead be “technicians” offering hair trims and something called a manicure.

I suggested to my barber “why don’t you offer manicures?” “Sure” he replied, reaching for his straight razor, “hold out your hand.” I withdrew my suggestion.
Should they leave us, we will miss the old fashioned barbershop. But that’s progress, hair today gone tomorrow.