The first chair

[gurdonark]

The barbershop in the town where I went to high school was located in the old hotel. The hotel, like a lot of hotels, thrived when auto travel was unproductive enough to require overnight trips for the shortest drives. But by the time I was a teen, the hotel's zenith had passed, and the satellite was hurtling back to earth.

The barber who owned the place had a steady, loyal clientele, who came for haircuts which cost three dollars and fifty cents. Like all good barbershops, the place was alive with copies of "Field and Stream" and "Popular Science". The conversation in the barbershop varied, but never strayed far from politics, pick-up trucks, and hunting dogs.

I always liked the fellow who occupied the first chair. He was an older guy, who did not own a portion of the shop, but merely rented a chair from the owner. His clientele was not large and established. Indeed, the main barber's clients would wait for a long while for their chosen barber to get free, even as Mr. First Chair stood idle.

I like to make a virtue of convenience, though, so that I always hopped into the First Chair. I don't recall the first chair barber as a man of many words. He instead largely got about the task of cutting hair. But I do remember him as a man with a zeal for his craft. So much zeal, in fact, that one often left with so much less hair than one arrived bearing that one had to wonder if zeal might not be tempered with mercy upon one's scalp.

In my family, the phrase First Chair came to have its own meaning. A "First Chair" haircut meant a haircut in which one came out looking part Marine, part besieged.
"You need a First Chair haircut" or "go to the barbershop---First chair!" became a way of saying that one could use the spit and polish that only the shears with very, very low numbers can provide.

To this day, when I am a bit out of sorts, I think that all I really need to snap back into better performance and better attention is a solid First Chair haircut. The First Chair barber is no longer there. I hope he is out growing black-eyed peas on a little house in the country. Perhaps he has gone on to his shear reward. For that matter, the hotel is gone, and the local barber is in a little cinderblock and drywall building. Everything changes, as it all passes in a murmur of earthworm farms in the back of magazines.

My life now consists of convincing people in chains with cute names to cut my hair as if I sat in the very First Chair.

Comments

[laruth.livejournal.com]

What a great story! I love the "You need a First Chair haircut" phrase. Thanks for sharing that story.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I must have taken into account your haircut thing, because I sat and wrote this not that long after reading yours. It is really a slice of Americana, a trip to a small town barbershop.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

that evokes a whole era for me. i'm seeing my own small town as it used to be, with a hotel that probably was more boarding house but somehow seemed exotic among the houses on its street. i like the way "first chair" became a family code word. :)

[mouchette.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough I took Eva for her first chair haircut just this Tuesday. Her hair was very long and very thick and I adored its messy shinyness but still, it was time. I talked to her about it beforehand and she took it very seriously. I said if she sat nice and still she would be 'rewarded' later. She took me at my word and sat like a statue (the hairdresser commented on it). She got a reward. And she looks very swish now. Though I do miss her wild locks ...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love that expression: "very swish", although it means something somewhat different here than there. Kid haircuts! I love those chains in which the kids get to sit in fire engines or rocket ships as the barber works.

[mouchette.livejournal.com]

Eva would love one of those seats. We don't have them here except in very very expensive Kings Road type kids toy stores. My little darling was happy watching all the old ladies getting their curlers in and sitting on her high chair wrapped in a doggy patterned blanket. You should have seen her ...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like that small town kinda thing, and I'll bet some such hotels and barbers are still out there...lots of them, and it gives me hope, a bit.

[arcanum-dogma.livejournal.com]

when i was a teen, my Father and i went to this Italian barber (family tradition, my Mother's Grandfather was an Italian barber for most of his life - excluding the period where he was most likely a Sicilian mafia goon) on Liberty Rd in Randallstown. this barber only knew one hairstyle but he knew it well and for 5 bucks. now, at prices upwards of 40 dollars, i'm getting far less than that 5 dollar cut.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

yes, exactly. Those 5 dollar hair cuts really were good!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

You, sir, are a lucky man. I used to have one like that in Balch Springs, but now I'm far too far away from Mesquite/Balch Springs to use him. 5 dollars, he was, in a tiny shop on a little hill by the rodeo.