Dead American icon alive and well in En Zed

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I needed to get my hair cut. At home I usually just go to Jiffy Cut or Minute Lube, or one of those places. You know, the ones where the skanky single mothers work, with pictures of their twenty seven kids on the wall. It usually takes me about two weeks to get this job done. That’s because I just stop in and if they can get me in instantly I stay. If not I leave until the next time I happen to be passing by. I don’t do appointments. Needless to say, I get my money’s worth out of a haircut.

On one of her nightly walks, Cynthia told me she found a barber shop down the street. A barber shop. If someone offered me $10,000 at home to tell them where a barber shop was, I’d be out of luck. I have not been to a barber shop in probably thirty years. I forgot how great these places are. You walk in and there’s hair all over the place, and everything is painted white. Looks like about 20 coats. The floor is black and white linoleum tiles in a checkerboard pattern. There’s straight razors and strops hanging on the wall, and not a hair dryer in the house. The magazines are perfect. Fishing, hunting, guns and cars. There’s not a single copy of Redbook, or that Oprah magazine, nothing that has to do with Martha Stewart, and they don’t give a shit about Britney Spears’ bastard of the week. Usually when you get your hair cut (or your teeth fixed, or your prostate examined) all there is in the office is the above. I’m stuck with having to read some golf magazine.

In front of the chair there is a display cabinet selling Zippo lighters and flints, safety razors and blades, and pipe cleaners. There’s also the cast of local characters that have nothing better to do than hang out at the barber shop bitching about the government (doesn’t matter which party is in “power”), and talking about last night’s rugby game. It’s not even weird when the man cutting your hair trims your ear hairs and digs out the cuttings with his finger. This is the last bastion of man-ness. The last sanctuary where women aren’t allowed. After all, the sign in the window says “Men’s Haircuts”.