BUZZED

Men got their hair cut in barber shops in the 1950s. No salons, no stylists, just barbers- plain and simple. They always seemed to be Italians, too. Real men with names like Joe or Lou or Frank.
My barber shop was in Woodbury, a short walk from Nanny and Pop-Pop's house across the railroad tracks. It was a small, red brick, flat-roofed building owned by a man named Mike. Mike was a soft-spoken man. A nice guy with a mustache, and yes, he was Italian. I always wanted Mike to cut my hair. The other barber in the shop was named Lou or Joe. He was Italian too, and he also had a mustache. He didn't talk too much and he always had bad breath.
Mike's barber shop was a man's place. It smelled of hair tonic and talcum powder and cigar smoke. You sat waiting your turn- there were no appointments- in red vinyl chairs with chrome frames while looking at those prints of dogs playing poker and shooting pool. I read magazines I'd never seen before; magazines like Argosy:stories written by real men to be read by real men.
You sat in those reddish brown barber chairs with thick white trim, big wide head rests , heavy metal foot rests and thick padded arms. The chair was pumped up high like you were a car on some lift in a gas station's service bay.
The shop had little pictures of different types of haircuts you could get, but there were really only two: a regular cut where your hair was trimmed at the sides and left longer on top so you could comb it, or you had it clipped short all the way round.
When I got my hair cut it was always a crew cut, a flat top, a serviceman's buzz. My hair was unruly with four cowlicks that couldn't be tamed, wouldn't be parted, would never lie down. I always looked like some marine headed for a troop train on his way to boot camp. When that Lou or Joe guy cut it, I looked even worse.
When I was in the Fourth grade I decided that enough was enough, and I'd be like everyone else and get a regular hair cut and comb my hair and look less like a fuzzy-haired geek. I had it cut short on the sides and back and around my ears, and I was ready to part and comb my hair like a real man. Only thing was, my part wasn't straight, it was crooked and even worse than that, it was hard to find. Those darned cowlicks were ruining everything, and defeating my efforts to keep it combed down. There were no gels or mousses; just greasy stuff like Brylcreem or Vitalis, and a little dab wasn't gonna do it for me. I'd use the whole tube or bottle if I had to, and I did; plastering my hair down into a hard impenetrable shell that was impossible to move.
But those cow licks of mine were evil. They had a life of their own, and there was no taming them. On my walk to school they'd push their way up through the layers of grease and oil, so at the end of my trek I had four hairy horns protruding from my head. After a month of this insanity I abandoned my attempt at conforming and went back to getting scalped.
After I had my hair cut, Mike or Joe or Lou would trim the back of my neck with a real straight razor. I could hear the scraping of it as it removed the top layer of my skin. They'd slap some kind of stinging tonic on me, and brush me off in a cloud of talcum powder. No matter how much they brushed you off, your back and neck still itched from the thousands of little hairs still remaining.
There was just one more thing.
Before you could get out of the chair and pay the bill and be on your way they'd take this stuff, I don't know what it was, but it was pink and waxy and kind of greasy, and they'd rub it into the front row of my scalp.
When they were finished, it made the front of my hair stick straight up in the air.
Yeah, like I needed any help with that.