One of my favorite places in the world is the barber shop. While that wasn’t always the case during my long haired mid teen years, as a little kid I loved my barber. Bill was a great guy. He had enough sense around the time I turned 10 to listen to what I asked for in the way of a haircut, and what my mother told him to do. And for the most part both of us were happy with the results, although my mother had some abnormal obsession in me not having any bangs, but that is beside the point. It also didn’t hurt that he had one of those old fashioned coke machines and I got a dime to get a bottle of soda after my hair cut was done. Of course this was in the days when the family-run gas station still ruled the countryside. And quickie marts and corporate monolith gas and grocery marts hadn’t moved too far from the cities.
Over time, my childhood barber [...]