This Small Town is full of the touching, the humorous, the unusual, the bizarre, history, progress, backward ideas and people, love, family, faith, and honor. It is worthy of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to write about from time to time. If it isn't worthy, then it is at least of interest -- albeit morbid curiosity in most cases. These are the stories of the small towns I grew up in and now live in.
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The spinning red, white and blue signifies that the barbershop is open for business. Inside, the atmosphere is calm, laid back, slow even, but not slow in a bad way; slow as in the way life should be.
There is time to talk here, catch up on the family, find out how the new job is going. Voices mingle with the soft clip of the scissors, the gentle hum of the clippers. In this small town there are six barbers open for business on any given day. They start early, some around 6 a.m., and some work late, up to 9 p.m.
Inside the first shop I visited for the day, the one barber was suspicious. "What are you doing this survey for?" he wanted to know.
"It's not a survey!" the other barber shouted at him. "She's doing a story! A STORY! For the PAPER!"
The other barber eyed me with an air of disgust and turned back to his work. When I left, after speaking to his 70-something-year-old business partner, I couldn't help but laugh.
If the distrust in the one barber wasn't enough, the comment by the first barber that: "The Beatles practically put barbers out of business." sent me over the edge in a fit of giggles.
The next day I was giggling again, this time as an old-time barber expressed disgust at a fellow barber who used modern cutting equipment.
"You have to be careful, being so close to the brain and all," he told me.
Later he added his brain had taken it's own trauma a few years back when a car ran over him while he was on his motorcyle.
"When somethin' happens to your brain, it's just not the same from then on," he said.
Oddly enough, I understood what he meant.
Hosted by Cecily and Sue
