Settling a Score by BuzzBarber

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I remember it as though it were yesterday, despite the fact that it happened in 1979 or 1980. While it didn’t change my desire to eventually shave my head, it did teach me a valuable lesson about parenting, and how NOT to punish a child.

At the time I was in my mid-teens, and my dad would bring me to an all-male barbershop to have my hair cut. This place was definitely a male bastion, but it had kind of hybridized itself in the men’s “hairstyling” trend of the 1970s. The shop was built with a series of partitions for each of the barbers, who wore golf shirts or Mexican-style Guayabera shirts. While one could have a clipper cut, in the typical style of the day most asked for and received well-crafted scissor cuts that were finished off with clippers. Even though some of us cringe at this now, this was definitely au courant, and you actually had to admire these barbers both for there precision cuts as well as their ability to survive the barber profession’s “dark days” of the 1970s.

My barber, Burt, was a very nice man and a gifted barber, and he would cut my very thick hair while my Dad’s barber tightened up his modified military cut, which was very businesslike. One Saturday in August I was waiting my turn, when I heard a man in Burt’s cubicle asking him to give an induction cut to his son, who was no older than 10 or 12. He spouted off that the child had misbehaved, and no only was he grounding him, he was making sure that the kid saw the consequences of his behavior every time he looked in the mirror. I really felt sorry for the kid, and not only because he was going to start school with no hair on his head, at a time when such a look was definitely not the norm. His father was very openly abusive to him in public – both physically and verbally – to the point that the child cringed like a whipped puppy when his father came near. You could see terror in this child’s eyes, of a sort that could only come from living with an absolute tyrant.

When the father went to sit down near me in the waiting area, it was apparent why he was acting so abrasively. He reeked of stale alcohol, and it was obvious that he was very intoxicated. At that point my father’s barber, who owned the shop, told the father that he would appreciate his respect for the fact that his employees were craftsmen, and that he would not abide such scenes in his shop. The father profanely gave the owner a piece of his mind; and to the owner’s credit he not so subtly “suggested” that the father wait outside until Burt finished cutting the boy’s hair. Burt took his time with the boy, and walked out about 20 minutes later with the boy’s hair beautifully cut in a short (for the time) style that was appropriate for the child. The father walked right in and exploded into yet another tirade, saying that he wanted his kid’s head shaved bald, and that he wasn’t leaving or paying the barber until he saw the boy’s bare scalp. As the child protested the father hit the child with a force that knocked him over. At this point, a large and muscular man who had also been in the waiting area instructed the father that he was not only a off-duty policeman, but that he was going to arrest him for both child abuse and being drunk and disorderly if he did not pay for the haircut and leave immediately, and that he had better not see him driving away in his present state of intoxication. The father paid and as soon as he was outside he let loose with a storm of profanity flowing from his mouth like an open sewer.

After this little episode Burt started cutting my hair, while the owner finished my father’s cut and started on the policeman. All the while we were talking about how sad the poor kid’s life must have been with such an abusive father. Right about the time Burt was finishing my cut, the drunken father stormed in, leading his son by the ear. Tears streaming down the boy’s face, as he had not a hair on his head.

“Now see here you candy-assed jerk, I’M the kid’s father, and what I say, goes! You can’t stop ME from giving him the punishment that I say he deserves! And don’t you forget, I’M his father - I make the rules!” And with that he slammed the child against the wall and said, “And you! Quit that crying before you turn into a damn pansy!”

Little did he know that the policeman was right behind him, standing in the small doorway of the cubicle. The policeman turned to me and said, “Young man, would you mind getting out of the chair for a minute?” I looked up to Burt, who said, “Go ahead Dave, just keep the cape on and wait in the owner’s cubicle.” I did as I was told, and I could overhear some words from the policeman that were in hushed tones but obviously strongly worded, followed by a sort of odd yelp and moan from the father. In the meantime, my father joined me and said to stay quiet and out of the line of action, to avoid being hurt if things got out of hand. The owner quietly called the police to send in reinforcements. We heard some struggling going on, interspersed with some strange mechanical sounds.

The ruckus seemed to die down about the time that the uniformed policemen arrived, and when we peered out of the cubicle in which we took refuge, it was apparent what had happened. Not only was the policeman having the father arrested for the drunken driving (not such a big deal in those days), disturbance of the peace and child abuse that the officer had witnessed with his own eyes, he had seen fit to have Burt administer an additional measure of justice on the father, by having his hair clipped to the scalp, just like his son’s. Just like his son, the father had tears streaming down his face from the humiliation of being given a forced haircut.

When the investigating officer asked my father for a statement, he included the “fact” that the drunken father had asked for “father-son haircuts – just like I had in the military.” I remember him winking to me after he finished that statement. I never knew my father to lie – not ever – either prior to nor after that incident. But after that day I had an even greater admiration for not only my father, but for the other gentlemen who worked in and frequented that barbershop. Perhaps the shaved head that I wear today is in part a tribute to that poor boy, of whom I have thought of often in the ensuing years.

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