AT A street corner, I overheard a dad talking to a little boy as I passed by. The tiny face had turned ashen when his papa announced a trip to the barber. Now I imagine this has got to be one of a few pronouncements in a growing boy’s life that emits a special kind of chill worthy of cringe whenever it’s spoken out.
At least in mine, it once did. But I’m at once reminded, I come from a century and ages ago and in my mind written in bold letters, it reads like that exactly. I might as well be on another planet.
However, when one talks about impact, any first time in anything, much less the first haircut, has got to be so impressionable enough that it creates a dent in anyone’s psyche, especially in a young mind.
As for me, I might have been that little boy in the corner. Surely, from his whitened look, this wasn’t a pleasant first time.
In all of perhaps sixty-something years, I must have held a silent fascination for all things related to barber-ism, from its odd traditional spiraling-down barber’s pole, with its red, white and blue design by the entrance, up to the special contraption called a barber’s chair which could revolve and recline at crazy angles… Not to say, the different personalities that had at one time, held me by the hair.
Among all my siblings growing up in Ponciano Street, who could ever forget Pablo Barbero (at least during my childhood, I actually thought that was his family name).
A silent hulk of a man whose only words I heard from out of his mustachioed mouth was when he complained to my brother, who came by to inquire what took me so long, I had been fidgeting so much, his razor left several tiny trails in my head.
As though that had not been threatening enough, his barbershop was located almost in front, across the street from my grandparents where we lived during the early days.
And almost every two weeks, all our parents had to do was point in Pablo’s direction, and we’d grudgingly head that way to sit and wait on his bench by the entrance.
Segueing to the late teen years leading to college, the white side-wall trims of high school‘s early years might have given way to little or no haircut. (But yet again, I reckon it must be all different nowadays.)
No matter, during those times in the 70s, the barbers’ faces have been all but a blur for us. To consider having a gentleman’s trim, as my father used to describe what it was to look decent, had been the farthest thing from our minds.
When eventually our rebel years were over, and along the way it was time for another first-ever moment, looking for a job. It was by then you realize, an invisible finger this time, seems to once again point you toward the direction of the barber’s pole. Your father had been right all along.
While I can say in a way, I miss Pablo Barbero and his little run-down shock of a barbershop, I miss you more Pops pointing us in his direction.
