RIP Jimmy the Barber

I've gotten many haircuts in the 25 years since I left my hometown, but you never forget your first barber. Mine was Jimmy the Barber, and today was the first time I'd gotten my hair cut since he died a few weeks ago.

From 2007:

On Saturday morning my dad would drop my brother and I off at Jimmy the Barber's for our haircuts, loudly proclaiming to Jimmy each time "Jimmy, I want them to have BOY haircuts." I don't know what he was scared of; I never once heard of Jimmy pissing off a father in town by giving a kid a beehive or something. Not once did I hear Jimmy look at a young buck and say "I'm gonna cut your hair like Strawberry Shortcake!" Then my brother and I would sit amongst the dozen or so 50 year old farmers in there, reading Reader's Digest while the old codgers shot the shit about tractors and crops and other shit we had no idea what they were talking about. After about three hours of waiting you'd get waved over to the chair by Jimmy (until I went to college I thought his last name was in fact "Thebarber") who would chop it all off in about 17 seconds, all while getting in what was a clinic on small talk "how you boys been playing ball this year how the team lookin saw your daddy rollin overB attery the other day yeah he's a good ol boy which one are you, part or no part whatchu say whatchu say bout it boy" BAM! taking off the shower curtain wrapped round your neck, you're outta the chair. I'd wonder what went on over at some girl named Robin's shop, where all my rich friends got their hair cut. Sorry, styled. I'd picture over at Robin's there's a real-life Pizza Hut buffet set up while girls in pajamas would come over and dance along to J. Geil's "Centerfold", wildly applauding each snip of the scissors and spreading all the 5th grade gossip while dancing the watusi and eating baby egg rolls. Meanwhile I'm sitting for three hours listening to Field & Stream come to life during mudbogging season, each old cuss more ornery than the last re: what pussies the military has become, unlike when they were fighting the Japs outfitted with only some shoestring and the knowledge of the difference between right (us/jesus) and wrong (them/slant-eyed jesus.)

During my haircut career as a kid, Jimmy the Barber got married maybe, oh, 76 times. I'm not even kidding, every other fucking time you'd try to go by his shop there'd be a sign on the door "GONE ON HONEYMOON, BACK NEXT WEEK." And what do you know, the next time you'd be there during lunchtime some new woman would breeze in with a bag lunch for him, give him a big sloppy kiss on the lips and leave him beaming.

Cap. Doffed.

RIP Jimmy the Barber, have fun standing behind that big barber chair in the sky...oh wait you're probably off on your honeymoon anyway  ;)