A Quick Hello Before We Begin:

Welcome back, friends—and thank you for joining me for another round of “Mike Remembers Things He Probably Should’ve Forgotten.”
I apologize for missing last week’s deadline, however, life took it’s toll and I had personal issues come up. Please forgive me.

In my last post, I talked about how certain memories from my very early years still pop up like uninvited guests, tapping me on the shoulder and insisting on being told. I also promised I’d start sharing a few stories from my book You Can’t Get Blisters Treading the Waters of Life, and today I’m keeping that promise.

This next tale comes from the “character‑building through mild humiliation” chapter of my youth—the day my hair lost its will to live. It’s a story that proves two things:

1. My mother was a brave woman, and
2. My brother and I were even braver for letting her near us with clippers.

So settle in, grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger if you’ve ever cut a kid’s hair), and enjoy this little slice of childhood chaos from the Blisters collection.

Mr. P and the Haircut (Or: The Day My Hair Lost Its Will to Live)

One day Mom sat me on a chair, took out her old Brownie box camera, and snapped a lot of pictures of me and my curly locks. She then told me she was going to take me downtown for my first haircut.

The barbershop was downtown on Washington Street, the main street in Marquette. The barbershop had the usual big red, white, and blue pole by the front door. The pole fascinated me as it went around, and around, and around. I could have stayed outside and watched it all day, but Mom made me go inside.

When I walked into the barbershop, I was scared. I had never been inside a barbershop before. It had a sweet smell, something like my Dad’s after-shave. There were three huge leather swivel chairs lined up in front of a large mirror. Each chair had a long handle on its side and by pumping the handle; the chair would raise or lower so the barber could cut hair without having to bend over. Each chair also had a long leather strop. The barber would use this strop to sharpen the straight-edged razor before giving men a shave.

A long mirror was on the wall that allowed men to sit in the chairs and watch as their hair was cut. In front of the mirror was a shelf filled from end to end with shaving mugs. Each mug had a man’s name inscribed on it and laying next to each mug was a straight edged razor. The men had their personal mug and razor ready whenever they came in for a shave.

Mom told me the barber I would see was called Barber Bill. As soon as I saw him I recognized him; he was the grandfather of one of my friends. I would often see him when I was playing at my friend’s house. The barber, a patient man, knew I was scared so he made me feel at ease right away.

As I walked into the barbershop, he softly asked, “How are you today, my little man?” I was impressed; nobody ever called me a man before.

Mom had me sit in a chair next to her while we waited my turn for a hair cut. As I waited, I wondered if it would hurt to get my hair cut. I didn’t see any of the grown men crying. Besides, the barber called me “little man”. I decided that I wasn’t going to cry even if the hair cut did hurt!

When my turn for a haircut came, Barber Bill went into a back room and brought out a red padded stool. The stool fit perfectly into the giant barber’s chair.

He gently lifted me onto the stool. It was soft and comfortable. He took a striped apron, wrapped it around my neck covering my entire body, and snapped the ends together behind my neck.

The barber then snipped and clipped, clipped and snipped. Off came all my long curls. When he was done he took a bottle off the shelf, poured some of it into his hands, rubbed the smelly stuff into my hair, and then combed my hair back on my head.

When he handed me a mirror to look at myself, I was sure surprised! My curls were gone. I looked like a different person now. No more prissy little kid, I was a big boy now!

Barber Bill gently picked my curls off the striped sheet and gave them to my Mom for safekeeping. She had them safely tucked away in her cedar chest until she passed away. I have them now. They are in the same envelope she placed them so long ago. That was the first and last time I had a haircut at the barbershop in Marquette.

With little money to spend on extras (haircuts were considered an extra expense) and three boys in my family, (Eddy, me, and of course, my Dad), something had to be done. Our hair grew very fast and the style of the day was short hair so we needed our hair cut every two weeks.

Mom decided she could save money by having our hair cut at home. For the cost of three or four haircuts, she could buy her own clippers.

She talked Dad into buying a set out of the family’s meager savings account. He went to Montgomery Wards (we called it Monkey Wards) across from the bank and bought the set. Now Mom was in business.

Mom never cut hair before but that didn’t stop her from using us as Guinea pigs. Dad was lucky; he was out of town the weekend she garnered up the courage to cut our hair. Eddy and I weren’t so lucky.

She had me go into the kitchen first for a haircut. She had me sit on a kitchen chair. Earlier, she had pulled an old bed sheet from the linen closet and now she pinned it around my neck with a safety pin.

 I tried to sit as still as I could so Mom wouldn’t pick me with the pin as she fastened the sheet around my neck. No luck, “Ouch, Mom!” This sure was starting out to be different than my hair cut at the barbershop.

She picked up the clippers and so began her first attempt at cutting hair. Snip, snip and clip, clip, and then buzz; the sounds filled my ears as Mom went to work. Hair was falling all around me.

“Bend down,” she said tapping the back of my head as she trimmed my neck.

“Look to the left” she commanded. Then, “look to the right,” she ordered. I did as I was told. Though I was very young, I was smart enough to know I didn’t want her to slip and cut off my ear with her new toy. After all, she already jabbed me with a safety pin.

Every now and then I heard Mom take a deep breath, maybe even a “shucks” or a “darn”. It wasn’t long before she was standing in front of me staring blankly. Holding the clippers in her right hand, with her left hand on her hip and a deep frown on her face, she stared at me. She didn’t say a word. That was scary.

She took the pin out of the sheet from around my neck and told me to get down off the chair. I got down and brushed the loose hair off my neck. I was done. Mom told me to sweep up the hair from off the kitchen floor and she called out Eddy’s name. He was next! He had been standing in the doorway the whole time Mom was cutting my hair yet he didn’t say a word. He just kept gawking at me with a funny look on his face. Now it was his turn. All he could say was, “Oh, Mom, do I have to?”

Mom sat him in the chair and wrapped the bed sheet around his neck. She then sent me off to play in my bedroom while she cut Eddy’s hair. He told me later that she almost stuck him with the safety pin too. He also told me Mom took deep breaths and mumbled quite a bit too. After she was done cutting his hair, she told him to sweep up his hair and then go out and play.

By the time he called for me to come out of my bedroom, I hadn’t looked in a mirror yet so I didn’t know how I looked. Eddy looked at me and I looked at him. Gee, he sure looked funny, but I wasn’t going to say anything in front of Mom. I valued my butt and didn’t want to risk a whack at the moment.

I didn’t know how bad I looked; I just hoped I looked better than Eddy. I guess we didn’t know how wretched we really looked until we went to play with our friends, the Periwinkles.
As we walked down the street and got closer to their house, our friends had silly looks on their faces. The nearer we got the more they giggled. Arriving at their house, they broke into belly laughs. It wasn’t until their Dad, Mr. “P.”, saw us that we realized something was wrong.

Mr. “P.” didn’t say anything at all at first. He just eyed us carefully, first at Eddy then at me. He rolled his big brown eyes and scratched his furry beard. He moaned something in French under his breath. He turned around and disappeared into his house.

Soon he reappeared carrying a box under his arm. He had gotten his own hair clippers and quietly asked us to follow him. Eddy and I headed back up the street to our house slowly walking a few steps behind Mr. “P.”

After we walked the half of a block up the hill to our house, Mr. “P.” climbed the steps of the front porch and knocked on our front door. When Mom came to the door he told her he felt so bad for Eddy and me that he would teach her how to cut hair the right way. He had been cutting his kid’s hair for years and knew how to cut without leaving nicks, groves or gouges.

Following Mom and Mr. “P.” into the kitchen, I sat back down in the kitchen chair. Mom wrapped me with the old bed sheet again. Mr. “P.” began to snip, cut, and shape my hair the best he could under the circumstances.

He carefully trimmed around the nicks, cuts, and gouges, showing Mom how to correctly use the clippers.

“Move lowly,” he said. “Use the attachments,” he added. “Take your time, don’t rush the job.”

He spent about thirty or forty minutes working on each of us. By the time Mr. “P.” was done he was able to repair most of the damage, but we were left almost bald. It was just as well. With the summertime heat, it was cool being bald.

After that day Mom gave us a haircut every other Saturday, like clockwork. Her technique improved over time. She never got as good as a regular barber, but no one ever laughed at our haircut again. As for Mr. “P.,” he kept an eye on us until we moved out of Marquette. Every time he saw us with a new haircut he would check closely, but he never had had to grab his clipper set again!

A Few Closing Thoughts:

Thanks for sticking with me through this memory — one of the many moments from my youth that still rises to the surface with all its comedy, chaos, and “what were we thinking?” charm. As you can see, my early years offered no shortage of material, and Mr. P and the Haircut is just one of the stories tucked inside You Can’t Get Blisters Treading the Waters of Life.

If you’d like to read more of these stories ahead of future blog posts, the book is available on Amazon—just in case you want the full collection without waiting for me to wander down memory lane one chapter at a time.

I appreciate you walking through another chapter with me, and I’ll keep bringing more youthful memories—and more stories from Blisters—into the blog as they tap me on the shoulder and ask to be told. More coming soon, and as always, thanks for reading.