The future, with short back and sides

I TURN 65 in July, the age at which society has it that you should retire, unless, of course, you’re in politics in which case it seems you can go on and on until someone at your deathbed prises the reins of power from your cold and stiff claws. Bob Mugabe, for instance, is over 90 (a little older than his moustache), and wasn’t it just recently that our renovation-loving President turned
72? (You might not know this, but SA Institute of Builders & Renovators has declared Jacob Zuma to be their “Man of the Year”. Or so I’ve heard.)
So I suppose I could go into politics when I retire, and dedicate my coming years of increasing dotage and senility to the pursuit of lively parliamentary debate, and the commensurate perks served in the dining car of a luxurious gravy train. But I suppose that would mean that I’d have to relocate to Cape Town, and I’d rather not.
So what to do when I retire, that I could do in Vryheid, and that would earn me a crust, that would keep me out of mischief, that would require some personal discipline and would not be too taxing physically? And what does Vryheid need?
The first thing that occurred to me, and I don’t know why, was a gent’s barber. When I came to Vryheid just over 30 years ago, there were two gents barbers in town, one of them located in Landdrost Street, more or less opposite Music Mecca. They were traditional barbers, gents hairdressers, with a striped pole outside on the pavement, and chairs and magazine for their awaiting customers.
Men, wanting a haircut, wouldn’t be seen dead elsewhere. And Dads took their sons to the barber, like a rite of passage, even if the barber had to put a plank across the chair’s arms on which the boy sat.
I don’t know what happened, I really don’t. The last barber in town was ol’ Ted Barker who retreated from the business area of town and operated from his home. He was the last of a dying breed – and then he died, and that was it.
Why did men forsake barbers and start going to the ladies’ salons? Why would any man swop the dignified and masculine  atmosphere of a traditional barbershop, and a barber’s chair so solid and commanding that Captain James T Kirk could have
used it to boldly steer the Starship Enterprise where no man had gone before? By George, the barber’s chair was a handsome piece of furniture! You could land a record-breaking marlin from a barber’s chair.
And we swopped it for what? For a prissy little chair of the type that an aging aunt might use outside on the lawn for Sunday afternoon tea. Yeah, that and blow waves, highlights and moose… hold on, I’m told you spell it mousse, although real men in the good old days of proper barbers wouldn’t have minded extract of moose as a hair tonic, not if their barber recommended it, pal. Elk essence: nothing wrong with that, buddy!
That’s what it was, you know, adapt or die; barbers didn’t adapt, and barbers died.
Perhaps the Beatles started the rot with their longer hair which I remember my parents being astounded by. This was when? the early 1960s. Up to then, all men had short back and sides, and there was no mucking about with gels and stuff. No, the most the
barber would offer you was, maybe, if you asked, a spot of Brilliantine, which was a perfumed oil which kept a gent’s hair slick and shiny. It was actually quite a hideous concoction. My old Dad sometimes used to use it.
Otherwise, after giving you a short back and sides, and shaving your neck with a proper razor, sharpened on a leather strop, a barber was most likely to simply spray your hair with water and give it a last neat combing. Finish and klaar, no mess, no fuss, thanks for coming, who’s next please.
Ja, men didn’t go as often for haircuts, and when they did go then they wanted their hair styled, and barbers couldn’t, or wouldn’t, oblige. And they didn’t wash your hair either.
A proper gent’s barber did not offer this unnecessary service, didn’t have the facilities to do it and would have told anyone making such a ridiculous request to take a hike. In them days, my child, people were quite capable of washing their own hair.
I remember, it must have been in the mid 1980s, when the OK was where Checkers is in Mark Street, there was a ladies’ salon there, in the vicinity of Stallion’s tavern. I think it might have been called Kim’s, this hair salon, and as I was managing Rebel Bottlestore
in President Street, next to Alexis Tearoom, it was convenient for me to get my hair cut at this salon. They washed my hair, for reasons that I still do not understand 30 years later.
Now, it seems to me, there are a lot of us older men in town who have done with the vanity of hair styling, and longer hair, done with following trends, and simply want a no nonsense short back and sides, and a chat with a pal.
Hairdressers, gent’s hairdressers, I mean, are pals. You can talk horse racing with barbers, and the odds on horses racing at Scotsville on Saturday, or the Super 14 log table after the weekend’s games, and Pamela Anderson’s cleavage and Land Rover
differentials and who’s going to win the election.
Yep, I reckon there’s a gap in the market for a traditional barber. He won’t get rich, but that’s not why he should be doing it. And anyway, it can’t be all that difficult to give a man a short back and sides, can it?