Going to the Barber
Sung by Perry Como and the Buffalo Bills Barbershop Quartet
My first visit to the barber was more than 80 years ago. As far as I know, I didn’t object with tears to my baby curls being shorn. And I’ve never had a bad experience with a ‘follicular surgeon’ as I sometimes call barbers. Once upon a time they were surgeons of a kind.
However, going to the barber is for me a chore whereas for women going to the hairdresser seems to be a joyful event. A couple of years ago a family friend in Dublin, Mona, died aged 103. She had worked as a hairdresser with my Auntie Eileen, a younger sister of my mother, her bridesmaid and my godmother. Mona also had the good sense to introduce her only brother, Willie, to Eileen. They were married on Whit Monday 1950, traditionally a big day for weddings in Ireland, and the first I attended.
Before Covid the social event of the week for the widowed Mona was her visit to the hairdresser. For me, going to the barber is something I do every two months or so and is akin to eating most vegetables because ‘they’re good for me’.
When I was a child I often went to Jack Foy, whose barbershop was right next to my Auntie Eileen’s salon. His son Alan took over and was a great conversationalist. Sadly, he died in his 50s. Occasionally I went to Jack Maddox, down the road, who seemed to spend most of his time outside his shop waiting for a customer but always with a smile. I often think of him and pray for him.
During periods of study in the USA and Canada my barbers were all Italian. A barber in Ottawa I once went to was a Mussolini supporter. While studying in Toronto my barber, Cosmo, was delighted when I linked him with Sts Cosmas and Damian, martyrs mentioned in the Roman Canon. He was a lovely family man. On a visit to Toronto some years later I went to his place and he remembered my name.
My current barber here in Ireland, Paul, is widely read and a musician and we have interesting conversations. The experience is more akin to eating ice-cream rather than ‘veggies’.
Perhaps the best-known barber of Italian heritage was Perry Como in the video above. He was a devout Catholic and a papal knight who put his family first. Singing was his job and he never got mired in ‘showbiz’.
I’ve only tried once to give a haircut, during my first year in the seminary. My ‘victim’ was my classmate Terry and the result caused amusement at night prayer in the chapel for three or four days, starting with Terry himself, who was in the first pew. His neck would redden and then his shoulders would shake with suppressed laughter. I learned very quickly, as did the other seminarians, that when it came to ‘follicular surgery’ I wasn’t ‘a cut above the rest’.
