Class pictures from Kindergarten through third grade show me with very short hair, sometimes long enough to lie flat, sometimes bristly short. My father had grown up having his hair cut in his family’s ranch-house kitchen in eastern Montana during the ‘20s and ‘30s. A couple of years at the Naval Academy accustomed him to the 90-second plebe cut featured at Annapolis. An upside-down economy during World War II and a wife willing to help save money by learning barbering skills solidified his belief that haircuts looked best when done at home.
At first, my mother tried to corral me into keeping still long enough to let her cut my hair. But mothering is hard enough without worrying whether you’re going to snip off your son’s ear. My father went out and bought a new hair care set, including scissors with a little curved finger rest, two types of combs, scissors with teeth for getting those recalcitrant longer hairs out of the way, and, most important, an electric clipper, and took over the job.
By the time I was four, I’d learned that my parents did not have total control over all my thoughts and deeds, so I began rebelling when I got the chance. Saturday mornings, every month or two, in the kitchen with a vinyl drape around my neck, I’d squirm, fidget, and complain enough that my father, to avoid smacking me literally up-side the head, began five years of buzz-cuts for me with those clippers. Just like in the Navy, a minute and a half, and we’re done. It took longer to sweep the floor afterwards.
With short hair, I sometimes marveled at the brush cut then popular among American males of all ages. In its most elegant incarnation, the “flat-top”, the hair stood straight up, creating the appearance of an even, not rounded, surface. Popular among army sergeants and football linebackers, it evoked aggressive virility, a snarl in place of a hat. Even Elvis Presley, once drafted into the army in 1958, lost his forehead curl and joined the crew-cut set. I never had the courage to join their ranks, afraid I might not have the swagger necessary in my walk. Our President then, Dwight Eisenhower, was bald, and it seemed that flowing locks seen in 19th century tin-types would become a relic of our past, swept away by desire for a clean, sleek, modern head of hair.
Luckily, John F. Kennedy become President in 1961, and the Beatles led an English Invasion into American music. The mop-top slowly, inexorably adorned the covers of magazines at grocery story check-out lines and sofas next to talk-show hosts. Once again, I yearned to be a part of the tonsorial trend. But my father’s haircuts, and my budding avocation as a competitive swimmer stunted that desire. Yearbook photos show me with a little flop across my forehead, but naked ears and exposed shirt collars. My one nod to flaunting my hair came with that chlorine sheen from hours in the pool, bleached gold from summer days in a lifeguard chair.
Fall, 1970, I moved permanently to the West Coast, Southern California version. Flower power had fully bloomed there, and my father was two thousand miles away. My hair, fertilized by the LA sun, revealed a curl as it grew, over my forehead, across my ears, down my neck. Infrequently, I chanced a visit to an actual barber, daring to look a little more like the locals, many of whom were sporting pony tails or radiant spheres of wiry growths, emulating Afros. I found another girl with long hair of her own, and after falling in love and moving in together, hoped she would take over the task of shearing my unruly locks.
She tried it a couple of times, and then said, “No. Never again. Not me. I won’t do that anymore. You should go to a good barber, your hair is so beautiful,” Cheryl insisted. Since I wanted to keep this woman close to me for the rest of my life, I acquiesced, at least to having her as my barber. Photos from that era show me on occasion with a head band, ears hidden, the collar of my white doctor’s coat tickled by wavy brown strands. Cheryl seemed pleased, both with avoiding haircuts in the kitchen, and having a boyfriend with a lot of thick, alluring hair.
I graduated for the fourth, and last, time, in 1978, from residency, and prepared to enter the Real World, where my reputation as a physician, someone with the power to examine and alter another’s body, rested at first glance on my appearance. I did not have the self-confidence to present myself to patients looking like a rock star, so I reluctantly went back to imitating a TV news presenter. My father, meanwhile had retired and begun to cut his hair himself after my mother suffered a stroke and could no longer wield scissors. His greying hair began to creep over his ears and down his neck.