Bear Grease - Ep. 281: This Country Life - Barbershops and Beauty Parlor Astronauts

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

It's time to get a haircut and Brent's taking you to the barbershops of his youth for a fresh cut and a look back at a dying art. You'll hear how his older brother, Tim, fared on the first uniform cut of his law enforcement career. And sit back while Brent tells the story of space exploration while his grandmother got her hair fixed. It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Hurricane Relief: https://www.redcross.org/donate/cm/onxmeateater-pub.html/ Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Barbershops and beauty parlor astronauts. One of the many things we all have in common, aside from you naturally depilated folks who have as much use for a comb as I do a dog that won't hunt,

is the fact that we all at some point need a haircut. There ain't many of those old-school barbershops around anymore. Or is there? We're talking about barbershops today, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. My brother Tim had been hired by the Arkansas State Police at the tender age of 19. It would spend his entire career at the Troop F headquarters in our hometown of Warren, Arkansas. He went to work in the communications division running the radio,

eventually becoming the communications supervisor for that troop, and retiring after 29 years and four months of dedicated service to our community in the state of Arkansas. The badge and the pistol tooters are quick to be recognized for the jobs that we did, but I tell you this in no uncertain terms. A good radio operator is worth their weight in gold. And my brother's reputation in South Arkansas was that he was the best. Just ask anyone who worked with him or for him. But before he built that reputation, he had to get a haircut and report in uniform to the headquarters for his first shift.

He went to Kohler's Barbershop, located on the north end of Main Street, one of the two main shops our family would patronize during my childhood and until I moved away. Mr. Oscar Kohler was a veteran, and I remember the American Legion magazines that were scattered around the shop along with the daily newspaper that was folded neatly, waiting for someone to read while they waited for his chair to open. Now, Tim was no stranger to Mr. Oscar. He and a couple others had been cutting all of our hair on and off all our lives, including our grandfathers and our dads. It wasn't like there was a lot of choices for haircuts, but it didn't have to be. A haircut was a haircut. Unless you ask for a high and tight or a flat top,

you were getting what we called the white walls. Like a set of vintage tires that had a big white stripe that cut. covered the majority of the side walls, the side of your head around your ears would be shining just as bright after Mr. Oscar ran the cold steel of his clippers around your ears exposing your scalp that the sun hadn't seen in weeks. Or in Tim's case, a couple of months. This was the late 70s and hairstyles were pretty much whatever you could grow. Tim wasn't stylish by any stretch of the imagination. His style just happened to be in vogue at the time. He told me he'd never owned a comb and just wore a hat that would get his hair cut when it got to bother in his ears.

None of those facts were lost on me. My brother had 99 problems. Keeping his hair cut for fashion, that wasn't one of them. But now with this new job, he'd crossed the threshold of Kohler's Barbershop twice a month to keep his hair-to-ear ratio in check. He sat down in the chair and Mr. Oscar went to work while Tim excitedly told him about his new job he was starting, how proud he was to be working there. All the while, hot lather, towels, a straight razor was dropped. Eventually, clippers, scissors, tonic, and a comb was applied to what once was a briar patch of hair. A Southern Farmers Association co-op hat had been hiding from the public.

Tim said he eased him around in that chair to look at his hair in the big mirror and said, How's that, Tim? I'm not really asking for approval, but more or less waiting for him to say thanks and hand him $3, letting him keep the change. Tim said, I looked in the mirror and said, Mr. Oscar, I part my hair on the other side. He said, no, you don't. Tim said, as nice as I could say it, I said, yes, sir, I parted on the other side. Tim said Mr. Oscar got a little testy and spun him around in that chair and said, boy,

I've been cutting your hair since you was five years old. I know which side you parted on. Tim said it kind of scared him, and he said, oh, oh, yes, sir, that's right. I don't know what I was thinking. He paid him, and he bought a comb, the first comb he ever owned, and he left and went home to show Barber Jean, his wife, and by the time he got there, that tonic water had dripped. dried and his natural part had returned, which had freed his combed over hair from its bonds of

moisture. He walked into the house to get dressed in his uniform, and he said as he walked through the kitchen, he met Barber Jean. A woman so sweet that sugar would melt in her mouth. His biggest fan and supporter, she was coming out of the living room. She took one look at his hair and said, What is dead? On your head. Now, it's a good thing.

that he bought a comb. It came in real handy that day. And according to my brother Tim, that's just how that happened. And what happened and would continue to happen every time he went in Kohler's barbershop. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hand. Yeah. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The barbershops of my youth were a time-honored tradition of two types of haircuts. short and shorter. They were places of refuge for the menfolk, some of who always seemed to be there waiting every time I went in there. You go ahead, son, we're just visiting. Then they'd go back to their self-appointed mission of solving all the world's problems. I heard them talking and arguing about everything from livestock, futures,

and foreign policy to telling war stories and where the fish were biting. A young one could get quite an education in the barbershop if he paid attention according to my grandpa. And if he wasn't careful, according to my grandma. The barbershop was traditionally a male-only environment that was more of an unspoken courtesy to the men who frequented the business by their female counterparts. Also, I don't know any ladies that would want to go in a barbershop.

They flipped the coin over, and the same accounted for the beauty parlor, women only. No men allowed. Growing up, I wish that had applied to little boys as well, because every time the fates hung me up with my grandma, Mama Sly, and she was going to her standing weekly appointment at Bonnie's beauty parlor, I knew I was there for a wasted afternoon. I'd sit in there surrounded by a mountain of Southern living and good housekeeping magazines,

choking on hairspray, and listening to the blue-haired ladies talk. I wish I was anywhere, but right there. I remember one time I got up in one of the chairs that had a big hair drying bubble on the back and the ladies would pull it down on their heads and it'd dry their hair. Now to me, it looked like an astronaut helmet, and that's what I would pretend it was. I got on my knees in one of them chairs and I pulled it down as low as I could get it down over my eyes and looking through that clear plastic shell at the distorted figures and faces of the women in a beauty shop. What a strange planet I've landed on.

These cackling monsters that live here are loud, and this is no place to be. I must refuel my ship and leave here, post-haste. I flipped around the seat and saw a button and two knobs, and I turned to what I imagined was the proper coordinates for Earth, and I mashed the button and I was pretending to be the blast-off switch. Turned out, that's exactly what it was. an immediate and sustained blasts of volcanic air smoked my eyebrows like a camel's cigarette. Now I assumed I knew what a burnt match felt like.

I also received my first experience of getting snatched out of the frame when Mama Slide grabbed the hold of my arm and pulled me from my imaginary spaceship and out from under the furnace of a dryer that was blowing more hot air than in August wind in West Texas. It scared the soup out of me and embarrassed me in front of the same. of all those old ladies who were trying not to laugh and doing a very poor job of it, I might add. My eyeballs were so dry from that back draft I just endured that as I blinked repeatedly to re-moisten them, it sounded like somebody was playing a snare drum. Well, it felt like that anyway. Unfortunately, that little mishap didn't bar me from Bonnie's Beauty Parlor, located adjacent

to the courtyard at the Coker Hotel on West Cedar Street. I still had to go. I still had to in with Mama Sly when some poor planting on my part had me in town instead of at home on the farm. And every time I was there, time stood still. Love of humanity. That kind of stuff didn't happen in a barbershop. In both places were sanctuaries to each set of patrons and never the Twain should meet. In rural southeast Arkansas, where I grew up, the Twain never would meet, at least not during that era of my life. The barbershop, just like the beauty parlor, was a gathering spot for each specific clientele.

It was Facebook before Facebook and where you got all the news that wasn't fit to print. Our local newspaper only came out once a week every Wednesday, but the barbershops and the beauty parlors, they ran all week long. I couldn't testify what was ever said in the beauty parlor when I was there with Mama Sly outside of answering a million questions about how much I'd grown since the last time they had me captured in that never-ending hen party. At the barbershop, that was a whole other matter. That place had my attention from the moment I walked in the door.

I wasn't much on getting my haircut, but the magazines were way better. American Legion, VFW, outdoor life, field and stream, and national geographic with the occasional scantily clad native. There was taxidermy on the walls and cigarette smoke and chewing tobacco, and war stories. The old men that hung out in there were mostly veterans of World War II in Korea who talked openly about their times in the service. The veterans from Vietnam, they usually didn't.

My dad served but missed both Korea and Vietnam. One he was too young, four, and the other didn't kick off until after he'd served his hitch. I was enamored with the military and talking to the old men who'd been to faraway places in Europe and the South Pacific. The stories that they told one another that I was just a fly on the wall for played in my head like a black and white war movie of the 1940s that I just couldn't get enough of. Some of the stories they told make me look back now and I realized that they were talking

about things that they could only tell other men who'd witnessed the same and would understand. It was therapy for them, and I was privileged to some of those sessions. I never asked questions while I was. I was there, but I would talk to my grandpa when we left about what and where they were talking about. Now, surpassing conversations about the service was hunting and fishing stories, and depending on what time of year it was and who was in the shop, dictated what game was most discussed. Squirrel dogs, coon dogs, hog dogs, dug dogs, deer, rabbit, and cowos, they were traded for, bought and sold in the barbershop. It was a happening place, and the smell of manliness and aquavela drifted out into the street. in the summer when the door was open and the fans were running. I didn't have a favorite

barber at the time. I liked them all. In the barbershop I went to most was right in the middle of all the stores on Main Street. Mr. Horace Ashcraft, Mr. Ray Roberts, and Mr. Foster Smith cut hair in there for what seemed like a hundred years. Mr. Foster was the younger to the three and when he wasn't cutting hair, he worked for the State Highway Department running a ferry that took cars across the Wachita River from the south end of Bradley County at Morrow Bay before they built the bridge. Mr. Ray cut my hair more than anyone. He was such a kind and gentleman, but you didn't tell him how you wanted your haircut. You just sat down and he went to work.

When he could see the appropriate mound of fresh skint noggin above your ears, he'd cut you loose with a smile and a piece of candy. Mr. Horace and Mr. Ray retired and Mr. Foster Smith took over the duties of keeping my head bush hogged. Mr. Foster was a big man. His hands looked as big as catcher's midst to me, but he was quiet. He didn't say much, but he was a croppy fishing Jedi. He talked very deliberately and low with a gentlemanly southern drawl. I played football with his youngest son, who was a year older than me. As an adult, and any time I walked in to get a haircut, he'd be reading the newspaper usually and sitting in the big chair that he was fixing put me in.

Sit down here, boy. We'd start out the conversation. And about a quarter of the way through the cut, he'd talk again and say, well, Brent, you've been catching any fish? And then he'd ask about my dad. He was the only one left of the three who had cut my hair there during my childhood and up until I moved away.

I saw a picture on Facebook from a page dedicated to the town where I grew up that was posted in 2017. Someone had taken the picture of the interior through the big window that faced Main Street, and aside from the ceiling having fallen into dish repair and dust on the floor, it looked exactly the same. I stared at it. I could smell that picture.

I could have never imagined that the scent of hair tonic and aftershave that followed me out the door nearly 30 years ago would still stir fresh today just from looking at an old photo. But it did. I wouldn't see another real barbershop for quite a while until relocating and fighting crime in Eldorayda, Arkansas. Elvin's barbershop was the place a lot of us got a haircut.

Mr. Elvin Ramsey was a master of the hot, lather, straight razor neck shave and a 60-second high and tight. The refreshing and memorable scent of shaving lotion hanging in the air welcomed you into a barbershop. just like he did on the other end of town at the southern gentleman barbershop, an aptly named concern where my friend and colleague Mark Thomas's father has owned a shop for the past 60 years. Just like the name implies Mr. Benny Thomas is the epitome of a southern gentleman

and still cutting hair in his 80s. And according to Mark, he maintains the oldest continuously operated original owner business license in town. an incredible feat all in its own in a disappearing art form. Now, there's plenty of clip joints around, but a true barbershop was becoming something of an oddity. My career eventually brought me to Central Arkansas, and the true barbershops like I'd grown up with were few, and the ones I could find were packed daily with customers. You couldn't just pop in and get a haircut without waiting forever, and there was no talking amongst the patrons. Number one, I didn't know anyone in there.

Number two, everyone that was in there was staring at their phones instead of noticing what was going around them. And that's me included. Thirdly, there were never the same barbers in there two times in a row. I quit fighting and just went to a chain business for several years. The old-time places were gone as far as I was concerned. Then a couple years ago, I found Bluewater Barber and supply in Little Rock.

My friend, duck hunting buddy and old Wayland's veterinarian, Dr. Jonathan Bradshaw told me about it, and I tried it out one day. My main man, Dillon's been cut my hair ever since, and it's been quite a refreshing charge of nostalgia going in a real barbershop again. I've gotten to know the guys pretty well. Cody and Sean are all younger than me, and I make fun of most of the music they play, but it's 100% a barbershop. I talked to men to coming to Northwest Arkansas year before last

that they were cutting hair at the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff on the sidewalk, complete with a big barber chair. Now every time I go in, a scented hot towel wrapped around my head takes me back to Main Street in Warren, Arkansas in 1977. And for a minute, while I'm sitting there with my eyes closed, relaxing to the refreshing scent they put on that towel, I'm expecting my grandfather to jokingly say, Ray, I'll cut one side of his head and you do the other.

Or my dad say, Foster, you should just quit and go fishing with us tomorrow. But Dillon removes the towel and I'm not 11 anymore. And I don't see my pap off smiling at me, hoping I thought maybe this time he was actually going to cut one side of my hair. And my dad didn't sit in there talking to someone about a horse or a dog or trying to convince the barber to quit his job and go hang out with us. What I do see are three young men, among others that I know, who are single-handedly saving an important piece of American culture and art.

The last haircut I paid Mr. Elvin for in El Dorado was a little over $10. The ones I first remember Papa and Dad paying for wouldn't even buy you a soda water these days. I pay a lot more for a haircut now, but to have that feeling in connection with my childhood and my heroes that are all gone now, except in spirit, that took me to the barbershop and drugged me to the beauty parlor, well, to have that feeling and see those little movies playing in my head while I'm there, Dylan ain't charging me near what it's worth.

New boys sporting them mullets for the love of humanity. Get a haircut and support your local barbershop when you do. Thank you all so much for listening to Clay and I here on the Bear Grease feed. Share our content when you can and leave a review if you're so inclined. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day

and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be, versatile, matters, no shortcuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. FirstLight's new fieldware gear at firstlight.com.