Perry Huffman: The barbers of Avenal

We have more old friends who are dealing with health issues and too many have lost their battles and passed on. After recalling various old friends, those here and some gone, my very old Bee friend, Don Slinkard wrote, “May I inquire as to how Big Red is doing?”

Don retired about 10 years before me and I retired about 20 years ago. He hadn’t seen her in a long time. I filled him in on the highlights. She has some roving bouts with arthritis, some meds and is normal in weight. Barbara gets around smoothly with no serious hip, knee or foot issues. She and I are fortunate and blessed to still be here in fair shape.

I didn’t think to say, “Don, you won’t see the Big Red you remember from those old Bee days.”

Barbara decided to go gray as an 80-year-old great grandmother. So, now I don’t color her hair after I cut it. Yes. As a frugal semi-starving artist, I have been cutting Big Red’s hair since we married about six decades ago. When she decided to cover a bit of gray that began appearing with passing years. I helped her color it.

I began scissor trimming my hair right after I started work at The Bee. I found my regular barber had slipped too deep into the bottle. I never went back. It was just too tragic.

Frugal hair cutting and bottles go back to my Pop below the Coalinga oil fields, in town on Whiskey Row during the 1930s before I was born.

Bottles were involved in the standard bet among the oil-stained roughnecks and roustabouts, a half pint of whiskey due on payday. I remember Pop telling old stories to entertain our company after we moved to Avenal.

Sucker bets usually involved an outrageous claim that had to be proven. One guy was showing off how flexible he was by touching the rough planked floor of the dog house with the heel of his hands while keeping his legs straight.

Another guy hunkered down, wedged a wooden match in a crack between the wooden planks of the floor. He declared he could bend down, stiff-legged and pick up the match with his teeth. The foolish brag was quickly called, the bet was on and whiskey was in the deal.

The half pint bottle of whiskey went to the guy who took out his teeth, bent down, with teeth in hand and picked up the match while keeping his legs straight. The dog house rattled with whoops of laughter. Easy whiskey.

The hair-cutting deal began with Pop buying a set of hair-cutting instruments, clippers, comb and long thin scissors to cut older brother Basil’s shaggy baby hair, as needed.

Pop was a storyteller and word of his haircuts traveled about the oil fields. Guys began showing up for Pop’s haircuts when they were short of money and worked a trade of some kind. Maybe it would be a half pint on payday for a number of haircuts.

Pop cut all three of his boy’s hair. When my brother Basil got lawn-mowing jobs in Avenal, he moved up to store-bought haircuts. Little brother Jesse and I continued getting the standard whitewall scalped-job. We were not aware of high standards and cool fashions.

One Saturday, we had company, and there was the customary open bottle. Jesse needed his shaggy mop cut.

Mom and Pop were engaged in stories with our guest. Pop appointed me to be a barber, and Jesse was my first customer. Jesse and I didn’t talk back to adults. After I left Avenal, I learned over the years that courtesy and respect may be misplaced on a few people. There was no back talk from me at that time in Avenal.

Pop had watched me draw, carve wooden airplanes and make puppets. So he must have figured I could carve a mop of hair into a haircut. He was a creative problem solver and delegated Jesse’s haircuts to me. Pop awarded me the tools and title of barber. There would be no striped pole.

Jesse sat in the back yard on a wooden box with a towel around his shoulders and hair began to fall. Just about every time I looked up, another neighbor kid had drifted in. Apparently, a 12-year-old kid cutting an 8-year-old kid’s hair could draw a crowd in Avenal. Remember, this would have been a few years before TV came over Kettleman Hills and into Avenal.

By the time I was finished with Jesse’s hair, several of the kids had run home and gotten permission to get in on the handy backyard haircut deal.

Buddy was a short and thin little guy, for a second grader. He stepped forward without a word and held out a very small hand offering a quarter. I don’t remember but I think gave two or three of the kids a haircut. I was flattered they thought I was doing a good job. No. They didn’t all have a quarter.

By the time I left Avenal for a shot at that college deal my folks talked about, I had also trimmed Mom’s hair, Fuzzy’s and Jake’s.

I didn’t cut hair again until after I was married. I botched my first encounter with a comb-over. The failure came on a ranch outside of Strathmore. Barbara’s dad, Jim, could use a trim. Barbara volunteered me. My general standard was to leave about four inches of hair on the top that tapered to shorter over the ears and ????

The front four-inch cut hair fell about two inches short in the back to cover a big pink circle of skin where his hair was long gone. That one time was it, for Jim. He chose to return to his higher standards and a barber who had mastered the art of comb-overs.

Barbara had no male pattern bald spot to worry about and continued having me trim her hair. She watched with a mirror and directed my snipping.

When I cut our son Mike’s hair to start his fifth Fresno hot summer…I decided to give him a no-fuss cool butch haircut.

Mike looked in the mirror, studied his hair as he felt the stubs and said, “Now, let me give you a haircut.” He wasn’t smiling.

After that lesson in communications, his hair was cut to his specifications. Then one day he decided to let it grow long like some of the cool rock stars of the time.

Big Red of old will not be seen again. Barbara’s hair was a vivid red color. Instead of turning gray, her hair faded to unusual and natural pale-pink champagne.

Looking great, Great Grandma Babs.

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 5:39 AM with the headline "Perry Huffman: The barbers of Avenal."