Fond memories of someone else's childhood... aka Hocky Hair.

I was listening to NPR last night between Fountainhead and Wakefield. There was a great spot about a guy who grew up in Minnesota. There was one barbor in town that gave great hocky haircuts. You've seen them. It is the Canadian incarnation of what the rest of us down south call a mullet.

Anyways... All the cool kids in town used to go to this guy to get their hair cut without telling their parents. The goal in was to have a good hockey haircut and missing teeth for picture day.

On one instance, the reporter had a tooth that was loose, but just wasn't coming out. He and his brother tied one end of a string to the tooth, the other end to the dog, then opened the door and let the dog loose. Out came the tooth!

His father was so angry. He took the kids to "Andy the barbor" to get a descent haircut. Andy had pictures of all the different haircuts that you could get all over the shop. You'd go and pick out what you wanted, then Andy would give you a buzz cut anyways.

This really brought back memories for me. As a relatively unattended child, I used to get weird haircuts all the time. Mom sometimes didn't notice for a few days. Then she'd give me that disappointed mom look and ask me what the neighbors will think. I guess they thought I was a weirdo. To my knowledge they didn't blame her.

I had mullets, mohawks, hippy hair. I even shaved my head a bunch of times. That one I did by myself. My piano teacher's husband was balding and had the band of hair that went around the back of his head. I did that one once. That only lasted hours, though. It looked pretty funny.

I need to go back there at some point. If only I didn't have to keep my job. I'm concentrating my efforts on some interesting facial hair. That'll have to do.

Love,

Pete