The Reindeer Keeper

When I was a little girl my mother would take me to a barber shop to get my hair cut. It was situated in the heart of the downtown in my hometown. It was a perfect location; right where the two main streets crossed and in wait of Christmas, a plastic Santa in his sleigh with his reindeer were strung over top those streets. It was a huge draw to the downtown. When the wind blew I was convinced those reindeer were flying. To me that barber shop was as good or better than any beauty parlor around. But then, I'd never been in any of those fancier places where women and girls went for styles and perms with lots of hair spray and hair curlers and hair teasing and big awkward hair dryers; maybe even some Dippity Do. It wasn't time for me to move on to a beauty parlor. I loved going to the barber shop. Following my mother up what might have been winding cement steps, we'd go through the door leading to a very large area. That was the barber shop. I think there were four barbe...

Still to this day, the word 'Perm' makes me shudder even though perms have come a long way! Besides modern day perms being less harmful to the hair and more flattering to the person getting one, the biggest improvement to perms is that smell-the gagging, obnoxious smell that filled your senses for days is gone. And the end result is complimentary. When I was growing up my mother never took me to a 'beauty salon' to get my haircut. Rather, she took me to a barber shop in our downtown. I vaguely remember walking up big stone steps and into a large area with three or maybe four barbers dressed in crisp, white shirts-more like uniforms with black pants. They each had their own area in front of a big mirror. They each had a chair that, to a little kid, was huge-complete with a leather strap attached to the side used to sharpen their razor blade before shaving a customer in either hot lather or straight razor style. After my mother got her hair cut, my brother and I took tur...