Memories
Memories are funny things. I used to be very good at trivia games, especially games involving movies. Now I sometimes forget the names of the actors as I'm watching them on television. But I can still remember things from when I was a small child. I recently thought about my first haircut. My grandfather was a barber and he took me to his shop on a Sunday, when no one else was there. I was excited and pleased with all the attention. However, he cut my ear with the clippers. He said he had never done that before. Then a few years later he did it again. I began to wonder if I had done something wrong.
Remembering the haircut brought me to thinking about my grandfather. He was actually my step-grandfather, my real grandfather having died when my mother was a small child. He left home in Pennsylvania to become an apprentice barber when he was 12 years old. He soon traveled to Seattle to find work. Eventually he made his way to San Francisco, but left for the small town I grew up in to escape the flu epidemic of 1917. He had little formal education but by the time I was aware of him he had created a successful barber shop, had married my grandmother and was a well-liked and well-respected citizen of the small town.
He was of a very even temperament and never, at least in my presence, showed any anger or bad temper. I didn't think of him as particularly introspective nor did he seem to worry about things. I've forgotten my dates but some time in the late 1940s or early 1950s events occurred that changed my mind. Since he began his craft at age 12, my grandfather had always been a union member and when he started his own shop it was a union shop. In those days, that meant that he, as the master barber, was no longer a union member but all of his employees were. When the union insisted that he also be a union member, he, as a matter of principle, withdrew entirely and his shop became non-union. When someone planted a bomb at his shop, he became even stronger in his determination and tried to make it more difficult for his competitors, all of whom had acquiesced to the union's demand. He set his prices below the other barber shops in town. When the other barbers tried to pressure him to increase prices, including through use of government action, he happily continued to reduce his prices and his business prospered even more until his death.
I learned a lot from watching my grandfather under the kind of stress that, even as a child, I knew was intense. And I learned a lot from being around him in less stressful circumstances. When I was a child, I worked as the cashier at the barber shop every Saturday, the busiest day. I learned a lot from the customers and the other barbers too. I developed principles of my own that I maintain to this day. Beliefs in freedom and honesty, the notion of character, the importance of principle: All were fostered and enhanced at the barber shop. My grandfather, another of my heroes.
4-25-05
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