Getting a haircut has always been a rather special event for me. I can still remember my earliest haircuts from an Italian barber in Norwalk, CT. He was just down the street from the apartment where we were living for about a year and my father would walk me down to the shop with him on Saturdays. His shop was set back from the sidewalk and to enter it you had to pass two of the most magnificent topiaries on either side of the walk. They were of his two dogs and it appears that he was as good with garden shears as he was with hair scissors, given that they looked just like the dogs that were always sleeping just inside the door. I think I was about five and had to have a big booster seat but he talked to me just like he did with my father and I can remember the mesmerizing clickity, clickity, clickity of his scissors - always moving - as he would comb and clip, comb and clip, comb and clip. When he was all done he would slip on a huge hand vibrator and run it across my shoulders and over my entire head. Then he would powder my neck with talc and rub me with witch hazel, just like he did after shaving my dad. We would walk out of the shop smelling the same and I felt ever so grown up.
From that time until now I’ve most likely had at least seven hundred and twenty-five haircuts, many of them good, most average, and some extremely horrible. I love to get my hair cut in countries where I don’t speak the language and try with hand gestures to let them know what I want. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, they do what they want, and sometimes it is hilarious and leads to great fun as we try to communicate during the cutting. This can also be dangerous since hand gestures with scissors aren’t recommended. In China they wouldn’t cut my eyebrows; it’s bad luck to cut face hair. In Japan I’ve had a four foot five, seventy-year old woman cut my hair and then give me a shoulder massage that relaxed my entire body in three minutes. In Adelaide, Australia I found an Italian barber who looked at my head for a few seconds and told me that I had been parting it on the wrong side for almost sixty years and when he cut my hair, parting it on the other side, the cowlick that I could never control never came back!
So naturally when we arrived in Oporto and I saw an old fashioned barbershop during a pre-dinner walk around town, I knew I needed to get my hair cut there. The next morning after a nice walk I headed to the shop. Through the glass door I could see four old-fashioned barber chairs with cracked blue leather seats and armrests and faded chrome footrests and trim. There was one barber sitting in the back of the store and no customers so in I went. Having consulted the Google language tools before leaving the hotel I greeted him in Portuguese, “Bom dia, gostaria de um corte de cabelo, por favor. Scissors só por favor.” To my great surprise he seemed to understand my greeting and know that I wanted only a scissor cut, no machines. He took my coat and while he was hanging it on a peg I was able to take in the entire small shop. It was all wood - the floors, the cabinets, the counter tops - and that wood had been there a very, very long time. Each of the four chairs had the identical kit in front of the chair: the same number of scissors, combs, talc blowers, razors, etc. The entertainment came from a shortwave radio that was tuned to an AM station playing some old Portuguese songs, and most likely had been doing so since the 1930’s.
He led me to his station and began the process of getting me ready for the haircut. It was like a Japanese tea ceremony, filled with tradition and very specific rituals. Adjusting the height seemed to take the most time. I am not a tall man, but in Oporto I’m a giant, so he had to lower the seat to the point that I felt I was in a sports car. Then came the fresh linen towel from the stack on the counter that he opened with great care and then shook a few times until it snapped before carefully tucking it around the back of my neck and smoothing any wrinkles with the flat of his hand. Next came the cover, which was again whipped until it snapped like making a bed. He moved it over me while it was still in the air and let it drape around me. He adjusted the back so that my neck was completely covered and then reached for a safety pin to secure his creation.
He then stepped back and just looked at my head for a moment or two before getting out his scissors and wooden comb. And then it started, the clickity, clickity of his scissors, punctuated periodically by the chirping song of the Javanese finch in his little cage and the tiny tinkle of the little bell that hung beneath the bird’s perch. I was mesmerized and in haircut heaven as I was transported back to my earliest memories of childhood. No words were spoken, only small gestures on his part, as he would move my head the way he wanted it and then he would proceed to cut millimeters of hair at a time. This went on for a good thirty minutes before he was happy with his work, at which time he began the preparation for shaving my neck and trimming around my ears. This ceremony involved the moistening of a shaving soap tub, then whipping it into a froth with the shaving brush, followed by the gentle application around my neck and ears. It was delicately scented and wonderfully warm and the brush was as soft as silk. He proceeded to check the sharpness of the razor by brushing his calloused thumb over it, and satisfied with the result, began the shaving process.
When the shaving was done, he used the linen cloth behind my neck to rub away the moisture and dry my neck before taking the little talc dispenser - an ancient zinc bottle with a little rubber tube connected to a rubber ball pump - and spraying me with a fine layer of talc. When he finally rubbed me with witch hazel, I knew that I had had one of the great haircut experiences. What he did next was new to me. He looked at me head on, like he was giving me an eye exam, but he was really checking to make sure that the sideburns were cut correctly and exactly even. This took two tries before complete satisfaction. He then produced a very small wooden comb and combed all the loose hairs from my head, before brushing it for a while to complete the clean up. A small shoulder massage as he removed the cape and I was done. I could scarcely move, partly because I was so relaxed, partly because I wanted it to last forever, but I finally got up and received another brushing on my shoulders before he got my coat. The cost of this magnificent experience was only 7.5 Euros (about 10 dollars), but I gave him ten and thanked him very much for a wonderful experience. I walked out of there just as I had done sixty years ago with my dad, happy and feeling very much like a child.
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