Bad exit. Industrial. We were driving over bridges or some such thing. “Keep you eye out for a man,’ I said. “A man with hair.”

“I will.”

I laughed because it was a true pedestrian free, strip mall free zone. I thought about calling for a man like you’d call a dog but held my tongue when I looked over and saw to soldier so focused. And then on the left, an Ace Hardware.

“Ace Hardware! Got to be a man in there for sure,” I said.

“Pull over, P! I’m going in there.”

I made a U-turn pulled into the parking lot and dropped him at the door. “You’re on your own. Find your own man because I already have one.”

He laughed and disappeared into the store. I pulled in a parking slot waited. Two minutes later he was back out with directions a barber shop… about four blocks away. Huh? I was amazed.

“The building is yellow,” he said. Sure enough, there is was right where it was supposed to be. We pulled up in front. “You come with me,” he said. “Brighten the place up.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not missing this.”

We walked in and there as a man in his early sixties cutting the hair of a gang banger type who greeted us as we walked in. There was another shaggy man waiting and four empty chairs so we took two and I watched the barber work, mesmerized.

He was fast. With one hand clamped on this man’s head he deftly shaved two and fro and I watched a first rate haircut emerge like some kind of hair poetry. The barber finished the ultra modern cut in minutes then shaved the man’s neck, put goop in his hair and handed him a flat round comb which he strapped to his hand ran over his scalp.

The barber removed the drape, and money (cash) exchanged hands, the men thanked each other and the gang banger took off looking damned snazzy.

On the way out I noticed he had a braid down his back which made the whole cut that more “trick” so I smiled then turned to watch the multi-tasking shaggy man be transformed. Multi-tasking considering he was eating his lunch from a sack when we walked in.

I was surprised when I heard him ask the barber for a short cut. Judging from the length and the look of his hair, I guessed this was a one every six month thing and it was right about here it really sunk in: ‘So this is how men do business.” I liked it.

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