Well, I got a haircut today.

Nick the barber was walking in front of his shop yesterday holding up a sign which read "NO HAIRCUT, NO NICK."
I hated the thought of him starving to death so I hired him again this month.

I have been holding off till ex-Sheriff Reichert runs for Governor next election. He has a haircut that got him elected as U.S. Representative, and he is planning to ride that haircut all the way to the White House. I am not running.

Nick doesn't promise to get me elected to anything but he does agree to be careful not to scar up your skull. So far, after about 30 years, he has yet to put a “Nick” in my scalp.

My dad was my only barber tiIl I was 12. He had scissors and clippers that he also used on my dog Mack.

Dad also had a leather razor strop, not strap. He used it to sharpen his straight edge. His razor was about six inches long with a really sharp blade. It was a wicked looking thing that he shaved with. The strop he also used as a weapon for delivering stinging raps on obstreperous boys. I never felt it but my big brother did a few times.

We had a huge old bathtub in our only bathroom. Besides dad's shaving stuff it had a towel rack and a toilet. All 10 kids (five girls and four boys (it would have been five boys but a little brother only lived six months). Saturday night was set aside for big brother Russel and me to share the suds. We'd fill the tub with about five inches of tepid water and, while it was rising, we always soaped up the slip-and-slide rim, taking turns pushing each from one end to the other.

One night Russ gave me a hefty shove. I whizzed around the track for a world record and hit my forehead on the hot water tap.

Naturally, I howled like I had a broken skull and before Russell could stuff a wash cloth in my mouth, dad burst into the door. He grabbed the dreaded razor strop and cracked poor Russell's butt a couple of times.

He took it grimly and refused to wail. I felt guilty and slid under the water hoping nobody would notice me.

I guess Nick doesn't have a strop. At least I have never seen one. I hope not. I would hate to have him whack me if I bellowed about scissors that always pull hard when the tips of the blades  are not sharp.

Sometimes dad would give us pig shaves. We once had a baby pig that the guys at the hog ranch gave my brother Albert because they discovered it had no BM place, and he came home from the hog ranch and put it under the house in a cubby hole. Later, he went in to feed it and kneeled on it. The little fella squealed, making an awful mess. Albert had to bury it.

So I know what a shaved pig looks like.

I know this story has nothing to do with pig shaves or haircuts but I though I would share it.

I wonder if Nick does pig shaves?

Jerry Robinson is our publisher. He can be reached at robinson.jerry@comcast.net