Well, I got a haircut today.

Nick the barber was walking in front of his shop yesterday holding up a sign that 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 has been cutting hair here for a long time, He had a shop at the West Seattle Junction, then he moved to White Center and has been in Burien across the street from Sal's Deli on 6th Avenue since 1979.

Nick doesn't promise to get me elected to anything but he does agree to be careful not to scar up my skull.

So far, after about thirty years, he has yet to put a Nick in my scalp.

My dad was my only barber till 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 ten 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 Russell and I to share the suds-- whether we needed to or not. We'd fill the tub with about five inches of tepid water and while it was filling up 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 washcloth 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 cubbyhole. 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 thought I would share it.

I wonder if Nick does pig shaves?