"Daddy" Warbucks

My barber died. It's been a while now. Three years ago, about Thanksgiving, I went for a haircut but the blind was down and the shop closed, with a paper sign taped to the door, something about a family emergency, reopening soon, a number to call for information. Ira's wife'd had a stroke some months or a year or so earlier, so I assumed. I kept going back but the sign was there until it faded, blew away. Ira never came back.

He lived up near Wausau, for many years drove his pickup down and back daily except Thursdays. Two years older than me, I told him he had to outlive me, but he let me down. In due course something else went into his building next to the bus station, and a couple years later I googled him and found his obituary. He'd died the following May, 2013. I figured what, stroke or heart attack.

When I retired from parish ministry the end of September 1998, Bishop Duvall told me, "keep your hair cut and your shoes shined, I'll have jobs for you," and thinking it sounded too much like Navy life, I resolved never to shine my shoes (I haven't) or get a haircut again. But by Christmas 2012 Linda was hourly remarking on my need for a haircut, and friends suggested a hairdresser (it's not the same, folks) on Lisenby at 15^th Street. I went there, a nice woman, a Eucharistic Minister at either St. Dominic's or St. John's, but she was from Indiana or somewhere way up north, kept going to visit her sick sister, finally closed her shop and moved back home.

That was a year or two ago, and ever since then I've been going to the barbershop at Tyndall. In, grab a little tab off the roller. Sit and fiddle with iPhone while waiting your number to be called. Take out my ears. Black cover. How do you want it? Short. Buzz buzz buzz, see yourself in the mirror, whip off the black cover, out.

In Time I'll buzz it myself, a Warbucks.

Thos+