BUZZY'S

I remember my father telling me about his first haircut.  He was a teenager and his father took him.  He said that when the barber touched his head with the electric shears, he felt a shock go through his whole body.

Then came the day that my Dad took me with him to Buzzy's Barber Shop.  It was at the top of Ross Hill Road in Patterson Heights (Beaver Falls).  The shop was located in a small corner of a fire hall, right beside Waite's Restaurant.

Buzzy was an older Italian man whose English I had a hard time understanding.  He was stern and lacked a gentle hand.  The shop smelled of tonics and colognes;  it had a masculine fragrance that I enjoyed. 

It was a male environment.  I heard words there that I never heard at home.  I remember my Dad winking at me when it happened.  I was always the only boy there.  Most men weren't willing to spend $.75 to get their son's hair cut.

My Dad always went first.  It made me proud to be there with him.  This was one of the few things we did together - it felt like a male rite of passage.

When it was my turn, Buzzy threw a booster seat on top of the arms to the barber chair.  He covered me with a sheet and pinned it tightly around my neck.  He mostly used his scizzors and seemed to enjoy making them work fast - whether he was actually cutting hair or not.  I assumed that was just a hazard of being a professional barber!

When he was finished, he put Vitalis on my hair and combed it to look real nice. 

I grew up going to Buzzy's with my Dad.  Later, I drove there by myself.  Then, I went to college and grew my hair long.  When I would go home for a visit, I would often wake up on Saturday morning and find a dollar and a quarter on the corner of the kitchen table.  I knew what it was for!