BUTCH
HAIRCUT
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IWhen I was a teenager in the early
sixties, I had grown my hair longer for the first time when I started
highschool. In those days everyone greased their hair back on the sides.
Mine was parted on one side and slicked back and the top was combed over
and the forelock in a complicated wave over my forehead which joined the
slicked back side on the other side of my head. By summer when school was getting out it was seven inches long on top. When I went to barber's I'd just get a light trim and kept combing it constantly s my parents wouldn't notice how long it was. My cousin who always had to wear his hair in a butch drew attention to me just as my hair came down over my eyes, and told my father that I wanted to get a butch. My father told the barber before the next time I went in, and when I sat in the chair, the barber snapped the 1/4 inch butch attachment on his clippers and came at the side of my slick shiny hair. I pulled back and he put his hand firmly on my head and told me not to move. He tilted my head forward 'til the forelock curtained down over my right eye and I watched through my left eye as the clippers began trying to plow up the side of my head just back of my left ear. At first it was slicked back so tight the clippers couldn't get through, but all of a sudden they broke through and a big chunk of slicked hair fell to my lap. Well he kept plowing the parted side of my head til it was just fuzz, and then went around back and I felt the clippers go up through the wave in back of my head. He came around the other side and finished the other side off. He then put the clippers on top of my head, just behind the forelock and plowed backward though the hair combed across the top until the top wan just quarter inch fuzz and then took the butch attachment off and began shaving the sides even closer. And then suddenly he took a comb and lifted the seven or eight- in long forelock in front and ran the clippers across the top of thecomb about 3/8 of an inch from my forehead and the forelock fell in a jumbled heap in my lap. I loved seeing that forelock fall. After that every year I'd let my hair grow long in the winter and as soon as school let out in the summer, I'd comb in the most outrageous greased fifties hairstyle just for the occasion and go to the barber's and tell him to give the shortest butch he could. Hope you like this memory. |