TIM E HOLDER

Sometime in the summer of 1971, I’m fairly certain it was mid-August. I remember it being blistering hot. Sweltering, eggs on sidewalk hot. I was just leaving Jr. High and headed to sophomore status at Searcy High School. That time of life when everything was changing and abhorrent and loathsome. School, body, attitude, definitely attitude. Friends were the ultimate expression of loyalty. Parents knew nothing and could do nothing right. I didn’t truly think they were ignorant. They just thought they knew everything.

One particular Saturday, I was just finishing summer band practice at the practice field, which was just behind Ahlf Jr. High. Mom informed me, as I threw my trombone in the back and jumped in the front seat beside her that it was way past time for a hair cut. No big deal. She would drive me to Hickmon’s Barber Shop on Race Street. A little ramshackle, wooden shop as I recall it. Maybe only two chairs. But, I can’t remember anyone ever working there besides Mr. Hickmon. So one seat sat empty every time I was there.

At any rate, we were not going anywhere near Race Street. In fact, we barely went the length of a football field before turning into a house just adjacent to the stadium. I immediately recognized the sign out front. “Merlene’s Beauty Shop.”

Merlene Barker was mom’s dear friend from church and was the manufacturer of most every woman in town’s bouffant. For some reason, she apparently never recovered from the death of John F. Kennedy because most every woman coming out of her salon was channeling the exact same flip as Jackie did a full decade before. Except for my mother, who insisted that, much like the basic black dress, the beehive would always be in style. She normally said this at bedtime while wrapping her head in toilet paper.

For some undefinable reason, much like a rabbit when it senses danger, a coyote or woolly mammoth, every sinew and tendon in my body tightened into defensive mode. “What are we doing at Merlene’s? Somehow I knew it wasn’t to pick up one of Merlene’s amazing casseroles she was famous for making when there was sickness or a death in the family. “Why aren’t we going to Hickmon’s? And where’s Andy?” My little brother was almost always in the mix when it was haircut time. “Hickmon’s is closed today for some reason.” I can’t remember if Mr. Hickmon was sick that day, or out hunting with his boys. But, I’ve never gotten completely over the resentment of what transpired over the next hour.

Mom tried to sound excited. “Andy was finished so I dropped him off at JR’s.while I ran some errands.” That would be another friend of the family, JR Betts. She dropped my little brother off at JR’s service station while she came to get me. “Merlene wasn’t busy today and she said she would be happy to do your hair.” “DO…my hair?” My breath caught in my chest as I remembered the time Merelene gave my little sister a perm and burned her hair off at the crown. To this day, Jacqui still calls her, “Mom’s old lady hairdresser.”

“Mom, I can wait till next weekend. It won’t get that much longer.” “I’ve already paid her, so get in there.”

Many people, when they are in a ghastly, albeit non-fatal accident, experience flashbacks, small bits and pieces, pictures of the event and not the entirety of the cataclysmic, life-shifting episode.My first thought as I walked in the room was why my mother wasn’t, at least whispering, “DEAD MAN WALKING” as I walked to the chair in the middle of the room.
Merelene was thrilled to see me and exclaimed how excited she was since she rarely ever got to to work on boys.

I couldn’t compartmentalize all the smells in the place, a mixture of bleaches and dyes and I don’t know…what? Burnt hair? I was first strangled by a pink and blue striped plastic apron thing. And before I could instinctively rip it off, the chair was jerked back into water-board position. I have to admit, the hair washing was not half bad. I think I fell asleep until the chair was unceremoniously thrust back into an upright position and Merlene began circling around me with a pair of scissors and a comb. No clippers.?

She was absentminded talking to mom while she worked, about church and what someone wore to someone’s funeral. They laughed and giggled, which was totally annoying to me. Really stupid stuff.

And then, Merlene began performing some kind of sardonic treatment to my head as though she were raking it with a fork. Like she was combing it backwards or something. I asked, “Are you teasing my hair?” She said, obviously for the one hundred thousandth time, “Oh no honey, if I was teasing your hair, I would be doing this?” And she pointed her fingers at my head and went, “ Nyea, Nyea, nyea, nyea, nyea, nyea.”

I rolled my eyes as she continued to tease my hair. And the entire time she was doing that, she was spraying me with some kind of lethal toxin. My eyes were burning with the fires of a thousand volcanoes, and I was completely unable to take in air, literally gagging as I gasped for, what I felt certain were my final two or three tattered breaths.

Just before I went unconscious, I remember there were two thoughts almost simultaneously. ”This is what females go through almost weekly and don’t come out of it genetically altered like they grew up next to a nuclear power plant China Syndrome meltdown disaster? And the second thought, as I glared at my mother, who was mysteriously absorbed in a Southern Living magazine, was, “For the love of all that is holy, I am your son, save me.”

Finally, it was over. Merlene stood back, crossed her fleshy ams, cocked her head to the side and exclaimed, “Oh.” Mom lowered her magazine, looking up for the first time, and said, furtively, “Oh.” And then, almost as if adding intentional punishment, Merlene held up the mirror as I morosely said, “Oh!!!” With the underlying thought, “please. No. Let me wake up or die. Please.” It was not being able to look away from a train wreck, only I was still anticipating the wreck. Growing up, I possessed this weird tick. I would laugh at the most inappropriate times. If someone told me their mother died, I would stifle this insane urge to guffaw. There was no way to politely say I would rather have my eyelids stapled to a railroad track than look in that mirror. So, I froze. The next thing I knew, I was laughing.

I looked like Patsy Cline and Lady Bird Johnson gave birth. I WAS A GUY…IN JR. HIGH SCHOOL. It looked a little like this.

Only way more poofed up and…hard. I remember it being hard. Like I would raise my eyebrows and my whole scalp would migrate backwards.

I mumbled “thank you,” and slinked to the car, almost crawling, praying that no friend, actually no other human, would see me before I got to the car. When mom got in, I slunk into the floorboard and began trying to flatten my hair down with my hands an spit. But, it was like scraping a concrete yard ornament. I think my fingertips actually bled. Mom was yelling at me to leave it alone. “You need to keep it just like that till tomorrow, so Merlene can see it at church.” And there was about as much chance of that happening as hell getting a Baskin Robbins. I figured I could leave it alone until the second we got home and I could drown myself in the shower…with a jackhammer.

Again, however, the car wasn’t going toward home. We were, in fact, headed down Race Street. It wasn’t until we pulled into JR’s service station that I remembered my little brother. Mom, frustrated at me for futilely attempting to get the mutant off my head, said, “Go in and get Andy.”

I hope you’re getting the emotional picture here. I’m 15 years old. About to enter high school. In a town of about 10 thousand people where everyone knows everyone. And I look like Merlene literally dipped my head in Aqua Net and dragged me through a donkey barn. “I am NOT walking into that gas station. It’s not happening. You can pull out a couple of hairs from my head right now and stab me in the heart with them if you want. But, I’m NOT going in there.” “Timothy Eldridge, get out of this car and go get your brother.” She said Timothy Eldridge, so I knew the battle was over. I prayed that a freak tsunami would splash through washing away the entire town, including my hair.

I walked toward the firing squad, which was actually a glass door. I pushed it open to see three gas station attendants wiping tears from their eyes, looking toward the opposite corner of the room like they just finished watching the funniest movie of all time. I glanced over and saw Andy in the farthest chair he could find curled up in a ball with exACTly the same bouf as mine. They all turned and saw me. And the funny movie started all over again.

We tried to beat each other to the car. I got in the car and, looking out the side view mirror, I somehow stammered, “Okay, let me get this straight. You actually allowed this hairdo thing to happen twice?” “Oh well, now. It doesnt look that bad. It’s just…and she trailed off with a heavy sigh.

Not another word was spoken on the ride home. Andy and I, avoided eye contact, because it would only make the false hope that we didn’t have the same alien on our head a reality. Andy would burst into tears. And i would burst into uncontrollable laughter.

The car was barely put into park before we raced into the house and stood in our respective showers for about 45 minutes. Although I’m sure mom only took us to Merlene’s Little Shop Of Horrors…and torture…and humiliation out of convenience, no boy from our family ever stepped foot in that place again.

The only consolation I felt out of the entire experience was at church the following morning, when I marched in and watched Merlene’s look of shock. There may have been a snarl on her face, like I deliberately defaced a masterpiece. I may just as well have drawn nose hairs on the Mona Lisa with a Marks-a lot! Or taken a chisel to the statue of David. At any rate, fortunately, right about then, the old tick set in again and I burst into peals of hysterical laughter. We all have specific moments in our lives that define us. If you should ever wonder why it doesn’t phase me for a single second that my forehead recedes to the back of my neck…now you know.