Rejected - by RTE Sunday Miscellany -

Not cutting hair any longer.

When I was very young growing up, and I suppose our town had this in common with other towns, or indeed county houses - you had your hair cut at home.

It was usually done by your mother or father.

Some of us had a scissors and comb cut, a dry cut they call it today. Others had a Bowl Cut, just like Moe Howard, The Leader, had in The Three Stooges.

It was a simple and quick method of achieving a neat somewhat fashionable hair style. The pudding bowl was retrieved from the cupboard. It was placed upside down on your head and the hair that stuck out underneath was clipped off with a scissors.

You were left with a “Mop” of hair on your head, with a fringe just above your eyes.

Although if your head was big and the bowl was small: the fringe could well be just above your ears.

At some stage Old Bill, my Grandfather, got hold of a a pair of hair clipper from somewhere.

A hand operated gadget, with a flat surface at the top, that housed the blades that cut hair when you squeezed the handles and presented the hair to it above a steadying comb.

I remember it had two sticking out flat knobs on each arm that steadied the squeeze and helped apply the hand pressure. Granddad was a danger, in the vicinity of stickie-out ears.

I was often sent up to him for a haircut.

What a commotion! If you moved your head constantly as little boys do, you would be seized in a ferocious grip by your above-neck hair, the same grip he used for holding a pony's mane to steady him while the collar was put on.

Then the haircut would proceed under his rules. Even now I imagine I can feel the stinging hair- pulled pain in my scalp.

But no matter how many times when we were squirming - and he threatened to shave our head with his cut-throat razor, that he sharpened on a leather strop: he never carried out the promise.

Instead a fidgety kid might only get half a haircut: a terrible botched job, before he was released by the statement. “Good Lad, off you go now. The job is Oxo. Tell yer mother I was asking for 'er.”

At time progressed Francie brought me to Larry's in the Main Street for more torture.

Larry smoked a pipe, well tried to smoke a pipe while cutting hair. It kept going out and had to be restarted interrupting the haircut.

The phrase “Keep her lit” could have been coined for Larry.

We had a song then. “Larry the barber - shaved his father, with a rusty razor. The razor slipper and cut his lip. Hurray! For Larry the barber”.

He had a collection box in the shop. It was used for contributions to what we called The Black Babies back then, the Nuns in the school made similar collections.

Larry's box had a carved and painted small head on a stick at the top of the box. He nodded, thank you, as the coppers dropped down the slot into storage in the bottom of the box.

Larry's small shop, a small converted room in the front of a two up, two down, was always crowded, and the wait was long, and hot as the body heat filled the shop.

It was sometimes so bad that if you wanted to check the queue: the moisture running down the small window prevented this.

But then as teenage years came, I changed to Franks, beside The Barracks, for my Crew Cut: with a flat top. A more fashionable style than Larry was prepared to provide.

I suppose he knew that when Francie called in for his Short Back and Sides he might ask. What did you do to the young fella'?

This could lead to a conversation where barber and customer didn't want to go.

Also a report back to Headquarters would be required, with a predictable outcome: Francie or Larry, or both, would get the blame for my hairstyle.

I stuck with Frank, until himself and the family decamped to Drumcondra Road Lower, near where the Drumcondra Suburban Railway station is now housed.

The shop today has lost the family name over the door for the more descriptive Barber Shop sign.

Then Seán who took over the shop, got the chance to spruce me up for dances in the CYMS Hall at home, or more further afield: Danceland in Portlaoghis, Dreamland in Athy and the once year jamboree that was The Tullamore Harriers Festival.

Even when I came to Dublin, but went home most weekends I continued to have my hair cut in the town, I can't remember much about the conversations we had while the job was being done but I do remember I had a haircut on November 22nd 1963.