Sam's Barber Shop

When I was little, my Dad got his hair cut at Sam's Barber Shop in Pulaski. It was this little shop that had the revolving striped poll outside the front door. It smelled like stale smoke and some kind of lubricant. Sam shared the space with his father's clock repair shop. I suspect that's where the lubricant smell came from. It was always full of sound: ticking clocks, the drone of an old radio in the background, small talk between Sam and whoever was in the barber's chair, and thirty different clocks chiming in the hour, half, and quarter hour.

I never really liked going with Dad; little girls don't get their hair cut by barbers. I would sit there and look at the pretty, ill-fated deer in the hunting magazines and watch the demo screen on the Contra arcade game over and over. I always had a book--the Hardy Boys, or Encyclopedia Brown, or Nancy Drew--but I couldn't concentrate for all of the ticking clocks, especially if I was trying to figure out why Encyclopedia knew Bugs Meany was lying (if you're wondering, yes, I Wikipedia-ed it). Sometimes I would play checkers with Keith, but I'm not very good at strategy-type board games, and I got tired of losing pretty quickly. When that happened, I would sit and look at the clocks. All kinds of clocks. Coo-coo clocks, grandfather clocks, old pocket watches, clocks with spinning weights. I wanted to know how they worked, and why some of them had long chains and others didn't, and how a pocket watch could do the same task as the big heavy mantle clocks.

I never really got to find out. We moved before I was old enough to understand any of that, and I doubt I would have bothered finding out.