Ron's Barber Shop

Twenty-seven must be the perfect age.  You’re old enough to know what you like, but still young enough to do about anything.  For instance, my body was sturdy enough to carry me and a full pack over the Rockies, through the Black Rock Desert, and over the most rugged section of the Sierras.  I can still sprint at a good clip, I can throw Duke’s tennis ball with reasonable accuracy and velocity, and my eyes are sharp enough to aim a rifle with iron sights.  But I’ve been around long enough to know what I like.  I like hunting, hiking, and driving across the country.  As I have already noted in this weblog, I like burgers and beer, and anthropology and mint juleps.   And this morning, when I walked into Ron’s Barber Shop, saw a giant fish on the wall, and smelled pipe tobacco, I knew I had found a good spot.

I sat down in the only barber’s chair and Ron tied an apron around my neck.

“How do you want it cut?” he asked.

“Well,” I said.  In some places this is a difficult question to answer – I just want a regular haircut.  There aren’t too many options in the world of men’s barbering.  The way I see it, unless you want a spike or a mohawk or you wear your hair like Willie Nelson, you pretty much either buzz the hair or you give the same haircut that every guy has.  I am one of the regular-cut guys.  It isn’t complicated.  In some establishments – usually places to highfaluting to call themselves barber shops, where they stack shampoos with funny names behind the counter – I have had difficulty expressing this sentiment.  “Hairstylists” have quailed at my request for a regular haircut as though I were asking them to drive to Anchorage without a roadmap.  I find such caviling irritating.  How complex can cutting a man’s hair be?  Just give me the same haircut I’ve had since I was born.

“Nothing special,” I said to Ron.  “But make it pretty short.”  I paused.  “I can tell you what I don’t want – I’m losing my hair at the top, and I don’t want to have one of those haircuts where it looks like you’re trying to cover up the bald spot by combing over.  Just let it go, that’s my philosophy.”

He nodded as though that made perfect sense, which it does.

“So a regular haircut, and short?” he asked.

I knew I’d like this place.

Ron was an old guy with glasses and gray hair cut short around the sides of his head.  A buzz guy.  He also knew how to cuss, a trait I admire.  He didn’t mind an occasional four-letter word, at least when ladies were absent, and didn’t care very much if you disapproved.  But he didn’t swear exhibitionally, the way some folks do to make you think they’re jocular or tough.  He’d been born around Big Timber, and had lived here all of his life.  As a younger man, he’d had a ranch up on the Boulder River.  “But some guy from New York wanted it more than I did,” he said, “so I sold it.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Oh, yeah.  But at my age . . .”  He paused.  “You just can’t mess with it anymore.”  He walked to the other side of my head and did some snipping.  I rested an ankle across my knee.  We sat in silence for awhile.  “You can’t make any money at it,” he said.  “At ranching.  You can make a living, but it’s no way to make money.  I still say, the only time you make money ranching is when you sell the place.”

Another guy walked in.  Ron said hello to him, he said hello back, I said hello to the new guy, and he said hello to me.  He sat in the only waiting chair against the wall.

“So how has Big Timber changed since you grew up here?” I asked Ron.  The guy against the wall chuckled, then smiled when I looked at him to let me know he hadn’t meant to be derisive.

Ron chuckled too.  “Terms of size, it hasn’t changed much at all,” he said.

“The people,” said the guy who had just walked in.  His name, I would learn, was Arnie.  “The people have changed.  Used to be, you’d know everyone on the street.  Now, I walk down the street and eighty percent of the people I don’t know.”

“Too many Georgians coming in here?” I grinned.

“No, the Georgians are fine,” Arnie. said.  “It’s the Californians.  They’ve ruined their state, and now they want ours.  Want to run it too.  Want to come out here and tell us how to do things.”  He shook his head, and if we had been outside, I think he would have spat in the dirt.

“That’s the damned truth,” Ron said.

But neither of the men seemed angry.  Just wistful.  Arnie told about how it was getting hard to let the local folks hunt on his ranch anymore, since nowadays so many of them wanted to do it.  He used to let local folks hunt, as did most landowners, but now he had two problems.  First, people were coming in from out of town wanting to hunt, so there were more hunters.  And second, because out of town folks were buying up the land around Big Timber and not allowing hunters, there was less land.  “The people from out of town want to have their own private zoos or whatever,” he said.  “And they don’t realize how that affects the neighbors.  I’ve got a neighbor who’s got 130 head of elk on his place.  Won’t let anybody hunt.  Just got 130 elk out there.  These folks don’t know – he doesn’t realize – how much damage 130 elk can do to his neighbors.”

He meant, I think, competing with his cows for grazing.  For Arnie, cattle had priority over elk.  Most folks used to agree, but now it’s not so clear.  The world that he had described is ending.  Ron had it right: it’s hard to make money ranching in the old way.  It doesn’t pay because it’s inefficient – without subsidies, ranching would be finished already.  The subsidies will last only so long as ranchers maintain lobbying power, and that lobbying power will wane as ranchers’ contribution to the economy wanes.  Nowadays, the demand for this land is recreational.  People from out of state.  People like the New Yorker who bought Ron’s place.  Hikers, hunters, and sightseers.  They prioritize elk over cattle.

“I don’t know,” sighed Arnie, leaning back against the wall.  “Maybe I’ll sell.”

What a stylish haircut . . .