Page A3 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Saturday, July 7, 2007

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Carl’s barber shop

By J. Bueker

     Westown Barber Shop flourished for many years at the old Westown Shopping Center. An assortment of my neighborhood pals received their regular trimmings there, buddies like Chris Dickey, Mark Wells, and Glen Eide. I recall one memorable occasion when Chris and I rode our bikes up to Westown for Chris’s regularly scheduled cut one summer morning, and each received a free shiny new “Westown Barber Shop” comb from the barber. Imagine that, a free comb, and I was just there to watch.

     For the Bueker boys however, hair cutting reality was of a markedly different nature. Carl Bueker recoiled at the prospect of paying someone else good money to cut his sons’ hair when he could do the job himself far more cheaply. He purchased a home barber kit when brother Charles and I were still quite young, and he delighted in the knowledge that this would be the only investment he would ever have to make in his boys’ hair-related hygiene. Carl Bueker the hair stylist was born.

     Unfortunately, Dad was obliged to learn his craft through trial and error, and the early years of his barbering career would probably qualify as borderline child abuse by today’s legal standards. There were few things in life that Charles and I dreaded more than those two chilling words emanating from the lips of our dear father – “Haircut time.” When he sat us down in that bar stool and wrapped the toilet paper and towel around our necks, we attained a grim appreciation for what a prisoner condemned to the electric chair might experience in his final fleeting moments of existence upon this earthly plane.

     In fairness to the man, Dad did improve somewhat with time and experience. His standard technique was to begin by trimming around the bottom edges and ears, and then working his way slowly up to the top of our heads. Throughout the haircut then, we would pleadingly cry out, time and again, “Are you to the top yet, are you to the top yet?” When the job was finally completed, our paternal barber would then insist upon applying a liberal dash of Vitalis or Brylcreem to our shorn heads and combing the remaining strands into the dorkiest configuration conceivable.

    The standard “Carl cut” in the early years of course was a crew cut, but as the hairstyles of the later ‘60s took hold, he did generally allow us to sport somewhat less conservative lengths, but then only at the persistent urging of our mother. Curiously, this relaxing of standards did not seem perceptibly to mitigate the suffering involved in the overall “Carl’s barber shop” experience. When that electric trimmer cut into your flesh, you still knew it.

     As the years passed, dear old Dad became a bit more forgetful about his haircutting duties, which was a relatively positive development for certain members of the household. The man would solemnly announce on Friday evening that there were to be haircuts over the weekend, but then become absorbed in sporting events and assorted domestic distractions as Saturday and Sunday unfolded. Needless to say, Charles and I would somehow fail to remind him about our pending barbering appointments. Instead, we would sweat out the last few hours on Sunday, hoping the clock would run out before Father remembered to bust out his trusty home barber kit. This was truly a tense and heart stopping experience, and the outcome was never predictable. On one occasion Carl was so annoyed at having forgotten to cut my hair on Sunday that he insisted on doing so Monday morning after we had eaten breakfast and before we had to leave for work and school. Of course even when my brother and I successfully slipped into the week haircut free, we faced the very same scenario playing out the following weekend. Ultimately, there was no escape from Carl's barber shop.

      Things took a turn for the worse in the early ’70s when Father acquired a pair of “thinning shears.” This delightful device was actually designed to pull at the poor subject’s hair as it selectively made underlying cuts to achieve an overall thinning effect. Father was fascinated by this innovation and did not hesitate to invest in a pair. He brought the shears home one evening and proudly explained the principle involved in this new hair thinning procedure. As we listened, the blood slowly drained from our faces. The thinning shears added an entirely new dimension to the torments my brother and I endured during our hair cutting ordeals. And yet we couldn’t really perceive any discernible difference in the final result.

     At long last, Charles and I were mercifully permitted to seek professional hair styling services as we proceeded through our high school years, and Carl’s barbering enterprise finally closed shop forever. We began patronizing Long Hair Inc., a fairly trendy hair cutting establishment located at the old West Plaza Mall over on 35^th Ave. and Bethany Home. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty…

     They didn’t give out free combs at Long Hair Inc. But they didn’t use thinning shears either.

1967 JDA Address Pop Quiz

By J. Beaver

     How soon we forget. (Hey, it’s only been forty years). Who lived at the following addresses on Joan De Arc Avenue in 1967?

a)  3121 W. Joan De Arc Ave.

b)  3141 W. Joan De Arc Ave.

c)  3222 W. Joan De Arc Ave.

d)  3243 W. Joan De Arc Ave.

(Answers at bottom of page A5)

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________JDA

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