If you were a kid in the 1950s, there is a good chance you had to endure the “home haircut.”
My father, also known as “Mr. Cheapass,” became a barber almost overnight. A friend had given him a pair of worn-out electric barber clippers, and he saw a way to save that $1.50 flat top haircut I received once a month. My mother, bless her heart, tried to intervene and save her only son from the humiliation of the shearing, but the old man won the battle, and I found myself sitting in our kitchen with two phone books under my butt, just like the real barbershop.
No cape, no tissue around my skinny neck, no talcum powder, no Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic, just a worn-out towel with a clothespin holding it in place. My mother sat at the kitchen table, misty-eyed, crossing herself despite being a Baptist.
My father tried to act like a “real live barber” by making small talk, asking me about my baseball team, the weather, and my dog. It didn’t work; I knew I was in for a massacre.
He didn’t know which guide to use, so naturally, he picked the wrong one, flipped the switch, and tore into my nice, thick seven-year-old hair. Gobs of dark hair were spilling onto the towel and the floor. My mother sat there with a shocked look on her face. The more he buzzed me, the worse it got. Finally, he removed the guide and put the clippers on my scalp, rendering me bald except for a tuft of hair in front for the application of Butch Wax.
The deed was done. I was scalped, mutilated, disfigured, and humiliated. Lucky for me, it was summer, and by the start of school, I would have a normal head of hair. My father was rather pleased with his handiwork and strutted around the house for an hour or so. I happened to catch my mother tossing the clippers into the garbage can in the alley the next day. When school started, she took me to my regular barber and paid half the buck from her grocery stash.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 