When you do a column, you’re on the lookout for things to share with readers. Sometimes it’s big, like the common threat climate change poses to us all. Sometimes it’s not so big. Like, we all love doughnuts.
The other day, I was looking in the mirror at some old guy who has aged beyond recognition. I guess that’s me. Glancing up, I saw a scruff of grayish, thinning strands. It hit me, “Hair! We all have hair. Or we used to. I should write about hair.”
Last Sunday, I was sitting in church toward the back. The good Lord knows that my focus waxes and wanes during Mass. I’m not around people a lot, so observing them is fascinating. This time I considered the incredible array of heads of hair in the pews ahead of me.
Short, long, none. Blonde, brown, black, red, plus an abundance of whites and grays. Curly, straight, flowing, bobbed. Big hair and tufts of hair. It was a reminder how glorious is our diversity as a species. And this was only one church in a Midwest town on one Sunday. It was a sliver of our planet’s diversity.
Our hair gets a lot of attention. That’s partly because we can do something about it quickly: brush it, comb it, toss it. Other parts of our appearance take more time to alter. Like how much we weigh. Hair gets a lot of attention, considering it is dead cells hanging around the outsides of our bodies. The root in a gland and the follicle are live cells. But once they push one of your hairs to the surface, it is dead. We fuss a lot over those dead cells.
My own history with my hair is short and unimpressive. Kind of how it looks. When I started school, the Sixties was a young decade. Every boy started school with a heinie. A “heinie” was basically a buzz cut. Families were large. Moms already had to spend time with their daughters’ pigtails and ponytails. They didn’t have time to fuss with the boys’ heads, too.
I never thought about the origins of the word heinie in first grade. Turns out heinie was used as a derogatory term for German soldiers in World War I, something to do with referencing buttocks. It also was a common nickname. Heinie Manush was a Hall of Famer who played against Babe Ruth. I’m not sure how any of that leads to a type of haircut.
Regardless, all us boys started school sporting a heinie. Gradually as the Sixties grew into the decade of Vietnam, protests, and hippies, long hair became a fashion and a political statement. Sleepy Eye boys were hardly on the cutting edge of trends back then. But we had Beetles albums and the Monkees were on TV.
Looking back on the Sixties, hair took on an outsized role. Long hair came to stand for many things: anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-Nixon. Peace, love, rock and roll, and hair. I was young but remember hearing of household battles. Fathers and sons were common combatants. Mothers were the referees. Barbers were caught in the line of fire.
If you think I’m exaggerating the role hair took, consider the musical of that name. “Hair” opened off Broadway in 1967 and was immediately wildly popular and stepped into the abyss of the generation gap. From a review, “The musical Hair was written to be controversial, to shock traditional theatregoers with its frank depiction of drug use, nudity, and sexuality, and with its gleeful use of obscene language.”
Broadway is about as far from a farm in Brown County as you can get, but a chubby little kid with a heinie sang along to “The Age of Aquarius” playing on the barn radio.
“When the moon is in the Seventh House
“And Jupiter aligns with Mars
“Then peace will guide the planets
“And love will steer the stars!”
I think the cows liked it.
By sixth grade, all the cool boys had grown out their hair, at least enough to carry around a comb. Fred Braulick and I were the last to give up our short hair. We were both dairy farm kids. The smell of silage wouldn’t be carried in our short hair, which may have been on our moms’ minds. I’d like to think Fred and I wore our heinies long enough that its popularity came back around. I don’t think that was true, though.
By high school even Fred and I had grown our hair out. That led to several years of me trying to look hip, and of course attractive to girls. Despite multiple attempts at parting, brushing, styling, primping, conditioning, and gelling, I don’t think I ever achieved hipness. I’m not sure about the girl thing.
A pivotal moment in my life came in college. I was standing in front of our dorm room mirror brushing my hair every which way, trying to find something that worked with the mop God and genetics had given me. Roommate Jerry Heymans walked over, put his hand on my head and rubbed it back and forth. He said, “Why don’t you try that?”
It was a revelation! Nothing worked with my hair, so why try? I was done with brushes and combs, and a simple quick rub back and forth was all I did from then on. Tussled it was and tussled it has been ever since then. I was liberated from the tyranny of hair care. Besides, my disheveled head more accurately portrays the state of the brain that is inside. Thoughts fly around in there, never really lining up, tapered, or styled. I have thanked Jerry several times.
Eventually I started hanging around with Pam. Ever since, she has told me when I need a haircut, so I don’t need to think about that.
I had a beard for a long time. I could really save time grooming then. Outside of showering and brushing my teeth, I could avoid personal maintenance altogether. It was great. Then whites began to appear in the beard. It made me look old. Shaving is annoying, but I don’t want to look like some old guy. Ahem.
The other time I spent up close with hair was our children’s, when occasionally I was charged with brushing theirs. Mom’s know secrets about brushing that no one ever tells dads.
There is an age I call the ragamuffin stage when hair on a kid is basically a battlefield. Especially in summer when everything from sweat to dirt to bugs might be in there. For my two daughters, brushing before school or church was akin to a type of torture. I’d like to think it hurt me more than it hurt then it did them, but that’s probably not true. Sorry kids.