I was born in 1956, so somebody cut my hair before George Ament and his wife Penny moved to town and took over the barbershop. Somebody cut it, but I don't remember who it was. My first memory of a haircut is my first memory of George. For me, he was the Big Sandy barber.
I could look it up somewhere, but since I am more about anecdotes than accuracy, I am not going to bother: I think George came to Big Sandy in about 1962. I believe he came from Minnesota. He probably thought he was going to have a nice, peaceful, quiet time of it in a tiny town in north-central Montana.
From the time George got to town until I graduated from high school in 1974, I got my haircuts at his shop. I discovered early on that George and I had some things in common. Let's say we both liked to get a rise out of people.
We naturally took to each other, in a good-natured, adversarial sort of way.
I was no more than a third-grader when I beat George out of a free haircut. To this day, we debate whether the whole thing was on the up-and-up. We made a wager, and ever since, there has been some discussion about the ground rules – the devil is in the details, as the saying goes.
George had a little box of combs for sale, they were 29 cents each, and the sign said they were "unbreakable." They were black plastic combs, nothing fancy. I was always running off at the mouth, even at that age, and while waiting for a haircut, I told George, "I can break one of those combs."
"No, you can't," he said. "They are unbreakable."
We debated it and eventually made a bet: if I could break the comb, I got a free haircut. If I failed, I had to pay for the comb, as well as the hair. The haircut was a buck, I believe, so right off the bat, George was sticking his neck out in reliance on a 29 cent comb.
With a bit of fanfare, I selected a comb and bent it back and forth about fifteen times until it broke. As this was happening, George started yelling, "No! No! Not like that! You can only bend it once!"
"You never said that," I reasoned. "You only said I couldn't break it." We argued about it up until my haircut was done. At that point, George relented, and my hair was on the house.
For years afterward – in fact, to this day – we have debated this issue. I keep telling George that since it wasn't stipulated as to how I would break the comb, there were no rules of engagement. He has never conceded this point. This debate will continue until one of us is dead, at which point the survivor wins, I guess.
Something funny happened every time I went to get my haircut. I discovered comic books in that little barbershop, reading and re-reading Fantastic Four #57, part one of a four-part Doctor Doom story. I berated George for having been too cheap to go to the drug store and buy #s 58, 59, or 60 when they came out. It was years before I learned how that story ended.
A lot was learned while sitting in the old theater seats that made up the waiting area. Us kids listened to the adults getting haircuts ahead of us. They discussed politics or local gossip. Some of the things they said were just awful. We soaked it all up.
I was about a sixth-grader, waiting with my friend Willie Smith; we were bored, and there were a couple of people ahead of us, so we started taking turns punching each other in the shoulder. This was supposed to be fun. We kept hitting each other harder and harder. George was being the devil's advocate and was goading us on. "Hit him harder, Willie," he would say.
It escalated. We started flinching in anticipation of the next punch. I reared back to hit Willie, and he moved at the last second. I punched him in the jaw. Now slugging Willie Smith was not a good idea, and as soon as it happened, I jumped up and ran for the door. Willie was right behind me. George was yelling as we knocked over the magazine stand on our way out. Willie chased me down to the bowling alley; by then, we had started laughing and were friends again. When we got back to the barbershop, George was picking up the mess. I think we got moved to the front of the line; he wanted to get us out of his hair.
In addition to owning the barbershop, George always had some side gigs – he sold insurance, he sold Amway shoes if I recall correctly. He drove a school bus and was mayor for a time. He rode around on a small Honda motorcycle and wore a hard hat from the NAPA store to comply with the helmet laws. My cousin Ray and I once talked him into letting us ride his motorcycle on Main Street. He was reluctant, but he was so good-natured he finally gave in. With the two of us on it, we promptly crashed it into Budd Beaudette's pickup, which was parked on the street. More hollering and yelling, but no harm was done. Not much, anyway.
I always had fun at that barbershop. I had many good-natured debates and arguments with George over the years. I gave him lots of advice. For some reason, he never took much of it.
It was like Disneyland in that place. It had a carefree atmosphere. As a child, I felt like I belonged when I sat in that big barber chair.
There were two big mirrors on the wall – one on either side of the chair. You could look left or right and see your image repeated into infinity. It was like looking into the future. It gave me a sense of security; there was a little magic in those mirrors. I had read stories of Disneyland but, of course, had never been there. I imagined that this feeling was the same sort of thing you would find in that giant amusement park.
Disneyland smells like popcorn and candy apples. Ament's barbershop smelled like hair tonic. It was every bit as sweet, and a lot easier to get to from where we were.
George and Penny and their kids are long gone from Big Sandy now. Their lives have changed; they live in a different world. But here's the thing about Big Sandy, and people like the Aments – they still come back. Just like me, they are still connected. Every Homecoming, I see George. We always reopen those friendly old wounds. A couple of Homecomings back, we watched the parade together, arguing about that broken comb the entire time. I even offered to pay him the dollar for the haircut. He just laughed.
George still has that same crooked smile; he still looks like he is up to something, and you just haven't found out about it yet. Every time I see him, I am back in that little barbershop with the wooden theater seats, the smell of the pomade, and those two amazing mirrors of infinity. It is like a trip to a land of make-believe for me.
It's a trip back in time, to the Disneyland of Big Sandy.
