at the barber shop

I went to the barber shop today..

He's not a hair stylist,, He's a barber.

A hair stylist is a poodle, he's a hound dog....

Not the Elvis "hound dog" nope, not that. Kind of like the sheriff, hound dog in "Fivel goes west"....

He's a "git er' done" hound dog. A cowboy.

He bought the shop from the guy who trained him, the barber pole has been there since the ninteen twenty's

The guy he bought it from, bought it from another guy; who trained him.

The shop hasn't changed much over the years, no phone, no fax, and while you are waiting, you sit on an old pew that was bought from the leftovers from when they built the first stake center in town, it's made of wood sawn and milled from our mountains above town. The walls are solid wood and a huge elk head hangs from the north wall.

Most days people walk by just to see how deep the line is... there was four in the line before me...

A cop
A retired teacher (just home from a mission)
A farmer
And a city councilman and his daughter.

Everybody gets their fifteen minutes in the chair...it's not a written rule, but the guy in the chair pretty much runs the conversation.

We talked about: health care, socialism, hunting, city council, taxes, new high schools, old high schools, fishing, Jason Chafitts (our current congressman), obituaries, weather to develop more farmland into housing, weather to and how much of some one's land should be donated for a new stake center.


And then the first guy's turn was over....

Believe it or not, I just listened.

I was the youngest one there today, ....It seemed a good thing to listen.

I didn't agree with every point of view, but I learned a great deal.

What concerned me most was the tapering off of conversation when we were trying to figure out "what exactly was the "government" doing?"

Two of the men talking have actually bled for their country,

One wounded in Pyongyang city.(Korea)
The other in the Tet offensive. (Viet Nam)

They were perplexed ; "what had they fought for? for whom did they bleed?".

The loss of freedom and liberty was painful to them.

This isn't what they wanted for their grand childeren.

It was the saddest thing I have seen in recent memory.

Someone then said " You did it for me.....thank you. I will not forget."

The rest agreed.

Cops and cowboys, politician and carpenter, and a few others who had wandered in and awaited their turn,....

Not a dry eye.....

It was a hell of a thing......It was.

true story.