Rural Town Barbers Ahead Of Their Time.

Thurles Poet & Author Tom Ryan Reflects.

Some people are traditionalists; happier with the way they were than the way the world is currently going.

This thought yo-yoed around my brain recently when my partner decided to visit relatives in Dublin. Things usually happen when we visit in-laws. Herself introduced me to a large shopping centre where I was informed, I would get a good haircut, and as quick as you could count the hairs on a bald man’s head, I was whisked through the hands of three pretty young ladies, for a wash, a cut and a blow-dry.

Things were different in Co. Tipperary. Here in the small rural town of Thurles the barbers are real barber, not just hairstylists. Barbers are an institution and a way of life. They knew every hair of our heads since the day we were baptised and indeed in many cases the heads of our fathers and their fathers before them. For generations every head had come under his scrutiny, and customers admired the slick way he sharpened his cut throat razor on the leather, before administering to bearded ones.

Men over a certain age will recall days, when he handed us a few pence with which to buy bulls-eyes or Cleeves Toffee. While waiting to be clipped by my hairdresser I nostalgically ponder the little short-trousered garsun, up high on the barber’s throne, being comforted by the kind cutter.

Whether his regular customer normally wore a ‘Crew Cut’, an ‘Afro’ or ‘Steps’; the local barber was fully familiar. The barber was anxious to please his first tiny customer and so ensure a head for life, who would, henceforth, call in on the Friday before First Holy Communion, on market days, Confirmation days, before a match in Semple Stadium or the day before that family wedding.

If a customer was forced to take the boat to Holyhead, to begin work with Mac Alpine’s Fusiliers, he would receive comfort and be referred to many acquaintances of the barber to be found in Britain. It would not be for the want of a decent cut, that the exile would fail in his mission across the water.
Our barbers were an integral part of our lives. They knew everything about us.
For dates he would have us “cut up to kill”, so that we would rise head and shoulders above any opposition and indeed, out-glamourise them.

Rural barbers are independent souls who bow down to nobody. Their word is gospel on everything from hurling to cattle prices. They were an authority on the state of the nation, and made more sense than many a politician. They were advisors to married men whose wives did not understand why hubby spent most of his week-end watching men in knickers beating a piece of leather around a field with an ash plant.

Long before the arrival of marriage guidance counsellors, you had that wise head in the barber shop advising in a manner to do justice to any professional psychologist. The short-back-and-sides expert is a brilliant conversationalist. One would expect that his real calling was in imparting and receiving knowledge on everything from attire worn for Golf club dinners to IFA dinner dances. His shop was always a male preserve, where men could talk macho and discuss serious matters, such as horse racing, poker, cattle, GAA and other codology. The barber provides enlightenment and entertainment. Men were among equals, and always chairing the proceedings, often only by silent agreement, was to be found the barber.
Indeed, if he had run for elected office, he would have headed the poll and would have been elected on the first count. He was always ‘well-in’ with all who mattered and that was everybody.

I heard of a hurling selector who went to a barber’s shop regularly seeking advice on whether or not to include a certain forward on a senior team. He had bowed to the wisdom of his barber and the same forward rifled home four goals on his first outing.

At election time the barber was often courted by politicians anxious to get feed-back on the way people were thinking, and was willing to pay the price of a ‘short-back-and sides’ in order to find out the state of party play.
Did you ever see a political candidate with a sloppy hairstyle? You didn’t, unless he was a born loser who wouldn’t be selected even for the council elections on the planet Mars.

All secrets come out in a barber’s shop, and the man holding the scissors was the trusted confidant of all. He was no respecter of status, whether you came in to him in wellingtons after the fair or in a cassock from the Cathedral; you were all the one head of hair to him.
The wise barber knew it was your hair, and what lay beneath it didn’t matter. His shop was a classless state. If you hadn’t the cash for the cut, he’d tell you to drop back on Children’s Allowance day, Pension day, or whenever you had it.

The barber wasn’t a Capitalist, rather a Socialist, who cared about every hair on your head. He had from an early stage observed that the greatest unexplored territory on earth lies under a cap. He was conscious of his duty to the heads of all in the State and discharged same duty with great diligence and distinction.

Should the day ever dawn that the barber is replaced by some sort of ‘whizzier‘ that looks after hair, but overlooks the head that wears it, then we are in for some really quare times.