MEMORIES FROM LEVI
Levi Brake, CHS '51
You can sometimes get me started thinking which is not necessarily a rewarding experience, but one which I usually enjoy.
About barbershops, my first recollection is of one in San Angelo, TX, where we lived prior to moving back to Clovis in 1940. Up to that point in my life Mother had always cut my hair at home using the old hand-operated torturous clipper instrument of the time. I suppose she got tired of my squalling resistance and relented to let me go to a barbershop just down the road from us.
I admit to being scared when the barber laid the board across the chair arms and told me to climb up there. The thing I remember most is the wonderful smell of the place, what with all the lotions and potions, shampoos and shaving soaps. What a MANLY aroma that was. That was maybe the beginning of my long-lasting desire to grow up quickly and become a man.
In Clovis there was a barbershop on the east side of Main, in the same block as Hotel Clovis I think, or maybe next to the old "Monkey" Wards store. This was a mysterious place to me for many years. They did a lively business cutting hair but something else was also going on which took me many years to figure out. Occasionally a man would walk in, usually carrying a small bag of some sort and he would stop and talk to the barber, briefly interrupting the haircut in progress. He would then pay the barber some money and disappear into a back room.
I finally figured out that the barbershop had a bath tub and clean-up facilities in the back and that the men who came to use them were likely Santa Fe RR employees, between trains and wanting to get spiffed up, but unwilling to pay for a hotel room for only a few hours use. Mystery solved!
Take of yourself, Pard.
Levi
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