Wondering, should I try being trendy A STORY WORTH TELLING
“Style icons always change, and they usually inspire my haircuts more than anything else.”
— Maya Hawke – American actress and singer-songwriter.
A haircut isn’t something I think about a lot these days. Because a small crop is easier to take care of, they’re a minor thing anymore.
If I look in the morning mirror and the old guy looking back at me has hair over his ears, he’s off to Boyd’s Barber Shop in Center for a trim. Boyd does a good job, and the haircut comes with the latest politics, public opinion and what’s happening in town.
Sitting in a barber chair is also a reminder of Saturdays spent as a kid reading Popular Mechanics magazine while sitting in a barber chair at Chris Durant’s shop in Mount Pleasant.
Getting my flat top trimmed just in time to make the matinee next door at the Martin Theater. No appointment. Just go in, take a seat, find something to read and wait for the barber to call, “Next.”
Hairstyles have trended since then. I see long hair, short hair, hair on top of the head and shaved on the sides. I see artistic designs sculpted in hair. I see green hair, purple hair, blue hair.
Sometimes, different colors and cuts on the same head. Attempts at being trendy.
Sometimes, it’s fun to be classified as trendy.
But if you’re like my Uncle Bill, my mother’s baby brother, you simply pick one hairstyle and stick with it. Because what goes around comes around. Uncle Bill is 89 and wears his hair just like he’s always worn it. In a style that was trendy when he adopted it as a youngster. But Uncle Bill didn’t change with new styles coming along. He stuck with the ducktail haircut he’s sported since he was a kid in the late 1940s.
Over the years, the ducktail has been trendy, then faded away only to return a generation later. And, I hear it’s coming back again.
In case you missed it, the ducktail is a men’s haircut style first popularized during the 1950s. It was also called the duck’s tail or sometimes simply D.A., which is an abbreviated reference to another name derived from the south end of a northbound duck. And, that’s all I’m going to say. You’ll have to figure out the rest on your own.
The hairstyle’s origin is credited to Philadelphia barber Joe Cirello, who said he invented it in 1940.
History records that he called the combed-back hair held in place on G
the back of the head by pomade ‘The Swing,’ after the music style of the day. After becoming a fad with young males in the early 1950s, it was sometimes associated with those discontented with authority during the era.
Think James Dean in the movie “Rebel Without a Cause.”
In any case, Uncle Bill adopted the look early in his life and stuck with it. After Elvis Presley, poodle skirts and custom Mercurys in the 1950s came the British Invasion in music, the Vietnam War and the “one giant step for mankind” in the 1960s.
Through it all, Uncle Bill kept his haircut despite being told he was “out of style” as the 1970s
Did it bother him?
Nope. He continued to comb his hair back in a ducktail fashion, just like he always had, like “Kookie” on the 1950s television series “77 Sunset Strip.”
The first revival of ducktails came with the 1950s comeback in the 1980s. Mainstream marketing utilized 1950s cars and music to sell new products. Flat tops and ducktails were back in vogue. Uncle Bill was back in style— again—but oblivious to it all because he never abandoned his original hairstyle.
And now, with hints of another comeback for D.A.s, Uncle Bill will find himself back in style. Again. Even in shades of gray, his hair is combed back on both sides to meet in the back, just like it was in the 1950s.
Uncle Bill has always been my hero. But I’ve never gotten caught up in being trendy and never styled my hair in a ducktail cut. The flat top was my style from junior high and halfway through my senior year of high school when I let it grow to a late 60s length. After helping the ag major cowboys at East Texas State University defend the flagpole from which a group of hippies tried to remove the flag,. When it was over, I went to the barbershop. I left with a “conventional” haircut.
The only change in the years since has been color. And I didn’t make that change; time and raising kids did it for me. “My hair is turning gray,” I bemoaned to my barber one day in my late 40s. Comb and scissors still clicking away, he replied, “Just be glad it’s not turning loose.”
Today, I’m still blessed with hair to comb, although gray. But I’m wondering if I should try being trendy, like Uncle Bill.
There may be enough to cover that place in the back where it’s getting thin.
