What happened to the Greens and why doesn't the Tea Party split with the Republican Party? Musings from a non-expert in the matter.
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1971: A Hair Odyssey
The late ’60s were exciting, turbulent times, especially for a young man growing up in a Catholic seminary. When I entered the Juniorate of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in Pascoag, RI in 1966, there were 24 of us guys (most of whom were gay, I now realize), from all parts of New York/New England. We were the future of the Order, just as hundreds of young men who had come before us over the past half century. But something happened along the way–Vatican II, rock music, flower power, the anti-war movement, the political and cultural awakening enabled by the Beat movement and personified by the Hippie movement. That awakening decimated American seminaries, as religious candidates began to question their faith and tuned in to personal discovery and freedom. By my sophomore year, twelve of us remained; by my junior year, only 3. The Order, reeling from the loss of so many young and middle-aged brothers, shut down the Juniorate, sold off the property, and shipped the three of us seminarians to Woonsocket to attend Mt St Charles, one of the Brothers’ high schools.
There I began to reenter the secular world, going to school with regular local kids, and returning to the Brothers’ residence (a former hospital–my bedroom had been Minor Surgery, complete with blood spatters all over the ceiling) at night. During summer vacation after my junior year, I heard about the strange event called Woodstock, and shook my head in wonderment and confusion. When I returned to school in the fall, I remember vividly my friends recounting their adventures at Woodstock–they were profoundly changed by that experience, and suddenly the world had changed for me. I had had an aha! moment that changed the course of my own life. I quickly began to question my faith, all that I had been brought up to believe. Perhaps it was the times, because I very quickly shed the burden of all that Catholic weight from my shoulders–an epiphany of Paulian proportions.
And of course, my outward appearance began to change with the time. Even with the strict seminary dress code, I began to let my sideburns drop (like Neil Young’s), and my hair lengthen as much as permitted. By the end of senior year, I had donned a whole new perspective on life, as an idealist atheist, heading off to college to become a psychologist. As part of that new image, I vowed to let my hair down.
And just at the right time. The Boston of 1970 was a hotbed of antiwar protest and hippie culture, and I easily slipped into the student lifestyle. And, the music! The Beatles, The Stones, Cream, The Who, and King Crimson dominated the turntable in our dorm living room. And then Jethro Tull caught my attention–there was something about the English flute-folk sensibility combined with electric-guitar power that made me instantly follow Ian Anderson. Then and there, I vowed to grow my hair like my new hero.
And so I did, much to Mom and Dad’s chagrin. Dad would refer to me as my son “Jesus.” And Mom, who didn’t want me to go into the seminar at 14, now regretted that I had left, and was an atheist to boot! Mom had recurring happy dreams that I came home with my hair cut…
And so it went through college, all the way through graduation (see my attached booth photo right around graduation time). I had lived the hippie dream, as I had vowed. I wore a purple velvet suit (hand tailored by my talented teenage cousin) to my graduation dinner. And, when one of my parents’ friends approached me during the spring of my senior year about applying for a job with his organization–the CIA, I was aghast at the thought of having to cut my hair! You imagine correctly that the thought of working for the CIA was abhorrent, even immoral, and my prized hair remained unthreatened.
But of course, all things must change. After graduation, I took a temporary job managing TopCopy, a Xerox copy center, while I pondered my future. Not law school, not medical school, not psychotherapy, not an academic path…I gravitated instead to a career in public administration, and set about applying to masters programs.
To my good fortune, my terrific girlfriend had even more terrific parents who took an interest in my career. “If you’re interested in public management, why don’t you get an MBA with a public administration program,” they reasoned. Back then, business school was immoral to the Hippie world view, so that idea took some convincing. Thank god I listened to them, applied to business schools, and got into a dream program, just as they suggested.
It was time to grow up. Shortly after I signed my admission letter, I made the decision to cut my hair for the first time in five years. As my girlfriend accompanied me to the barber shop, my nervousness was only exceeded by the completely blase attitude of the barber. Quite a punctuation to mark the end of a life phase…
Wilbur
My very first car was a 1953 Chevy Truck we named Wilbur. Not much to say other than that right now, but it was a cool car to have in high school!
Bad Haircut
In sixth grade I was a bonafide punk rocker and wanted a haircut to match. I was living in an upwardly mobile community where fitting in and excelling were the norm. (This is perhaps why I was drawn to punk rock; I never quite bought the materialist zeitgeist.) I was at a friend’s grandfather’s house, and my friend (also a punker) was telling me how his grandfather had been the neighborhood barber in his village in rural Mexico when he was younger. I got the bright idea that we should both get buzz cuts right then, which other than the mohawk was the predominant punk-rock style. Luckily, Granpapa was game. He wouldn’t need scissors for what we wanted; just an electric razor would do. We asked for a “Number One,” meaning the shortest cut the razor could deliver other than baldness. I felt conformity drop off me with each lock hitting the ground. Twenty minutes later, I had nothing more than peach fuzz on my entire head. I felt proud but scared of what people would think. And yet I soon as I thought that, I’d remind myself that I didn’t care what people thought! (Though I did. The cycle between acceptance and independence has always been a roller coaster for me.) When my mother got home that night, she was shocked and told me in no uncertain terms how absolutely terrible my hair looked, and that I was going to be made fun of the next day at school. I was so upset that I ran out of the house and slammed the door and walked by myself for two hours, perhaps my first real foray into adolescent angst. The next day as I put books in my locker, I heard two kids whispering about how bad I looked. “You can see his scalp!” they giggled. Lucky for me I decided to not care and felt great the next week when I went to my first punk rock show, my scalp glistening with sweat as I slam-danced with abandon.
Lessons from My Father
The lessons from my father were never actually lessons. That is what has stayed with me so strongly over all of these many years. They were life lessons that I learned, by osmosis, from this incredibly strong man of character and integrity, who had a stiff backbone in standing up for what he believed, and in doing “the right thing.”
He spent his too short lifetime spending monstrous numbers of hours working for activist causes, being involved in Democrat polities, and being a strong supporter of civil rights. And yet he never told my brother or me that either of us should do any of that. He simply led his life being 100% true to his principles and set of ethics, and we both watched him and learned from his actions. Yes, he would tell us why he was supporting certain causes or working so hard for certain Democratic candidates or treating friends and family in a certain way, but he would never teach it as any sort of lesson.
Watching and observing as a sponge — yes, as I grew older I realized that’s what had occurred. There are so many life lessons that I learned from him, but here are two that I think about fondly, and almost reverently. One was during one of two summers that my family belonged to a swim club, and my mother would take my brother and I there daily during those summers, as it was her summer time off from teaching. It was a wonderful world for a 12 and then 13 year old boy–filled with tons of other families and kids around my age. My father would work all day at the office and seeing his accounting clients, and then would make the long, half hour drive out to the country to relax at the pol and have dinner with us. One of those early evenings my dad and I were in the locker room changing back from swim suits to shorts and tops, and there were probably about six to eight other kids in the room, plus a couple other fathers. One of those was a large, ponderous man who was speaking very loudly, and clearly, to me, had had too much to drink. He was speaking to another man, and was relaying his anger about how black people were “becoming uppity,” and the “n” word was in the midst of his sentence. My father turned to him, and said: “Please–there are young people here, and it is totally inappropriate for you to use language like that.” The man continued without missing a beat, and then my dad, very quietly, but sternly, made a similar request again. The man stared at my dad in disbelief, and then swelled up with more bombast and anger,and responded: “I’ll speak about those porch monkeys any way I want what are you, Al, a “n-lover?”! My father then dropped him, with one punch. Yes, dropped him. And I had never, ever, seen my father physically respond to anyone like that. And rather than any sort of fear, or embarrassment, I felt a great sense of pride, to see my dad stand up for what he believed in.
My father was a CPA, and he loved having his own office, in which he “did the books” for over 200 small independently owned mama/papa businesses. He never enjoyed “pushing a pencil,” as he always called it, but loved being the free business counselor to his clients, as they would ask him all types of business questions related to their dress shop, or drug store, or small restaurant, etc. And during tax season when I was in high school I would always come in to work for him on Saturdays and some days after school, and I would see these clients come in to their office with their briefcases and boxes of papers. But there also was a stream of other men who would come to the office toting shopping bags of papers and receipts — I grew to learn that these were all people he grew up with in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and they were all struggling to make ends meet. I so often heard them say: “Al, make me a tax return.” And I also learned that their prior years’ returns were all kept in two bottom drawers of one of the file cabinets. As my father’s business would go up and down over the years, based on generally him hiring two many accounting clerks because he didn’t want to “push a pencil,” I would hear my parents arguing in the evenings and on weekends regarding money struggles at home. And one of the sore subjects that always came up was my mother’s upset over why my dad would be doing all of these free annual tax returns, while he was neglecting to complete work for some of his most prosperous clients. And he would always say: “because we were friends growing up, and they need help; if I don’t help them, who will? And why should my most prosperous clients get preferential treatment, just because they’ve become self important? It can’t always be about money, Anne, as there is no person too small to not be able to get by.”
And again, this wasn’t a lesson taught to me by my pop. But it was a lesson learned that I have thought about, and acted upon, so many times throughout my life.
Hair Time
I should
write a piece of YA flash fiction about what I could have done with all the time I spent worrying about and fussing with my hair between the time my mother gave up on it when I was seven, and when I decided to stop trying to battle my curls sometime in my mid twenties. Slavery to conventional wisdom on hair styles. Submission to parental belief in tidy hair signifying good grooming. Sleeping on hair rolled around orange juice cans. Sitting under a bubble dryer for an hour with hair tortured around huge rollers. Denying myself social activity around a pool or lake or being outside on a rainy day to avoid dreaded frizz. Blow drying sections of hair stretched taut with a brush until my arms ached. Constraining the untamable with rubber bands, head bands, barrettes, bandanas. I did it all. Until I didn’t care whether curly hair was in fashion or not. Until a run in the rain trumped a sleek hairdo. Until I spent summers sailing and swimming far away from mirrors. Until someone reminded me that my life was a mass of twists and turns that originated in me and grew outward: why would my hair be any different?
Shoot the Hostage
I’ve always been vain about my hair.
When I was born, I was pretty much bald, but as a very young boy, I had bright, curly locks of almost white blonde hair. My parents had also had bright blond hair as children, though by my birth, they had both had become brunette as they aged.
As with most children, I had a complete meltdown the first time I had my hair cut. It probably wasn’t from losing my pretty hair, but from fear of being held down in a big chair by some big guy with sharp scissors and buzzing clippers.
Growing up, I would often not leave the house if I hadn’t showered and combed (and for a while, blow dried) my hair. It was the 1970s and 1980s, and hair was a big deal—often literally a “big” deal.
At some point during college, my step-mother announced, “You’re losing your hair, you know. You’d probably better enjoy it while it lasts.” It was typical of her type of personal interaction.
I managed to deal with the growing “parking spaces” for years, but generally kept my hair long enough to comb. It was growing finer, as well as thinner, so needed a bit more strategy to keep it looking right. I switched the part to the right side, because it made my hair look fuller, and I kept it a bit longer so hair on one side would cover the parking space on the other. It was decidedly NOT a comb-over. No, never that. At work, there was a fairly senior-level employee whose comb-over went from his left ear all the way to his right. Not subtle, not fooling anyone, and the subject of some sad head shaking among the staff. I swore that would never be me.
Then, one haircut, the stylist really messed up, and cut some of my hair much too short. He had to drop down to about a #6 on the clippers on my whole head to fix the problem, and I had my first “buzzcut” style ever. It felt extreme and a bit awkward, but the response from people was huge. It was such a departure from my usual look, that people seemed to be seeing my face as if they’d never noticed it before. From then on, I kept going back to the buzz cut, gradually getting shorter and shorter until I was at about a #3 on the clippers and felt that any shorter might as well be shaved.
Unfortunately for my vanity, the “parking spaces” eventually turned into a “roundabout” — the pattern of thinning hair had progressed to leave a clump of hair in the center above my forehead with a mostly clear, bald zone around it. Worse, one side of that clump of hair was thicker than the other. Meaning, even with my hair buzzed, it looked like I had a one-inch lump of off-balance hair on my forehead.
I decreased the clippers to a #2, and eventually to the lowest setting before using just bare clippers. If I thought I looked bald before, this was new territory.
Vanity sucks. But Vanity also gave me an option.
In the movie “Speed”, one of the characters talks about how to solve a hostage crisis by “shooting the hostage”—to get the innocent person out of the way so there is nothing in the way of taking out the kidnapper. I decided to metaphorically shoot the hostage of my own vanity.
I shaved my head.
Now, rather than being that “guy with the receding hairline,” I could now be “the guy with the shaved head.” Much more manly. Much more decisive. Look at all the “tough guy” actors and athletes with shaved heads out there. That would be my new look. Vanity without a full head of hair. Without hair at all, in fact.
I can only say this about the journey and my eventual, relatively permanent choice of solution: You will NEVER know how vain you truly are until you shave your head. You’ll also never truly realize how much maintenance time and money we all spend — even men — on having a head of hair. While I don’t always shave with a razor (which usually needs shaving at least every other day), I still keep my hair clipped as short as I can and buzz it about once a week, if I don’t shave it off completely. Very low maintenance, and I can wake up from a nap and not look like I’ve been rolled in the subway.
It was a very liberating thing to do, and I realized after that—all along—it had been me who was the hostage.
The Kitchen Table
Even as a youngster I wasn’t a big fan of formica. But, like so many kitchen tables in the 1960s, our family meals were served on a gray formica table. The formica looked to me like it was trying to be a modern art painting, even though I didn’t really know what modern art looked like back then. I just knew it looked fake somehow. The tomato soup colored plastic chairs, however, were pretty. They weren’t trying to be anything but chairs. It was at this kitchen set that Mom served the first meals I remember.
Mom was a good cook and would later become a really good cook after traveling the world. My dad probably barbecued every summer day of his life until he passed away at 82. As a young couple my parents shared cooking chores for our family: Besides grilling, Dad cooked weekend breakfasts — usually pancakes and often bacon and eggs. In his fun made-up language for my sister and me, he called bacon “basin” and eggs were “egglets”. The most frequent dinner was barbequed beef patties, corn on the cob, good old Campbell’s pork and beans and a relish dish – usually pickles and green onions. Sitting in a booster seat on those plastic red chairs at dinner, I watched Mom dip her green onions in a bit of salt next to the beef patty on her plate. Of course, I tried it and liked it. It was the beginning of a lot of salty snacks down the road.
But the very best “meals” were the birthday cakes. Likely a neighbor or McCall’s magazine was the source of a recipe for using dolls in birthday cakes. Mom positioned a doll maybe 6″ tall or so in the center of a bundt cake and frosted the cake to look like a big hoop skirt. We loved it! The hats on these dolls were works of art, and the tiered skirts were a little girl’s dream. Again, the beginning of a lot of mouthwatering desserts…and somehow mixed with fashion! And beyond the cake, Mom decorated the house. Boy, did she decorate.
Looking back, those were wonderful years. The memories of breakfasts, dinners and parties around that kitchen table with my family are among my favorite. Even if it was a formica table, which is blessedly covered by a tablecloth in the attached photo of my sister’s 6th birthday party.
Flipping Out
Growing up in the Beach Boys days, my idea of the perfect girl hair was a shoulder-length flip. It might be teased on top, it might have bangs, or a bow, but it had that cute little flip up on the ends that really said, “Beach Girl”. (A beach girl who obviously never went in the water). I tortured my hair, and I tortured my mom in my quest, but I was determined to achieve the flip.
What I achieved was a slow-growing realization that EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT HAIR. Not only did hair length play an important part — my hair was too long to maintain any sort of flip on the ends — but hair texture did, too. I could Dippity-Do it till the coyotes came home, I could sleep on curlers every night, but I never quite got the look I wanted. I swung between Judy Garland braids and a tightly-curled poodle do.
Not only does everyone have different hair — but they have DIFFERENT HAIR AT DIFFERENT TIMES IN THEIR LIVES. By the time my hair was ready to comply, the cute flip was out of fashion. Maybe I just got the right cut; maybe the hair products had improved, but I think it had more to do with the stage of life I was in. At the time, I chalked it up to contrariness. My hair never did what I wanted it to do. Curl? No, it was dead straight. But when Susan Dey was wearing her hair straight and parted in the middle, mine suddenly had an annoying wave.
I have since made peace with my hair; I don’t ask too much of it, and it doesn’t disappoint. Fortunately, I have lovely highlights in the form of gray streaks now, and it is so much more than I ever dreamed of back in the days of the Beach Boys.
Dippity do da day
Hair has power. My father knew that, which is why he shaved us skull-tight once a week, leaving him with the controlling interest. Yet he was bald, which didn’t make sense.
Regardless, by third grade, the year I started hitting on women, he let us grow our hair out. The power it gave me was … I have no idea.
What I do remember was that I was required to keep up with my end of the bargain–keeping it combed and neat and combed at all times–unless I wanted it shaved off again; and I couldn’t go back to that, not after making my grand entrance into the third grade classroom, hair combable and slicked back and looking groovy.
But I’ll tell you what, it was a lot of work. And because I was a lazy boy (no other way to say it), I would comb it to perfection at night just before bed, then pull one of my mother’s old stocking hose over my head so when I woke the next morning I wouldn’t have to comb it. Incidentally, after my parents would go to bed, I would also get dressed, shoes and all, so I wouldn’t have to dress in the morning, either. All night, with an itchy head, I worried about my stocking cap falling off, and I was extremely uncomfortable with my Levis and shoes and long sleeve shirt on. It took twenty minutes to turn over in bed; and when I did turn over, I had to get up immediately afterwards, worried that my stocking cap shifted a little, checking its position in the bathroom mirror. Then, when I’d lay back down, I’d wonder again if my stocking cap had moved. Long nights. It reminded me when I used to wet the bed.
So I’d get up the next morning, my stocking cap would have undoubtedly shifted, and my hair would look like someone pressed an iron against my head in several places. I’d have to wet it and re-comb it, and by the time I was done, it was more work than if I would have just gone to bed like a normal kid. On top of that, my mother would make me take off all of my clothes because they would be all wrinkled.
“@$#% Blane! What the hell is wrong with you? Now I have to re-iron them and you’ll be late for school. What the hell is wrong with you?” I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, I’d say to myself.
It was about that time that I discovered it, the most important discovery in the 60’s–Dippity-Do setting gel, for women. I saw the commercial, I listened to the song, and two days later I spotted it in our bathroom medicine cabinet. I was elated. That morning, I unscrewed the cap, dug my whole hand into it, pulled out a gob double the size of silly putty, and worked it all through my hair. I ran a comb through my hair, effortlessly, making a perfect part, every strand matching the one next to it. I looked close to perfect. The only uncomfortable part was the all the excess goop running down the back of my neck and down my back, but it dried up by the time I got to school.
The best part was yet to come. Within an hour, my hair got hard as concrete, turning into a hair shell, a helmet. If anyone tried messing it up, they’d probably get cut or bruised. It got even better. By lunch I would comb it out, leaving my hair soft, dry, and in perfect shape. I would start out in the morning with a wet look, looking almost perfect, and my afternoon I would look even better.
When the season changed and the days started getting warmer, I discovered one of Dippity-Do’s defects. When I started sweating, my hair would harden up again. So when I came in for recess, half my hair started hardening (the part that got wet) while the other part stayed dry. Since the wet spots were darker, my head looked kind of spotted. Becky told everyone I had malaria. Larry said it was because my head was growing. I was a walking freak-of-nature.
Fortunately, I quickly learned that once it completely hardened again, I could just comb it out, bringing back that 100% dry look, bringing back me.
