The Bucket of Tears Haircut
By: George J. Schroeder
Tags: Humor, Economics, Family, Pandemic, Memoir

Home haircutting is a fad. I’ll be glad when it’s over.

I admire the folks on Facebook and Instagram showing their home haircutting outcomes. Maybe these skills are newly acquired or re-discovered. But I assure my barber friends that home haircutting is not going to take hold. It will not drive you out of business. People will come flooding back to you. How do I know this?

There is a bucket on my back patio. It’s there if I store rainwater and want to pour some of the precious liquid onto plants or trees or grass. This bucket was once filled with tears. This is why I know the barbering industry is safe and will emerge stronger than before. It’s rough going for the barbers right now. But it’s bound to improve.

Early in our home haircutting game we learned an important lesson: I suck at cutting hair. In contrast, my wife is an accomplished hair braider and hair twister and has inspired her friends with daughters our daughter’s age to braid and twist and puff their daughter’s hair to perfection. It was an amazing experience to see my wife, a white woman, become expert at Black hair. I would not be outdone. I checked in the bathroom cabinet and found the trimmers. The plastic case was there behind the hot water bottle and the ice pack. The trimmers and attachments were all there. The heft of this quality implement boosted my confidence. I found the stool on which my son would sit. I have a great place to give outdoor haircuts. I will create the optimum shade-tree home-barber Dad set-up, I thought. This will work. Frugality. Father-son bonding. So many ideals can be achieved in this one simple task.

My son’s girlfriend texted me recently and asked, “What is the bucket of tears haircut?” I told her I once gave our son a haircut and he cried enough to fill a bucket with tears. And while this is true, it’s not the whole story.

You need to know is that my son’s DNA is entirely African. He is about 50% Kenyan and 50% West African. My DNA is entirely European. About half from Germany and the other half from Ireland, roughly speaking. I have seen many men and boys getting haircuts outdoors, in the shade of a tree, in every African country I have visited. In Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Africa and in probably every country on the continent there are legions of skilled shade-tree barbers. And what appears to be a very easy task is rather much more difficult. Grooming and shaping the Black man’s hair is nothing I should make a business of.

My initial goal was easy. To remove all of my son’s hair. On second thought, this was not my initial goal. But after first few passes with the quality tools, I knew where we had to go: All the way to bald. There was no going back. The only way for both of us to emerge with any dignity and self-esteem at all was to remove all of the hair. And this is where the bucket comes in.

In shade-tree barbering, the hair falls to the dirt and is ground into the earth by footsteps. Maybe some of it is later collected by birds and made into nests. The wind sweeps it away. It returns to the elements. It is the circle of life for hair. The outdoor haircut is a great thing. It is a tradition I wanted to begin in my family. I had observed this cultural phenomenon many times. Yet I knew that simply observing this did not make me an expert any more than you can learn to ride a motorcycle by watching motorcycle riders on TV or learn to play soccer without ever getting a grass stain on your knee. You have to get in the game. Pick up the tools. Learn the skills. I was naïve to think this would turn out well.

My haircutting experiences as a youth went something like this:

Dad: Get in the car.

Me: Why? (All the while knowing, it was a Saturday morning and the only reason I ever was told to get in the car on a Saturday morning was to go for a haircut.)

Dad: Haircut. Let’s go.

Me: (through tears): I don’t want a haircut.

Dad: Get in the car.

It was the 70’s and kids had long hair. Not me. Everything was happy by the time we got to the barber shop. Stiff, carboard bubble gum, a fake smile, and a haircut that enabled me to see and hear clearly. Piles of hair on the floor were swept up and sent to the garbage can.

I wanted my son’s haircut experiences to be better than this.

Nevertheless, I was raised to believe that tears are a natural part of the haircutting process. It was deeply ingrained in my psyche. I fully expected the bucket would fill with tears. But what happened next really surprised me.

When the bucket overflowed, the tears ran in a small rivulet toward the back gate. They went under the gate and alongside the low concrete wall that divides my yard from my neighbor’s. The small and gently pulsating stream reached the driveway apron, then the street, and I was aghast. Letting water run in the street is a big no-no. The moment you observe that your home landscape irrigation system (garden hose) is running into the street, you shut it off. But these were tears, not municipal water. And they were flowing up the gradient that our kids had just skateboarded down at high speed mere hours before.

The rivulet would not be stopped. And it was gaining speed. I put down the clippers, grabbed a bicycle, and followed the stream of tears. The trailing edge of the stream was drying up and leaving a salty residue that would soon succumb to natural forces. When the tears crossed the grassy park, out of the neighborhood and up to the main road, they did not soak into the dry earth. Like army ants, the tears assembled themselves and mounted obstacles and kept steady in their purpose. What that purpose was, I didn’t know. But I could follow them on the bicycle. So, I did.

The small army of determined tears, by now less than half of what had been contained in the bucket, moved faster, perhaps knowing as the pavement heated up on this summer day they would succumb to evaporation. The stream picked up speed, went past the liquor store, through another neighborhood and turned sharply left on the next main road. Moving swiftly uphill, the remaining length of the stream decreased. Where before it was at least six or eight yards long it now stretched out not more than a foot or two. Around the corner, past the 7-Eleven, the tears came to a stop in small puddle which I watched evaporate. Who would believe me?

I had not walked around in this neighborhood in many years. I was not familiar with the shops and the buildings on what had been vacant lots and the bare dirt lots where there had once been buildings. And then I saw it. A Black-owned barber shop. Really? Practically walking distance from my house? I thanked the gods of Planning, Zoning and Economic Development and the sky issued forth a torrent of rain, washing away the last traces of salt and tears and leaving a glistening new world that we would enter into with gratitude and humility.

Now at this difficult time we must master new skills. Rationing of jelly beans and liquor, for example. People in my house need to get better at this. We must dig deeper than ever before to emerge stronger. So for now, son, meet me in the back yard. Sit next to this bucket.

Barbers, stay strong. Our tears will lead us to you. Be ready. No bucket required.