A COUNTRY SHAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1925, Page 16

A COUNTRY SHAVE.

FUNNY BARBER'S OUTLOOKCURIOUS CHAT TO CUSTOMER. A WEIRD AND WONDERFUL CHAIR. There is a delightful element of risk in submitting to the ministrations of a small-town barber in the matter of a shave. He may, of course, be a splendid ! tradesman, with a steady hand and a i light touch, making a good living by reason of a monopoly, but again he may be below standard, lack of skiU having driven him into the wilds, where men are not too particular. While the Kettle Boils. However, my country barber knew nothing of all this. His greeting was a grunt, and a whisky-cough, that immediately put the customer on bis guard. Once in the chair, he made sure that you were not to have a minute's respite for the remainder of your time. No shroud did lie possess —not a bit of it, for he wraps his customers in nothing but a couple of bits of toilet paper, tucked into the collar. Of course, the chair is a weird and wonderful affair, a sort of cross between a baby's tucker stool and a dress-circle theatre seat, and the man who built it didn't know of the existence of tip-up swivel seats. Suddenly, the funny little barber man gave up coughing, and proceeded to light a smelly pipe, and then a kerosene heater, which made the whole room horrible with its sickly stench. On the top he set a little dented kettle, and while it boiled the barber regarded the man in the chair with a curious intensity, such as one might expect from an experimenter with an insect under a microscope. "I'd suttenly say as you need a shave," was the inquisitor's opening remark. Then, seizing the stubby face of his victim in both hands —rough hands —he observed with equal gravity. 'And as 'ow you suttenly got a tender skin." One can only agree, of course. But the kettle hasn't boiled yet, and meanwhile the poor city chap must hear all the local gossip. As the barber wanders ont, beginning with Joe the milker, who was kicked in the tummy by a recalcitrant cow last week, and hasn't worked since, and ending with a highly coloured description of a rumpus in the hotel backyard at 6.5 p.m. only last night, the realisation dawns that the chatty Queen Street barber is a sphinx by comparison. Very considerately, the kettle boils, and the customer watches the steaming water poured into a tin mug, or, it may be, what was once a pewter "halfhandle." An aged brush, apparently the only one in service, is caught up by the barber, still puffing smoke at a furious rate, and soon he has worked up a tolerably good lather on its moulting end. The customer endures the lathering with as good a grace as pos-, sible, but his dread of a half-blunt razor is now beginning to be something very real. Quaint thoughts about asking if ho may wield the razor himself whirl in his brain, but too late, for the barber man has seized bis steel, and approaches, to do his worst. A Trade With Tramps. "Many's the man I've shaved for nothink," be confides, and the customer wonders dimly if he did it as a servant of His Majesty. "The tramps like a shave, yer know. Like a shave as well as any man, they does, only course they want it fer nothink, and that's 'ow it comes I waste 60 mucher mc time, for I'm er good 'arted bloke, and don't like to turn them away. But some of them makes it a bit hot, like. Now; there waa oner there tramps wot come in 'ere not a month ago, and looks appealing like and says as a shave would get 'im a job. So I shaves him free, and off he goes to a place where there's a job." By this time he has hacked his way round half the face. "But ter top it off, I sees 'im back in the town three weeks after, and 'c's all day in the pub, shouting .all the place. Next day, same thing, and 'bout four o'clock, blow mc if 'c don't come in here, quite cheeky like, and 'arf on, askin' fer another free shave." "What a nerve," mutters the customer, shutting his mouth up tight again> to avoid the brush that is doing the round for the second time. "Nerve! That's just what I told 'im, and said if lie 'ad the money forlikker, he had it fer a shave from an honest man." (Recurrence of the cough stops shave and chatter). Then, taking up the razor again, and apparently trying to. make nicks in it by beating it on an old belt, he goes on. "So I ses 'Yer don't get no shave 'ere my boy.' And then he curses mc for five minutes, and ses I'm so mean that if I 'ad a pocketful of watches I wouldn't tell a man the time." The Conversation Never Flags. Now, if %he funny little barber can be believed, country people only milk cows and do other things likei that in their spare time, between organising " 'ops" and socials, at which the whole countryside is to foregather. Now tho local hall is scarcely thirty feet long, yet the barber has witnessed therein wonderful, balls and dances that would make the Chelsea Arts affair look like a Sunday school "happy hour." "There's gonna be quite a turn-out 'ere in a fortnight's time, and it-.''ud be well worth yer while ter take a run down from Auckland, just ter see the fun." Powder, and a Discovery. ,- The customer loses all interest.in the conversation when he finds an avalanche_ of face powder descending onto his smarting face, and it is with a great sigh of relief that he gets up from the chair, spluttering, to behold himself in the little, square crazy glass that hangs on the wall, several inches too high for the tallest customer to look into while sitting in the chair. "An' I hope yer'll come again,- when yer come fer the dance," says the barber, who mentions something about sixpence. "Here, take la shilling," pleads the customer, getting a good grip on his hat. "A shave like that is worth it." Several yards down the street, having busied himself with his handkerchief in removing quantities of the face powder, the city man wonders why some yokels lounging against the pub verandah are laughing at him.' Suddenly, he realises that the paper bib, tucked into bis collar, has never been removed, and, on putting up his hands, he finds the neckpiece smeared with soap, and faint traces of stubble. Horrible! Then ! a furtive little figure, coughing huskily' ' darts into the public-bar door. Scratch i ing bis still stubbly chin, the ex-customer I goes on bis way, sadder if wiser.