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I got my first haircut when I was three. I had long, curly blond locks and my mother cried when Louie the barber cut it off. I got my hair cut a few more times by Louie the Barber and I was always good. He would wave his straight razor around and threaten to "make a baloney sausage" out of me if I misbehaved.
As I got older my hair tended to be a little reddish and I had a lot of freckles. The red hair and the freckles thankfully faded away by my early teens. I didn't wear my hair very long in school, but let it grow after graduation. I have never had super long hair, like the Kelly Family or the other rock stars, but people would still yell out of passing cars, "Get a haircut!" My wife Donna, would gently remind me of its length regularly but nothing swayed me.
I spoke at length in an earlier piece about the time I accidentally dyed my hair green.
There was a night at the Pub Steakhouse lounge when Bob Rosenthal and I had finished our gig and we were relaxing, talking with the patrons. Bob was engaged with several off duty detectives discussing the hippie situation and they were railing about the long hair. So Bob said, "Well, you all like Ronnie Dee and he's got long hair."
And they countered with, "Well, yeah, but we know him." And on it goes.
Not all barroom encounters I had were of a negative nature because of my hair, there were some funny ones too. We were in a beach bar in Treasure Island, Florida one afternoon having a leisurely drink at a table and there were two guys sitting near us at the bar. After a few minutes, one of them strolls up behind Donna and pokes her on the shoulder and asks, "Wanna dance?"
She looked at him and said, "No thank you."
With that, he turns and goes back to his barstool and as he sits down we could hear him exclaim to his friend, "Hell, one of 'em's a guy."
I got into a disagreement with a cowboy in a Denver bar one night about who should be served first. It was me, but he didn't agree and we had a little back and forth until he blurted out, "Aw, Hell, let the hippie go first." Donna got a chuckle out of that one too.
I just hate it when somebody gives me a bad time for no reason. I recall a night in the Storefront when some stranger came in and won a couple of chess games. I was watching and he asked if I wanted to play him and I agreed. I hadn't played in a while and I made a horrible mistake and he won in five moves. I was embarrassed and incensed, and it didn't help when he loudly challenged, "Doesn't anybody in this place know how to play chess?"
I couldn't help but to take up his offer. He reluctantly agreed to play me again and I thought, "Yeah, you might beat me again, but it won't be so easy this time."
I didn't like this guy, he was a real smartass.
We began playing and suddenly I couldn't believe my eyes. He was, I guess, overconfident and left me a wide open lane. A colossal mistake just like mine in the previous game. I checked and double checked. It was there. It was unbelievable. I slowly, but gleefully slid my bishop out on the board so he could see what was happening and loudly proclaimed, "Mate." On the third or forth move. I was so elated, I don't remember which.
He was stunned.
I said,"Doesn't anybody in this place know how to play chess?"
I high-fived the guy next to me and the loser left an unfinished beer on the bar and stalked out without a word.
I felt great the whole rest of the night.
No one dissed my hair that night, that story just seemed to fit in here. My original thought dealt directly with my coiffure. It happened in a little dive bar I frequented. I came in to watch a rerun of the Indy 500 that day and this fat guy came over and sat on the stool next to me. He was drunk and surly, giving anyone around him his unwarranted opinions and he finally turned to me and slurred something about my hair and got right up in my face. I had just ordered a bottle of beer, so I didn't hesitate. I turned the bottle up and poured the entire contents right on the top of his head. He just sat there and let me pour. He leered bleary eyed at me and I stared right back at his big, fat, ugly face while the beer poured off of his head, his nose and his chin. Some people nearby were gaping in shock and others were laughing. When the bottle was about empty, I jumped off the stool because I didn't want it all over me and he started to stand up, blubbering and spitting beer.
I began thinking, "Well, what am I going to do now?" But two guys solved that problem by suddenly grabbing him under his arms and ushering him right out the door.
"He's been bugging people in here for an hour," they said when they came back, "It was time for him to go." Indeed he went, never to return.
The 500 was a total disaster. Two drivers were killed in a tremendous accident and fire and I don't remember who won. It didn't seem very important at that moment.