(Note: The response to P.J. has been very gratifying. That means it will continue. In which case, I should note that it is dedicated to three of my favorite Southern writers, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and William Price Fox.)
P.J.: A Memoir
Chapter Two
“Men are but children of a larger growth.”
- John Dryden
P. J. had been summoned because Sarah Effie had decided it was time for her son to have a haircut. P. J. had a love/hate relationship with the barber shop. He loved it as the paradigm of all that was masculine: the smell of the hair tonic; the leather-covered chairs; the bigmouth bass mounted on the wall. And there were the magazines! Real men’s magazines like True and Sports Afield, wherein men wrestled grizzly bears and stalked the big cats in Africa. Fuel for many a treehouse fantasy. In fact, the barber shop would have been one of P. J.’s favorite places in the whole world were it not for the fact that every time he went there, he had to get a haircut.
If there was one thing Benny Dowd believed in, it was short hair for men. Benny had been bald since he was nineteen and had little choice in the matter. P. J., however, thought he should have some freedom of choice. He thought a crew cut made him look like a monkey. This perception was reinforced by every mirror and by most of P. J.’s classmates at Manatee Elementary School. Today’s excursion would be less painful than most because he had wheedled a quarter from his grandmother that morning, meaning he could get a fifty-cent flat-top rather than the usual skin job. With any luck at all, Benny would be too sloshed to notice and P. J. might be able to pester Sarah Effie into getting him some Butch Wax at the A & P.
After months of intensive negotiations, Sarah Effie had finally cracked and said that P. J. could ride his bike all the way to the barber shop provided he got off and walked his bike across busy Manatee Avenue. P. J.’s heart pounded as he pedaled his bike up the rough gray bricks of Sixteenth Street, for the boundaries of his world had just increased manyfold.
Turning west down Second Avenue, he deliberately rode down the center of the street where the loose bricks would clatter as he passed. He turned south again at Fourteenth Street and came to a halt next to an area of tall grass that used to be a Jimson cane field. Close to the curb, a pipe emerged from the earth bearing some of the coldest and most sulphurous water South Florida could produce.
The Yankee retirees who were beginning to discover the area thought the stuff smelled and tasted like rotten eggs. To a kid who was raised on the pungent artesian water, it was the Nectar of the Gods. P. J. thought the heavily chlorinated city water was disgusting. The spring and its attached stream were known incongruously as “The Man With The Mile-long Beard.” During the rainy season, the spring gushed gallons of water each minute. In August, it was reduced to an anemic trickle. P. J. drank directly from the pipe, then cupped his hands and dashed the cool water over his sweating head and shoulders.
Thus refreshed, he continued down Second Avenue until the street ended in a block of shabby wooden apartments with the unlikely name of Paradise Court. Sarah Effie said the inhabitants of Paradise Court were “poor white trash” and ordered P. J. to stay away. Most of the men who lived there worked at the crate mill building boxes in which citrus was shipped. Their dirty-looking sons smoked cigarettes and wore their hair long and greasy. P. J. was terrified and envious of them at the same time. He pedaled a little faster as he turned south on Twelfth Street.
Manatee Avenue, the main thoroughfare in town, ran nearly twenty miles from the Braden River in the east to the Gulf beaches in the west. Paralleling the south bank of the Manatee River, its length was broken only by a slight jog, which took it around the old cemetery at the east end of town. Manatee, the original settlement, had sprung up on the edge of what had been the Jimson plantation. After World War Two, however, the old town was swallowed up by the booming city of Bradenton to the west.
In the summer of 1958, the wooden and stucco buildings emanated an aura of genteel decay characterizing a town whose time had passed. Manatee was on the wrong side of the Atlantic Coast Line tracks that marked the eastern edge of the newer city.
Terry’s Barber Shop was located in the Arcade Building on the corner of Manatee Avenue and Tenth Street. The cool, dark recesses of the L-shaped arcade provided shelter for the local winos as well as at least one cut-rate abortionist and a motley assortment of elderly attorneys with no visible means of support. The barber shop was on the Tenth Street end of the “L.” P. J., having neglected to walk his bike across the thoroughfare, jumped the curb and coasted through the arcade.
He greeted Ron and Mr. Terry as he entered the shop. Ron, who noticed such things, wondered why P. J.’s old man had not accompanied him as usual. When P. J. announced that he was now allowed to ride his bike to town, Ron looked serious and guessed that P. J. would have to sit in the chair like a man rather than using the elevated “kiddy chair.”
When Mr. Terry got through with the customer he was working on, he gestured P. J. into the chair. The boy squirmed and said that he would wait for Ron. Mr. Terry winked at Ron and said he guessed he just couldn’t handle the young bucks anymore. He headed across the street to Sam’s Liquor Store for a cool one.
Ron Early was a legend among the kids of Manatee. He was a former minor-league pitcher who loved nothing better than talking baseball with his customers. When he wasn’t behind the barber chair, he often could be found on one of the two baseball diamonds at the elementary school. There, he spent hours helping dozens of youngsters improve their skills. It seemed he was never too tired to hit a few more grounders or pitch another round of batting practice. When the Milwaukee Braves were in town for spring training, he never missed a game. And he never failed to take a couple of kids with him, paying for their tickets and hot dogs out of his own pocket. If the kids of Manatee could have voted, Ron Early would have been elected God.
P. J. remembered with great relish a game earlier in the year after which Ron took him into the dugout and introduced him to Eddie Matthews and Hank Aaron. Speechless with awe, the boy could only nod helplessly when Matthews presented him with a bat that the third baseman had cracked during the game.
The statistics flew as Ron worked on P. J.’s flat top. Batting averages, slugging percentages and won-lost records were analyzed and it was decided that the Braves would take the Series again this year from the hated New York Yankees. Ron asked P. J. if he still had his two famous bruises.
That spring, Ron had persuaded a number of the Braves players to conduct a clinic for the local kids. The pitchers had taken a lot of speed off their pitches and suffered a loss of control as a result. P. J. had earned the singular honor of having been hit by pitches thrown by both Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn. The pain of the bruises vanished when the concerned pitchers had autographed both baseballs and given them to their delighted victim. P. J. had become a local celebrity for a week or two and had gotten his picture in the Bradenton Gazette. He was more than a little disappointed when the bruises faded after a few days.
Ron swung the chair around so that P. J. could admire his bristly new haircut in the mirror. The sight of his fashionably flat head and the smell of the Butch Wax heightened his feeling that this would be a special day. Ron said the first flat top was on the house and returned the extra quarter to P. J. The barber didn’t mind a bit when the excited boy fled the barber shop without even thanking him.
10:13:52 PM 
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