So I just had what was without a doubt the best haircut of my life.  Allow me to explain.  Having just moved into town, we didn't really know where to have it cut.  At home we've always just gone to the beauty salon with mom, since we were little kids.  At school, though, I have it cut by a barber that's near campus, and I liked that a lot better, so I told Mom that I wanted to look for a barber.  So we find this place in the phonebook: Bud's Barber Shop.  Sounded fun, so we called yesterday and scheduled appointments for Kyle and myself this morning.  So we went over there and this place is awesome!  It's just this one guy named (you guessed it) Bud.  He's like a real old fashioned barber.  He's 67 years old and he's been a barber here in St. Clairsville since the mid 60's.  He still cuts hair the same way he did then including touching up around the ears with a straight razor.  How cool is that!?!  So yeah, this haircut was incredible.  My only regret is that, should I get a job in Columbus, the haircuts from him will be few and far between.

Sitting there talking to him while he was cutting my hair, he was talking about how he used to have two other guys that worked there, but now it's just him.  He was explaining how he works 12 hours most days and even though he's supposed to be done at noon on Saturday, he ends up working longer.  He talked about a man who had cancer who had been a longtime client, he went to his house to cut his hair for the last 6 months of his life before he died.  The more I talked to him, the more I realized: this guy is one of those treasures.  This is one of the guys that make small towns so incredible.  He's a fixture here in town, an institution.  He's not a young guy either, and he's one of those guys that the whole town will miss someday.  And the sad part is that there aren't too many younger guys that do what he does.  It's a piece of Americana that's slowly being lost, and that's really a tradgedy.  Just felt inspired to write about that this morning.