Roma fell in a morning

So this is haircut day. 

I walked the 25 minutes or so to the Beaches and am about to head into the barber shop and I see there are two customers waiting, with one in the chair in the early stages of a shave. I continue my stroll and do a bit of shopping. 

About 15 minutes later I check in again. The line is longer. Three guys waiting, one in the chair, just getting going. Old Mr. Roma is not blazingly fast with the clippers, comb and scissors, so I decide to head home. 

But I still want a haircut. 

So I stop at barber shop at Woodbine and Queen. 

It was without customers, but not without business as the unswept hair attests to.

I parked in the chair and the barber went to work. He was a lot younger than Mr. Roma, although about the same height, 5'6 or so and quite chatty. He started his career working for his dad at a shop on Parliament. They worked seven days a week. His father still cuts on Mondays, traditionally a day off in the hair trade. As he was chatting, he went to work with a set of clippers, mowing down the sides and the neckline. He pulled out a different set for the top of my head, trimming with the help of a comb. He gave my head a bit of shape, rather than buzzing down too closely. He also said I was going bald the right way. I breathed a sigh of relief at that news.

He said in his business you know the guys in your neighbourhood; who cuts slow, who cuts fast, who's been around longest. Whenever someone retires, he finds out, because he gets customers. 

As he wrapped up his clipping he asked if I wanted a straight razor on my neckline. No problem with that. He said he used a fresh blade on every cut and made a point of showing me his technique for loading up the straight razor with a new blade. His hand was steady and the line was straight. 

I'm accustomed to being in the chair for about half-an-hour for my haircut at Mr. Roma's. He is a deliberate craftsman. Plus, he gives you that massage at the end. No massage this morning, but I did get one of the things that a barber cut should offer you: speed. It took 15 minutes for my new barber, Chris is his name, he gave me his card, to clean me up.

Clearly Mr. Roma isn't hurting for business, so my decision to switch to a shop that's about 10 minutes closer to home and twice as fast in the chair is entirely pragmatic. I would also add that my new guy actually did a better job on my head, which made the $14 haircut worth every penny (it was two bucks more than a Roma job). And he could talk sports, which strikes me a right of all men who choose to go to a barber shop. 

So no guilt in this corner. When it's time for the next trim, Chris will get the call.

The Long View

Journalism, or what people call "Main Stream Media" takes a real beating on this continent. There seems to be more effort expended in critiquing what gets said, shown or written than is put into the original product itself. 

I guess you can add me to the list, in a way. 

I just finished a lovely little book called "Are We Rome?" by former Atlantic editor Cullen Murphy. The book's subject is explained by the title, a 200 page romp through 2000-plus years of history. The caveats are many, but the essential point is clear. The United States has something to learn from the rise, decline and eventual disintegration of the Roman Empire.

I like to read history and I like it best when it tells a story and does so in clear, accessible language. Murphy's tome succeeds on both fronts. 

I won't get into the guts of his argument, read the book for that. What struck me as I was reading it was my growing gratitude that the writer was a journalist. He doesn't have a PhD in classics (as far as I know), I've read him mostly on US politics. He has an amateur's interest in antiquity and a curiosity about where his own country sits in the continuum of history. The result is a book that provides an entertaining Cole's notes version of Gibbon in parallel with a lament for current state of American politics. The narrative is punctuated by that journalistic standby: the telling detail. 

This is not academic history, and no doubt there are academic historians who would sniff at some mere magazine hack who dares to play in their sandbox and make money doing it. Think of the abuse Pierre Berton took from academic historians for the sin of popularity (and being a journalist doing popular history). But what this book has going for it is what all good history manages: there is a point behind the stories. He has something to say. 

My brother is a historian and I have always been struck by his ability to connect the dots. He draws things together into a coherent whole. Well-used deep knowledge does not get lost in the subjunctive, it brings clarity. (You can read some of his stuff here: http://theshtick.blogspot.com/) 

One of my favorite academic historians is Donald Creighton. He wrote a fabulous two-volume biography of Sir John A MacDonald, our first Prime Minister. It is very much a product of its time, the 1950s. The salacious bits, such as Sir John A's prodigious drinking, the fate of his first wife, take a back seat to his many qualities as a politician. But the books, all 800-plus pages of them, paint a picture of a man and a time and tell today's Canadians a lot about our national reflexes, why we are the way we are as a nation and as people. In fact, it was after reading Creighton that I came to understand some essential truths about the Canadian character that the passage of time and the evolution of the country have not yet erased. That is great history writing.

I am aware that an academic can devote an entire career to studying, say, the contents of a Roman latrine in northern Britain. And I suspect the work would be pretty interesting. But the real test would come from the writing that emerges from the research. It would, no doubt, adhere to academic conventions and advance its argument with detail after accrued detail. And if it is done especially well, it may tell us not just about where we've been, but how it relates to where we are. But will a general audience get it? Probably not. 

Which is too bad. If more historians had Murphy's, or Berton's (or my brother's) storytelling gifts, more history might be read. And perhaps the we would make fewer of the same mistakes, over and over again. Oh, and my brother's first job was as a reporter.

Le tire, le but!

There is a clear correlation between playing a sport and enjoying watching it. 

I got that point proven to me again on the weekend.

I played hockey for the first time in two years on Sunday, a tournament that demanded three games in a day out of me. I survived.

My team was made up of work colleagues. It's an annual ritual, one I missed last year on account of being in Mexico, that features teams from various media outlets in Toronto. Some teams take it more seriously than others. There was much scuttlebutt around the glass that the Toronto Star was liberally peppered with ringers. When we watched CTV and the National Post play before our first game, it was a sign of how the higher-rent teams handled themselves. They were both pretty good for a couple of pickup squads.

I used to play a couple of times a week, but it's been about three years since I've played regularly. I am fast approaching the age when it is increasingly difficult to just go out and play and not make an ass of yourself. No amount of knowledge, training, experience or even skill can compensate for a body that can no longer respond. Happily, that was not my entire experience. 

I am slower, I am not as strong as I used to be and my vision is not as sharp. But since a good proportion of my teammates are similarly aging, we're all getting slower together. It's all relative. 

The goal in my first game was not to embarrass myself and in that I was successful. I took all the necessary middle-aged precautions: Advil BEFORE taking the ice, a deliberate warmup, a bit of time with the puck on my stick just to remember how it felt. It felt good, even if kept sliding from my control like a drop of mercury on a piece of paper. And to skate again was a delight. I skate well, if a bit stiffly, I can still turn to the left and the right and stop without falling down. 

But in pickup hockey, the difference between being a hole-filler and useful to your team tends to come down to speed and conditioning. Good puck handling is a bonus. Speed allows you to cover the ice: attack and defend. Conditioning allows you to do it for more than the first shift. I was pretty much resigned to the fact my puck handling would suck. Two years of rust will see to that. 

My speed is not what it once was, so my ability to play in both ends was limited. But my conditioning, which is pretty good, let me be more-or-less in the right position most of the day. 

We lost our first game in overtime and won our second in a shootout. By the time we got to our third game we'd all learned each others names and were playing on regular lines.

As the games unfolded, I noticed something: my hockey brain and hockey body were beginning to get reacquainted. It's the small things, taking a pass and moving the puck ahead quickly while pivoting 90 degrees and keeping your head up. Seeing the player you're supposed to check and staying on top of him. Finding yourself in open ice in a position to take a pass for a shot. It's a kind of muscle memory that was shaken loose through repetition.

We played the Post in our last game. I'd seen them play twice. They lost their first game in a shootout to CTV and they creamed CP in their second game. I watched a bit of their second game and it was obvious that a number of their players were familiar to one another. They moved the puck easily, wingers stayed in their lanes and backchecked. Defencemen didn't pinch in unless they knew they had a play. Against us, the game was over pretty quickly. I think it finished 7-1. Even though we were being thoroughly trounced, I actually felt pretty good. First of all my lungs weren't burning, neither were my legs. The running held me in good stead there. And the game started to slow down a bit. I wasn't handling the puck like it was a hand grenade. When it was over, I was pleased. My modest pickup hockey career is not over. 

I got something else out of my day's exercise: a renewed appreciation for the pro game. The playoff games were on the TVs in the arena restaurant, and I was glued to the Rangers and Devils as I sipped a Coke after our second game. It seemed faster to me, the skill level beyond anything I had seen. Then came the subtle things; the footwork, close passing, the positioning, the use of the body. The scrums along the boards made sense, so did the cycling the in offensive end. And the routine failures of the greatest players in the world, the shots that went wide, the missed passes, the players out of position. A much faster, skilled and vastly better compensated version of our little tourney. And games that end with the same sorts of scores, 4-3, 3-2, and 7-1.  

It's all relative. They play at their pace, we play at ours. The pleasure I take in playing with my peers lets me to appreciate the pros' skills all the more. (You just have to watch one of these guys going slowly to see what I mean. Watch the Alexei Kovalev stickhandling exhibition on U-Tube and you get the picture. Pros live in another universe, George Plimpton notwithstanding.)

It's a reminder, a happy reminder, that when you play the sport, you are not just a fan. You are part of it. You might not make a living doing it, but you're a big reason why the game lives in the first place. Take away the weekend hackers like us, and you starve the roots that let the pro game flourish. Why is it hard to sell hockey in Nashville? Not because the game is bad, but because there are not enough people like us, the ones who drag their gear to the rink, hit a clean sheet of ice and share the magic.

More from the past

My father took this shot sometime in the late-1950s, '58 or '59. Obviously an intercollegiate trackmeet. I don't know my British Columbia landmarks, but I think it was at the University of British Columbia. He took a lot of track pictures, he ran the 200 himself, but was a better swimmer. He did the butterfly. I love this shot, the sprinters getting ready to lean into the tape, the spectators leaning in to watch the finish, the crowd in the stands. A nice sports shot. 

They once were young

My parents separated 27 years ago and my dad has been dead for more than a decade now. But once upon a time they were young, and they looked like this. This photo dates from 1962, I figure, sometime in late-April or early May. 

The River news

I just got back from a few days down in Brockville. A month makes a huge difference. 

Then I was facing enormous snowdrifts, cold temperatures and a river full of ice. 

This time I was able to run in my shorts, ditch the ski-jacket and walk right to the front door without a shovel. 

Winter's aftermath was everywhere. The snow isn't gone, there are piles all over, one of the largest in front of the shed door which would have required a god chunk of time to dig out. As the snow retreats, the dog turds are revealed, a considerable number. They belong to the neighbour's black lab. There is a lot of windfall: oak branches, maple, pine. There is one tree on the back end of the property that is missing its top 30 feet. The ground is not entirely thawed, so a misstep can send you skidding along the muddy surface. The runoff is keeping the sump pump busy.

The neighbours to my east, Liz and Dave, the longest-serving of the full-timers out there at 34 years, tell me the ice coming down river was the thickest they had ever seen. Evidence of it's force was visible at my other neighbour's (owner of the property-lined challenged lab). George is the guy with the helipad dock that is slung out over the water (you can see it in the bottom right corner of the picture). I can report that the dock survived, it's still sitting there, but is missing most of the wooden planks that constitute its skirt. The ice just peeled it away. The replacement wood is sitting on the deck, waiting to be hammered on, presumably when the water is a bit warmer. 

The fauna is of the season too. Woodpeckers everywhere, their hammering a constant rhythm. The robins are nesting, the red-wing blackbirds are in abundance, the chipmunks are back and digging.

It was the woodpeckers that caught my eye, especially when I took a look at the west wall of the house. It's full of holes. The birds have hammered out perfect circles, about two inches across, yanked out the insulation and are preparing to nest. They pecked through the outer skin of stained cedar, then through the sublayer of coated particle board and into the fibreglass. The wall looks like someone has been taking target practice on it. 

We don't want birds nesting IN the house, so I got the ladder and began to inspect inside the holes. No nests. I got some old bits of hardwood flooring and hammered them over the holes. I was distracted at one point by a starling that exited from one of the holes, ever the squatter, but his hole was too high up to cover. 

The flowerbeds are still covered with leaves and some snow, so it's too early to get the rake out (if I could, it's snowed-in still). The big clean up will have to wait for next time. 

The buzz at Roma

Tuesday was haircut day.

I go once a month these days, a frequency dictated by my hairs' length, or lack thereof. 

This time a year ago, my mop was pretty long, as the picture to your right demonstrates. I was on a leave from work, with no particular sartorial requirements upon me, so I decided to grow it longish. At some point last fall, I recognized a couple of things. First, long hair doesn't need to be cut all that often, but it needs to be cut well. Second, my hairline was moving away from it's roots enough to be noticeable. 

So in early December I had it cut off. 

I decided to forego the usual "stylist" for the more prosaic barber. I chose a one-chair place on Queen St in the Beach called Roma. I'd walked past it a few times and it looked credible. Customers in the chair or waiting. A stack of magazines. A barber pole out front. 

My first trip was the most time-consuming. Me and my barber negotiated our way through what I meant by "short". In the end, it was a two part process, the initial scything followed by a touch-up. 

When it was done I still looked like myself, but he evidence of my thinning hair was laid bare. I don't know if I'll keep it quite this short, but I do know it won't be that long again for fear of presenting a comb-over-in-training. 

Tuesday was my fourth return visit, evidence of my satisfaction as a customer. By now my barber recognizes me and the cut I want. Over the months I haven't managed to get the guy's name, but I have learned he's been cutting hair in this place for 30 years. While the shop is named Roma, he is from Napoli. He's a tiny guy with a head like a lightbulb and jet-black hair that gets its colour from somewhere other than the follicle. This week he had about a half-inch of gray root showing. The top is thinning so he combs it over. On my first visit we got talking about hair a bit, and he complained that kids these days, they all want to be "stylists". They don't know how to cut hair really, they don't know how to shave someone, they don't know how to use clippers. He is a dying breed.

There are regulars. One day a young guy, a kid in baggy pants and a hoodie came in. He hung out for a bit then left. He was third in line. 

"That kid came in last week and got me to shave his head, and he wants me to do it again," Mr. Roma said, "I don't know why, he must be joining the army or something."

My memories of barber shops are mildly traumatic. I hated getting my hair cut as a kid, it was like going to the dentist. I had one barber, an really old guy who'd had throat cancer and breathed through a hole in his neck. He had no voice box, so he had a gizmo that looked like a microphone that he held up to his throat and then burped out his words. He sounded like a robot and scared the hell out of me. One time he did such a terrible hack job on my head that my mother ordered my father to find someone else to clean up the mess and get it done before dinner. Two haircuts in one day. 

We finally settled on Bob Greenwood, who ran the Playboy barber shop. He cut my hair until I was 20, and again for awhile in my 30s. 

Bob's shop, and most of the others that I can remember, were tidy. The bottles of Barbicide with combs and scissors soaking, the blue-light sterilizer, the U-fronted hair-washing sink, the spritzer bottle full of water, the capes on pegs, a broom in the corner, a radio. Then there was the sporty wall art: posters of hockey players, baseball players, football players, sometimes a girl in a bikini or a pin-up calendar.

Roma is a bit different. 

There is the Barbicide, three bottles I counted. The soaking combs, the broom and capes. Stacks of magazines running the gamut from Maxim for the lads to Sky and Telescope for the star-watchers. 

But look a bit closer and the shambolic side of things becomes clearer. No sporty posters, just a collection of faded and dog-eared starving artist prints of Italian scenes: the Alps, Rome, the countryside. There's an old newspaper clipping of a boy getting first first unhappy cut. There is a calendar, a current calendar, from an Italian real estate agent. A price list tacked to the mirror. A radio is there too, in the corner, playing the classical music station. 

My barber has a system. It begins with the chair wipedown. When the customer before me is all done, the Mr Roma spritzes down the chair, tears a chunk of paper towel off the roll and wipes it down. He seats you, then goes to a crooked drawer in an old low-hung beige birch-veneer sideboard and tears another chunk of paper towel off another roll. He tears that one in half and then tucks it around your neck. Then he puts on the cape and secures it with a metal clip. 

He uses clippers to fix me. They live, blades down, in the top drawer of the sideboard. He reaches in and pulls out the big ones first, brushes them down, then commences the main cut. When he's done that, he repeats the exercise with a smaller set, and does the fine editing. The scissors do come out eventually, but first a dip in the Barbicide then a trim of my nose hairs and eyebrows.  

As I am sitting there watching him work, I begin to notice all the stuff. The aforementioned posters. The gel bottles, shampoo, rubbing alcohol, skin lotion, a can of shaving cream, a coffee maker with no pot but something sitting on the burner. The stuff is piled on both sides of the mirror in no apparent order. 

When the clipping and scissoring is done, he goes over to the coffee maker and flips it on. He then reaches into one of the drawers of the sideboard and grabs a few squares of toilet paper, and then dips it into the container that sits on the burner. He takes a shot of shaving cream and mixes it with his forefinger into the wet paper. He then rubs the warm lather on my neck and sideburns and then takes a straight razor out of the Barbicide and cleans up the loose ends along my hairline and sideburns. 

When he's done he cleans the hair and lather off the razor, dunks it back in the Barbicide and gets another few squares of toilet paper and squirts some rubbing alcohol into it and rubs it into the areas he shaved.

You think this would be the end. It isn't. He reaches over to his left and grabs a contraption with his right hand and flicks it on. It's a hand-massager. He leans into my shoulders one at a time and runs it along my upper back. I'm tall, so he has to grab a stool and gets up on his knee so he can lean into me a bit. This goes on for a couple of minutes, then he shuts it down and cleans me up. No fancy brush, just your standard-issue kitchen whisk. 

He grabs a mirror, shows me the back of my head, I nod, and he spins me in the chair so I can dismount and while I am reaching for my wallet, he's spritzing the chair for the next client. 

The cut costs $12, but I give him $15 and don't want the change.  

The next guy in line is a big ruddy-faced fellow in overalls. 

"Made your life easier," he says when he walks is, "I cut off the pony tail last night. My mom passed away and we decided to put it in a dream-catcher."

"What's a dream catcher?" Mr. Roma replied. The guy tried to explain but couldn't make him understand. 

"Well, at least I have less to cut, I can fix it," he says as he finishes wiping down the chair.

I bid my farewell and rub my hands through my stubble as I walk out the door.