I read about a millionaire who had his hair cut everyday. He had a barber’s chair from the old Confederate Congress Building in Richmond Virginia installed right in his house. I thought it odd, him being a black man and buying that chair, but I guess history is history, or maybe it’s an investment. But it did make me think of Buddy Bevan.

His dad, who was even balder than Buddy “Onion” Bevan, would come into Tifton on Friday afternoons to get drunk and have a haircut. Old Man Bevan, I don’t recall his christian name, was a big man who overflowed the barber’s old chair. He breathed slow and heavy while his eyes went in and out of focus.

It was a dollar and twenty five cents for a haircut then, but he grew up with the barber and came every week so for him only a buck. Buddy said it was only a dollar because it was a shit job done on a drunkard with no hair. I have to wonder what happened to that old chair.

by Doug Mathewson