Ivan the butcher

I've been going to the same barber for over ten years know. It's a hole in the wall, anchoring a row of decaying storefronts. A cake decorating supply store. An asian market. A video store. A 'lingerie' shop. Ivan has been there for at least three decades. Cutting, trimming, buzzing, dying, perming, frosting, and shaping hair. The shop is a collection of the jetsam of the past three decades. An old Hammond Organ, where he whiles away slow summer days, Flea market toys, combs, posters, magazines, and hair products, pictures, and until recently the pony tail he removed from me on my first visit there. He is Bulgarian. He has told me stories of the old country, working on a steam driven chaff machine. Joining the military. Mostly though the time is spent simply. I sit in the chair, he cuts my hair. Sometimes he suggests I take vitamins or condition, supplements vital to healthy hair. But mostly I sit quietly and he cuts. He is a craftsman who knows his way around a head of hair, tasks he could perform in his sleep. When I moved to the West Hills I started going to a small shop in Cedar Hills. They used warm shaving cream and straight razors. Barbers who had, much like Ivan, learned their craft from the military or from Fathers or Uncles. A couple years ago I went to a trendy local shop on a handful of occasions to receive a 'rock and roll' haircut. I returned to Ivan. He was suspicious. He knew I had gone to someone else. I couldn't lie to him, he could see right through me. "Who cut you hair?" his accent is still thick with the old world. "How much you spend?" "Ahhh, too much! They don't know what they doing. You keep coming here." He was right.
I've jokingly called him a butcher. He will cut your hair short if you ask for it and sometimes if you don't, he will swipe away sideburns without a second thought, he'll part my hair on the wrong side always. Despite those little idiosyncracies he is still a pro. More importantly though he is a dinosaur. A simple shop owner who has raised children and supported a neighborhood. He only takes cash which he keeps in a small drawer by his chair. He works five days a week, eight hours a day, plying a trade that he has practiced for longer than I have grown hair. Someday he will cut no more, and I dread that day. Cut shops, and strip mall chains are a dime a dozen, but there is only one Ivan.