My Father's Wise Words

10/7/2014 My father wisely said that the difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut was two weeks. My father’s words were a source of amusement over the years until yesterday. Yesterday, I had to use my father’s words as a mantra for sanity. After getting a haircut and beard trim in London, I have been almost afraid to get one here, in Portland. The London haircut was absolutely magnificent. It wasn’t only the haircut and beard trim itself, it was the entire barbershop experience; the clean linen neck kerchief, the flowing scented over-sheet covering my clothes, the meticulous care in ensuring I had the music I preferred in the background, the hot towel treatment, the straight razor expertise the barber exhibited, the velvet soft brush used to whisk away the trimmed hair, the delicate and patient use of scissors and trimmers to ensure the finest result of the work. Frankly, I fell in love with that London haircut and barber. I would have paid for the visa to have them come to Portland and set up shop. It didn’t matter how much it cost because it was the type of haircut one rarely only sees in movies or hears about from your grandfather (if you are my age) or great grandfather. Sure, the whole London haircut experience took over an hour, but who cared? It was worth every second of comfort, pampered satisfaction, and resultant fabulous haircut and beard trim. It was my last haircut and beard trim before returning to Portland. Yesterday, my loving wife suggested that I go out and get a haircut and beard trim. I truly needed one since my hair was almost ¾ of an inch long and my beard even longer. I was my usual procrastinating self. I took the poke gracefully (that means a grumbled a bit, farted, and left the room) and got ready to go get “the job done”. Inside, I was reliving London and anxious to get the same treatment again. Amy suggested Hair M as the place to go, but I knew they charged a pretty penny for the task. I wasn’t ready to revisit the place where I went on our wedding day. Not quite yet. I couldn’t actually say why, but I wanted to only return to Hair M for a special occasion, and this wasn’t it. Out I went, but I thought I’d try someplace local. We try and support local business when we can, and this seemed like a prime opportunity. I had used Walt’s Barber Shop before to get my seven dollar haircuts, but that’s what they were worth, seven bucks for seniors. Sure, I’d give him eleven bucks because that was the normal price and I don’t want to get four bucks off a crumby haircut just because I’m a senior. Walt also is a right wing nutcase who watches old black and white taped WWII and Korean War movies. He has flags all over the shop and NRA stickers plastered all over the windows. He yammers about the “dumb Democrats”, “lefties”, and “that nigger president” (I know that’s not an acceptable term, but that’s what he says and I won’t be part of the “n word” euphemisms crowd. I also don’t like the “f word” crowd either, but that’s a whole another blog entry. The place was called 4 M Haircuts. I also saw the sandwich sign out front saying, “8 Dollar Haircuts”. My stupid brain said, “Well, it’s got to have more class than Walt’s, he only charged 7.” Now, how dumb can a mind get on a warm morning? Yep, that dumb. I should have noticed that they had angle parking on an access that had no way to go the reverse direction; yep, no outlet, no alley, no established turnaround either. I parked and went inside through the door of a converted private residence barber salon. I described what I wanted and the pleasant, Asian girl listened and directed me to a chair. I sat down and enjoyed the comfort of a slope-back padded leather chair. I heard a sound from behind me. I turned my head and saw a woman coming from behind a shower-curtain room divider. She wielded electric clippers in her right hand and a rather fiendish smile across her face as she burst through the curtains aimed straight for me, as I felt helpless, sitting in that tortuous chair. Her hands were fast, like a garden hedge trimmer. She slashed at my hair and beard like a workmen paid by the minute. The fur flew, and soon my plastic shower-curtain covered body was deep in my own beard and scalp hair. She stabbed my scalp and face with the guides to her trimmer, but she never slowed a stroke as she sheered me like an Australian sheep. I was silly enough to ask if she would be using a razor to trim the hairline, ears, and throat. No razor touched her palm, but a close trimmer did. It burned with heat as she ran it over my ears and neck. I swear she grimaced with demonist glee as she raked about my skin. She even attacked my mustache and the beard right below my lower lip. She slashed the trimmers at my eyebrows. Those tend to be a bit wild, and apparently, they threatened her manhood. The whole assault took less than four minutes. Again, my father’s words came back to me. It wouldn’t matter what she did, it would only last two weeks. I paid her for her services since I was afraid I would be held captive if I didn’t. I left with my tail between my legs and crawled into my truck with the spirit of defeat of generations of Vikings. When I got home, Amy greeted me with surprise and joy. It didn’t take long. My life passed before me, but it all didn’t take more than an hour. My love looked me up and down and accepted my haircut and beard trim as “cute” and acceptable. I knew she did that in an effort to support my choices, no matter what they were. I loved her for that. I loved her for accepting me at whatever I looked like. My eyebrows were even “trimmed” by that dragon lady who slashed at me. Please, I am hoping that I am not being racist by noting that she was Asian, it was just part of the story and if I am being racist, I apologize. That may not have been conscious, but I think I was, indeed, racist. Well, that will be a topic for another entry. I will not go back to that hair salon. I will not return to that local place. I will not return to the place of where the lady slashes and cuts. I also won’t go back to Walt’s where I am treated to 40 to 50 minutes of right wing crapola. Gee, I’m intolerant, too. I will probably go back to Hair M for the next trim. Until then, my father’s words will ring true.

Fame and Heroes

Hero stuff and fame don’t seem to stand out in my family history. Sure, everyone loves to think that one of their ancestors did something that goes down in history as significant, but how many of us really have ancestors like that? After looking at all the old pictures and listening to the tales of our family as told by my parents, grandparents, and some great grandparents, I must admit, my family has no important people on our family tree; not one. Now, according to legend, my grandfather was the first boy to use stilts to harvest hops in the Rainer Valley. Of course, there is absolutely no documentation to that little tidbit. Also, the same grandfather was supposedly the inventor of the electric lawnmower. Of course, that bubble is burst if you look at the patents for the electric lawnmower engineering. Not one word about a Ramstead in any documents, or even footnotes. Heroism suffers the same fate in my family if you examine the record. The only act of heroism recorded in the written or verbal history of my family is attributed to my dad. During World War II he was at the Admiralty Islands as part of his Pacific duty assignment in the Sea Bees. Now, please do not misunderstand, I idolize my father and I also admit that he understates some of the most heroic things in his life. What I’m talking about here is the history book version of heroic actions. He was an electrician in the Sea Bees. The Navy sent the Sea Bees ashore with the assaulting marine troops. The Sea Bees were the land borne fighting construction corps that would build land strips, roads for the supply trucks and ammo wagons. The Sea Bees were immortalized in film by John Wayne’s movie about them. Well, my dad was one of them. He was stationed on one of the Admiralty islands after helping to establish the headquarters and communications stations throughout the specific island he was assigned. The weather is interesting in the South Pacific. It can be a rain storm, complete with high winds, and still be 90 degrees. The Sea Bees, like all soldiers, worked in shifts. When the shift was complete, they would try and relax and rest. The night in question, my dad and his crew of Sea Bees were off their shift of duty. They had eaten and were relaxing by playing poker in one of the several tents in their station. The rain was coming down in buckets and the wind was whipping the island with fury. The call came in by radio that a critical communications line had been severed and had to be repaired. It was also communicated that the line break was very close to the tent in which they were playing poker. My dad and the other Sea Bees cut the cards to see who had to go out in the storm to find and fix the “critical communications line” that apparently linked the entire island. My dad lost the cut of the cards. It was up to him to go out in the rain and fix the wire. He went out, found the line break, and spliced the wire. He told me it took about five minutes for the whole thing and everyone laughed because my dad was the one who had to get all wet just to splice a line four feet off the “deck” of the island. The repair made, dad said he went back to the poker game and lost another four weeks of pay. My dad got the Navy Cross. The heavy rain storm that dad went out into was a hurricane (or Typhoon as they are called in the Pacific). He went out in a typhoon and repaired a critical communication line that helped prevent a counter attack by the Japanese. Now, dad would laugh about all this and remind me that heroism is just circumstances that are judged by others, and not the stuff of reality. Was he a hero? Well, not according to him. To him, it was simply a rain storm and lousy luck. I love my dad, so I believe that the Navy was right in recognizing his actions. Was he a hero? Well, that all depends on who you believe. I have another story about my dad, or at least his memory, but that is another story for another day. I can admit that dad was a hero in my eyes every day…..not for the WWII stuff, but for whom he was and what he was able to overcome in his later life. One can pass over the rough edges when looking at the core of another. Dad’s core was that of a Norse God as far as I’m concerned. As far as the family, dad always joked that our coat of arms of the Ramstead clan was a Viking on the gallows. Mom loved that about dad because she considered it humility. It was humility on his part. “Ramstead” is derived from the term, “Rumsteadahl”, which loosely translated means “Ramstead’s Valley”. Our true core family name is Ellingson. It is that common story of Elis Island. They supposedly asked my landing relative the name for the family and he thought they were asking where he was had lived. The relative supposedly said, “Rumsteadahl”, and Ramstead instantly became the family name. I have no idea who that relative was, nor do I know for a fact that the story is real. I do know that dad was proud of the family name and he never moved from that until the day he died. The McClellan side of the family is pretty much the same. The McClellans are mom’s side of the family. They are fine folks. I once thought they might be related to General McClellan from the Civil War, but no, that is not the case. One of the McClellans did serve in the Civil War because we have his sword as evidence; however, he was an enlisted man. At one point in my life, I built that sword up into something truly grand, but it’s just an enlisted man’s saber. Why all this talk? Well, it’s because I was feeling a bit full of myself and I needed to get my feet back on the ground.

Easy Going My Ass

There are times when things just blow up. Now, I don’t like chaos, and I don’t like the emotional drama bit. I like the even keel. I like it when we just go along, and we don’t make a big deal about every little bump in the road. Some have called me “easy going” because of my attitude, but I have to differ with their opinion. Why, you ask? Well, in my experience on this planet, there are times that I can’t let go of that bump in the road, depending how important I view that bump to be. When it’s a win or die bump, it grows to the size of a mountain and I start to resemble Mt. St. I tremble and rumble, a series of small gas releases signals the potential for a full blown eruption, which, if it occurs, spews hot gas and rock over a wide swath, killing everything in its path. It is at those times one might not ever think of the term, “easy going” in the same paragraph with my picture. Yesterday and this morning, Mt. St. Helens Ramstead (me) set a new record for the number of eruptions and the damage piled up until it almost smothered me. Luckily, Amy and Daphne had absolutely nothing to do with the bump in the road that caused the episode, and they took wise action in just standing back and observing me self implode. I misunderstood someone, and then they corrected me in public. My itty bitty feelings were crushed and I stormed off to my mental cave to do the man thing, pout. The tremors were felt for miles as the magma rose to the peak of my pointed little head (now resembling a cinder cone) and I roared out of the cave and onto the computer to destroy the object of my aggravation. I spouted, spewed, cursed, ranted, roared, slung every insult I know, called anyone not perceived as aligning with me in my anger a “cowardly sheep”. I turned 14 shades of red then purple in my gasping tantrum. How dare they trifle with me? How dare they cross me? I was so self righteous that I could have almost had my own cross and felt entitled. Amy choked back giggles for almost an hour as she watched me pound the keyboard with one desperate attack after another. No matter how vicious my attack, the counter attacks by my tormentors were superior. I was being brushed aside like bad apples at an apple squeezing. I was rejected, countered, and then reprimanded for my poor behavior. This, of course, only pissed me off more. I was now being diminished as well as being a hot head. A word of caution: all this was my own little reality in my own little head, or “Bobland”. In Bobland, I am always right, correct, and above reproach. No one seems to like Bobland except me. Now, someone had taken a hand grenade and thrown it into the center of Bobland making a damned mess of it. I was doing just fine at blowing up the world until Mr. Sanity dropped by with Mrs. Consequences. I stopped just long enough to listen to them too much. The damaged walls of Bobland crumbled to dust before my eyes. Then Mr. Regret came through with his ego busting bullshitdozer and leveled Bobland into a poppy field. But, that wasn’t the worst. No, the worst was Miss Apology came by and sat on me until I got my big boy pants on and did the right thing. It was painful, and I didn’t like it, but it was necessary and warranted (at least according to Mr. Regret and Miss Apology). Mr. Sanity approved, and Mrs. Consequences changed from holding an ax to hugging a bouquet of flowers. The sun even came up and a new day began. Then I just wanted to go off and puke because of the whole damned incident and that I’d probably never hear the end of it; or even worse, it would become one of the cute cocktail tales that people have for parties and such. *Barf* Well, I put everyone back in my head and started to write on my blog. Somehow, I think things will return to normal and I can again be viewed as being easy going…….someday.