Pa Hayden's Haircut

As far back as I could remember as a teenager, that little house up on the hill surrounded by other homes just like it represented Ma and Pa Hayden. My mother's parents raised eight children there. My mother was next to the oldest, born in 1907. By today's standards no welfare famil would live in a house like that. Too small. I can remember just before they had inside plumbing. A little building on the hill with a half moon cut in the door for ventilation sat on a hill behind the house served sanitation needs.

But the house always looked good to me, like a home expanded by love.

He was a heavyset man of medium height and she was dark skinned with long, coal black hair. Her Cherokee heritage was there.

The third son was the one who became the junior, and everyone called him Son. He flew with the Air Corps over Europe during World War while another brother served in Alaska with an AA battery, another with the navy in the Mediterranean and the oldest was kept stateside. I remember the four stars that hung proudly in my grandmother's window.

Son was the only one to go to college in the waning days of the Depression. All the family chipped in to send him to college. He waited tables at William and Mary, met his future wife and brought her home to meet the family. When they prepared to eat, Son asked his father if he were going to put on a jacket for dinner. Pa Hayden said no and became angry, skipping supper. He said he had his lunch at noon and this was supper anyway.

Neighbors later accused Son of putting on airs since he had gone to college. He complained to Ma Hayden, "Ma, I even down said even down."

A bandy leg Irishman, Pa Hayden had a tremendous torso from years of working in a foundry, handling heavy molds and casts. And he had a taste for a dram of whisky now and then, which Ma Hayden despised. There was a remedy for drinking advertised at the time. It was called "What Stopped John" and was guaranteed to wean a drinker from the evil spirits.

One evening he came home tired from work and poured himself a cup of coffee. A bowl on the table had been used by Ma Hayden in some food preparation contained salt. Thinking it was sugar, Pa Hayden helped himself plentifully. At the first swallow, he spat it out.

"Damn it, Mary! You've poisoned me with the What Stopped John."

Ma Hayden laughed so hard it was an hour before she could explain what happened.

Although he was bald when I knew him, Pa Hayden once had a shock of brown hair which was his pride. One pleasure he had was for someone to run their fingers through his hair, which invariably relaxed him and made him sleepy. When he was taking a nap one day, he heard two of the boys talking about how they wanted to play barber. They ran their fingers through his hair which relaxed him even more.

"Pa, can we give you a haircut?"

"Uh-huh," he replied, enjoying the soft young hands massaging his scalp.

He dozed off, their voices coming faintly through the mist of sleep. "Maybe we ought to cut a little more off the other side." "Yeah, I think we got too much here." "Turn your head a little, Pa,"

When he woke up, he went into the kitchen to see Ma Hayden. She screamed. "Charlie! What has happened to you?"

"What do you mean?" He felt his body, looked at himself. "What are you talking about."

The boys had given him a haircut, and it was far from professional. Later he said what really made him mad was that she hadn't asked what happened to your hair. She had asked, "What happened to you?"

Once his oldest son came home crying and bleeding from an encounter with an elderly shoemaker nearby. Pa Hayden quietly took his pistol and went looking for him. Fortunately, the man had left town and was never seen again.

He loved sports and we grandchildren loved to have him play baseball with us. Although he wasn't the fastest runner, he could hit the ball so far he didn't have to. We decided he could only swing with one hand. When that didn't work, we wanted him to hit left handed. The ball still sailed out of the cow pasture.

A big eater who loved his food, Pa Hayden continued to eat heartily even after he retired. But he was getting no exercise and began to put on excess weight. Once when I went to see him sick in bed, I listened to him groan a lot.

"Does it help when you groan?" I asked.

He laughed. "I guess it does, Peter."

I was in my second year of college when the call came. Pa Hayden was dying and they wanted all the family there. My aunt and her family picked me up and I made the trip home with them. All the children and grandchildren were around the bed where he lay in a stupor.

He raised up once and saw me. "Well, there's ole Peter," he said. I always treasured that.

Ma Hayden had never been seriously ill in her life. But she died two weeks after he did. Their love seemed to be so strong that she just wanted to be with him where he was.

They left eight children and more grandchildren than I can remember. Mostly importantly, they left a lot of love. Someone said someone is immortal as long as someone mentions that name. So let me make them immortal again--Ma Hayden, Pa Hayden.