I took the old comb and dragged it through what few survivors are left of the army that once camped on my head. Time was, them soldiers were bright red, curly, and so full of mischief they’d march off in all directions at once, no matter how hard I tried to corral ’em. These days, they’re a pale, wispy sort; more like ghosts on parade. But to their credit, they still make a halfhearted attempt to cover the bald prairie of my scalp, and I reckon that’s worth a little thanks.

Without my say-so, I found myself wandering down Memory Lane again. That’s a road with no signposts—you just fall into it, like tripping over a root.

When I was a boy, no self-respecting male left the house without a pocket comb. That comb was like a badge of civilization. I carried mine in the left rear pocket, back of my wallet. Without it, I felt as incomplete as a preacher without his Bible.

Now, my Daddy, he was a firm believer in a man keeping his head in respectable order. His hair was black, with silver streaks here and there like lightning bolts in a summer storm, and he kept it parted neat as a plowed furrow, with a wave rolling across it that would’ve made the Gulf of Mexico jealous. We only trusted two men with those heads of ours: Huey Parris down in Jacksonville and Curtis Pope in Piedmont. Their barber shops weren’t so much businesses as they were news headquarters. A man could sit in one of those chairs for ten minutes and learn more about who was courting who, who owed who, and who was about to lose their farm than he could by reading the paper for a week.

When I was little, Dad stood me before the mirror and coached me on how to part my red curls into a pompadour, greased down with Brylcreem. I can still smell that concoction—sweet and heavy, like it aimed to freeze time itself. And freeze hair it did. No storm, no fistfight, no ball game could muss it.

Then my Nannie took sick with cancer, and my Aunt Roma Nell came all the way from California to help. She told me to wash that grease out and showed me how the Beach Boys wore their hair—loose, free, like it had someplace to go in a hurry. I took to it quick, and I wore it that way right up till my forties. Dad wasn’t too cheerful about the change, but he shrugged and said, “You’re ten years old, boy, wear it how you want.” And that was that.

That was my father: firm when it counted, but never mean about it. He’s been gone eleven years now, but I swear he’s still hanging around just out of sight—shaking his head when I go wrong, grinning when I get it right. Every morning when I pick up my comb—though it lives on the dresser now instead of my pocket—I can almost feel his hand guiding mine in the mirror. And I tell you, there’s no finer inheritance than that.

So—what about the rest of you? Any of you still carrying a pocket comb, or is that fine tradition laid to rest alongside the Brylcreem and pompadours?

*****

And, you know I couldn’t possibly neglect the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.