Football season has a funny way of taking me places.
Not just back to certain games or certain players or Saturdays spent watching the Gamecocks. It takes me much farther back than that. Back to when I was three or four years old and Saturday morning meant one thing.
Me and my dad were going to the barbershop.
We both wore crew cuts back then, so trips to the barber came pretty frequently. Dad would take me down to Meeting Street to Bickley’s Barbershop. It wasn’t anything fancy. Just a little white building with that red-and-blue striped barber pole outside beside the door. You didn’t need a sign to tell you what the place was. You knew.
When you walked through the door, there were three of those old-fashioned red barber chairs lined up inside.
And the place would be full of men.
Looking back, I think half of them were just happy to be out of the house for a while.
Somebody would have a newspaper spread open. Somebody else would be flipping through a magazine. A few would be sitting around waiting for their turn even though I sometimes wondered if they were really in any hurry to get their hair cut at all.
Because everybody was talking football.
Usually Gamecock football.
Every now and then somebody from the enemy camp—Clemson—would wander in, and that was always good for stirring things up a little bit.
I would sit there and listen to those grown men carry on about football like the fate of the free world depended on what happened Saturday afternoon. Everybody had an opinion. Everybody knew what the coach should have done. Everybody knew who should be playing and who shouldn’t.
And my dad would join right in with them.
Even as a little boy, though, I noticed something.
When my dad spoke, everybody seemed to listen.
I remember that.
I would always get my haircut first. I’d climb up into one of those big red chairs, and Mr. Bickley would wrap that barber’s drape around me until there wasn’t much left showing except my head.
Then the clippers would start buzzing.
Hair would start falling.
And I would sit there listening to those men talk football.
Mr. Bickley would talk too, of course. Sometimes he’d get so involved in the conversation that he’d stop cutting my hair altogether. The clippers would go silent while he made whatever point he needed to make, and then he’d go right back to work.
I don’t know what kind of grease or concoction he put in my hair when he finished, but whatever it was could make that flat top stand straight up.
And I can still smell it.
That’s one of the strange things about getting older. You forget a thousand things you probably thought you would remember forever, and then something as simple as a smell stays with you for a lifetime.
When Mr. Bickley finished, that big arm of his would come around me and he’d give me a little poke in the belly. Then one of those enormous hands would open up—meaty fingers about the size of sausages—and there would be a stick of gum.
Every time.
I’d take my gum, hop down out of that big red chair and go sit somewhere while Dad got his haircut.
More football talk.
More Gamecocks.
Probably another Clemson joke or two.
Then eventually Dad was finished, too. Everybody would say their goodbyes, usually something along the lines of, “See you next week,” and we’d walk outside together.
I’d climb into the car.
Dad would get behind the wheel, look into the mirror, look back at me and wink.
Then came the question I was always hoping for.
“I’m up for an ice cream cone. How about you?”
Of course I was.
So we’d drive down to Zesto.
We’d walk up to the window and order our ice cream cones, and Mr. Gus would hand them out to us. He’d shoot the breeze with Dad for a few minutes because, back then, it seemed like my dad knew everybody.
Then we’d get back into the car and sit there eating our ice cream.
No cell phones.
No rushing anywhere.
Nothing particularly remarkable happening at all.
Just a little boy and his dad eating ice cream on a Saturday morning.
When we were finished, Dad would back the car out and we’d head home.
That was our ritual.
Barbershop. Football talk. A stick of gum. Zesto. Ice cream with Dad.
At three or four years old, I couldn’t possibly have understood that I was living through moments I would someday give almost anything to experience one more time.
I didn’t know I was making memories.
I was just spending Saturday morning with my dad.
Maybe that’s part of the reason football season still means so much to me. Before football became something I studied, wrote about, talked about or tried to understand, it was simply the soundtrack playing in the background while I sat in one of those big red barber chairs and listened to my dad talk with the other men.
All these years later, football season comes around again.
The Gamecocks start playing. People start arguing about quarterbacks and coaches. Somebody inevitably starts talking about Clemson.
And suddenly I’m three or four years old again.
I’m sitting underneath that barber’s drape.
I can hear the clippers buzzing.
I can see those three red chairs.
My dad is somewhere behind me talking football.
And I still remember the smell of that barbershop.
