Elaine collected this story from Aunt Annette.  Thanks Elaine!

The Hair Cut

            My brother Stuart was eight years younger than me.  I thought he was the cutest little boy with his reddish brownish almost auburn hair.  From the time he was just a few months old I would play with him and in the summer I took him for rides on old Nelly.  Looking back now I am not sure what our Mother was thinking to let an eight or nine year old take a baby about nine months to a year on a horse but maybe she was not aware of all the things we did as kids.  After all keeping track of eight kids on a farm with all the other responsibilities she had must have been monumental.  I now realize just what an amazing mother we had.

            One day Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma had to go to a funeral.  I stayed home from school to take care of Delila and Stuart. We still lived on the ranch in Stone then and Stuart was probably between two and three.  So I must have been about ten years old.  I do not remember very much that happened that day but one thing I will never forget because I knew I was going to be in big trouble.

            If you talk to our other siblings they will probably tell this story a little differently but this is my story so this is how I remember it.

            As I said I was babysitting and supposed to be watching Stuart and Delila.  Now think about this and tell me would you leave a ten or even eleven year old in charge of a two year old and a five year old for most of the day?  Keep in mind that we did not have cell phones and I am not sure we even had a telephone at the house then.  Does this seem like the best situation?

            Anyway back to the story of Stuart.  I must not have been “watching” him as closely as I should and he disappeared.  When I went looking for him I found him in Mother and Dad’s bedroom with Mother’s electric hair clippers in his hand and a very noticeable bald strip right through the top of his head.  Yes, he had decided he needed a haircut.  I could not believe it.  He had shaved a strip starting right at his forehead in front almost all the way back across the top of his head.  I guess you would call this a reverse Mohawk but that is not what I was thinking at the time.  I was thinking about how upset our Mother was going to be and the trouble I was in.  What would Mother say when she saw that her baby boy’s beautiful head of reddish brownish almost auburn hair now had a bald strip right through the middle of the top of his head?  I was going to be in so much trouble and Stuart just sat there smiling at me.  He thought he had done something really cool and was so proud of himself.

            Well before our parents came home, Vivian, Mike and Ineda got home from school.  Mike took one look at Stuart’s new hair style and said he thought we should just shave the rest of his head.  I think Vivian and Ineda thought differently but Mike won out and so he shaved the rest of Stuart’s hair and soon all that beautiful reddish brownish almost auburn hair lay in a pile on the kitchen floor.  Thank goodness Stuart had a good shaped head and the bald head did not detract from his beautiful baby boy face.

            Not long after the shaved head appeared with all its baldness Mom and Dad appeared through the back door.  Mother took one look at her bald baby and started to cry.  “Why did you have to shave off all his beautiful curls?” she cried.  “I know that I could have done something with his hair.  You should have waited until I got home.”  Mike tried to explain that Stuart had done such a good job with his first swathe with the clippers that there was nothing that could have been done but shave it all off.  As for me I just stayed in the background and was glad that Mike had done the head shaving.

Written by Annette Hickman Christensen

September 17, 2008