The following Saturday my father woke me up for our monthly trip to the barbershop. I looked up at him and told him I wasn’t going, I wanted to grow my hair like the Beatles. I was a few months shy of my tenth birthday and from that point on I was at war with my old man.
My father was old when I was born, already in his fifties. He had lived through two world wars, the Great Depression and was not at all ready for the 1960s. The fact that his youngest son wanted to grow his hair long was as alien to him as life on Mars. He was a self-made man, he valued education above almost anything else. I was an indifferent student and would have dropped out in the fourth grade if I’d had my druthers. When anti-war politics entered the picture a few years later it was almost more than he could bear. But that was later, now he had a hair crisis on his hands.
I had heard about the Beatles before they appeared on The Sullivan Show. I clearly remember riding in a car with my brother listening to WMCA, “Good Guys, Beatles every half hour!” I asked my brother who the Beatles were, he said they’re this band from England who have their hair cut like Moe from The Three Stooges. Listening to the Good Guys and Murray The K (and his swingin’ soiree) I heard a lot of Beatles until the night I got to see the English Guys who looked like Moe on the Sunday show no one missed. That was it, I like almost every other young person around the world was hooked.
There was no clear winner in the hair war. I got to grow my hair out some but I would still get dragged out of bed on Saturday mornings, just not as often. He would yell, “God damn it, your hair is looking super Beatle and you are getting a hair cut!” The barbers took great delight in taking off way more than I had wanted and my old man and I would glower at each other all the way back home. My mother who rarely stayed out of anything decided this was a fight she wanted no part of although she thought I looked like a sissy with my carefully combed bangs and hair touching the tops of my ears.
Within a few years, the Beatle Hair Cut was a quaint throwback. Rock musicians, the style setters for most of us were wearing their hair down past their shoulders. Hair was also becoming a political statement. The Vietnam War was raging and more and more young people were voicing their opposition to the conflict. My father, an old-time Democrat and fervent supporter of President Johnson muttered the kids were all damned communists. The whole world was going to hell and it was those damned Beatles who had opened the door.
By 1969 I was one of the damned communists and I flatly refused to cut my hair. The old man finally surrendered when his doctor told him my hair was not worth him having a heart attack over. My hair was almost down to my shoulders and I tied a bandana around my head. I was smoking weed and hitching into DC to attend anti-war rallies. I was going to school but I was skipping enough that the local police took an interest in me. My poor father who had recently been diagnosed with Leukemia was convinced I was going to end up in jail or worse.
He died in August 1970 and in his last days was still complaining to my mother about “that damned hair”. I had recently been booted out of public school which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I was sent to a boarding school founded by a wonderful old-time radical named Agnes Sailer where all the kids were more or less like me. We were the Island of Broken Toys, almost all of us Public School rejects who could not or would not fit in. While I was never a good student I worked at my studies and graduated and went on to a successful career as a chef.
It all seems very had to believe now. Thousands of boys fighting with their fathers over something so silly. I’ve often wished I would have told my father, “hey, it’s just a hairstyle, nothing to get so excited about.” I vowed that when I became a father I would never mess with my kids over hair, I was gonna be the cool dad. When one of my sons showed up with his head buzzed I almost swallowed my tongue but I kept it in my head. Another one dyed his hair pink and I shut up. I’m not even sure what color my daughter’s actual hair color is but mum’s the word. Their clothes, their music, their piercings, I don’t get it but it’s their thing, not mine. Then again, I still wear my hair long, my kids are always telling me I look ridiculous. I tell them it was a hard fought victory and I’m not giving up. My youngest boy tells me he’s a conservative, that upsets me but I think, I hope.
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Steve Jaeger spent his childhood on Long Island but has lived outside of Washington, DC for over fifty years. He’s a former chef, an avid baseball fan and lifelong yellow dog Democrat. He lives in Arlington, VA with his cat Hoke.
