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(as told by Clyde Pritchard, proprietor of City Barber Shop, Piedmont, Alabama)

Now, I want it on record that I wasn’t trying to invent anything. That’s how trouble starts. With folks trying too hard. I was just minding my business, trimming hair, drinking my coffee, and letting the day drift by like molasses uphill.

Then Harold Dunn walked in. Y’all know Harold. Tomato thief, truck menace, general bringer of calamity. He slumped down in my chair lookin’ like a possum that’d lost an argument with a pea thresher. Said he’d been trying some new “tonic” a fella sold him out of the back of a van, guaranteed to restore hair, virility, and the will to live. I told him if it could do two out of three, I’d buy a case.

Anyway, he wanted a trim. “Just clean up the edges,” he said. Well, I was halfway through when I noticed the smell. Sort of a mix between gasoline, vinegar, and bad decisions. I asked him what he’d put on his head, and he said, “A miracle.”

‘Bout that time, my clippers started smoking. Sparks flew. Harold yelped, and I near about invented a new dance step trying to get that contraption off his head. When the smoke cleared, there we stood. Harold with a perfect bald spot the size of a dinner plate and me holding the world’s first flamethrower comb.

Now, most folks would’ve apologized. But not Harold. He looked in the mirror, ran a hand over his shiny scalp, and said, “Clyde, that’s the best my hair’s ever looked.”

Word spread faster than gossip after Sunday service. By that evening, I had thirteen men lined up outside asking for “the Dunn Special.” They said it was clean, aerodynamic, and “made the heat feel less personal.”

So I leaned into it. Printed a sign that said:

NEW! Pritchard’s Precision Follicle Reduction — Guaranteed to Stop Hair Loss Forever!

And technically, I wasn’t lying.

For about six glorious weeks, I was the talk of Piedmont. Folks came from all around; truckers, deacons, even the mayor, all wanting the same “treatment.” ‘Course, it wasn’t long before the State Board of Something-or-Other sent me a letter suggesting I cease and desist “experimental barbering practices.”

I ceased. I desisted. But every now and then, when a fellow sits in my chair, runs a nervous hand through his thinning hair, and says, “Clyde, you got anything that’ll stop this?” I just wink and tell him, “Sure do, friend. But it only works once.”

*****

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.