In the late fifties I woke up to the world of "cool".  Guys around me were starting to look cool, dress cool, talk cool,  and act cool.  I tried hard to be cool like them.  I had the engineer boots, the black leather jacket with zippers and studs, form-fitting white tee-shirt, levis down on my hips...and the hair.  I went for the Elvis/Fabian/every-other-teen-idol look.  Tried Brylcream, Vitalis, Wildroot Cream oil, Vasoline,  and Valvoleen but I never quite got it the way I wanted it.  Years later I heard Rod Stewart singin "Every Picture Tells a Story" (IMO the very best album he ever did).  The verse that goes "Spent some time feelin' inferior, standin' in front of my mirror...combed my hair in a thousand ways but it came out looking just the same"... and I said (loudly), "YES"  that was the feeling.

As my teen years progressed I became influenced by the surfin' scene in Southern California.  I tried the "bushy" hairdo the surfers wore...but that wasn't really me, either.  I never had hair that looked like I wanted it to look.  I kept it as long as the Chief (my dad) would allow...which wasn't nearly as long as I wanted it, but looking back it was a lot longer than he preferred.  Either left to its own devices or fussed with constantly, my hair just never was cool...at least in my eyes. 

Then,  at age 17 and-a-half,  I joined the Army.  In July of 1964 I sat in the barber's chair at the Reception Station at Fort Ord and the barber asked me how I wanted it...a true clown...then proceeded to solve all my hair woes in about three minutes.  They called it "High and Tight"  or "White Side-walls"  He left just enough on top to determine hair color...mostly.

After basic training, on through the next three years, it was a constant battle with the sergeants...always keeping as much hair as possible...and fussing with it all the time. 

As the end of my first enlistment approached, I tried as hard as I could to grow my hair out.  I wanted to have a head start on becoming one of those hippies I saw when I came through Oakland Army Terminal.  I wrote an article about how that turned out a year or so ago.

Anyway, after three months of escalating apathy about the hippie idea, I realized I didn't fit in and went back into the Army.  I got out again after four years, but by that time I had learned a few things about my hair.  First of all buzz cuts, flat-tops (with or without fenders), shaved head...all those are not for me.  Some guys have a nicely shaped, smooth and shiny head under their hair.  Not me.  My head is not nice to look at...it's best kept covered with as much hair as possible.  In June of 1969 I attended the 7th US Army NCO Academy at Bad Toelz, Germany.  They insisted on a return to a basic training haircut.  Those are the only two times I have had hair that short.  Secondly, I have a wife who loves me and thinks I am pretty good-lookin' no matter what is going on at the top of my head...so somewhere in the middle of my second enlistment, hair lost its importance.  For the next twenty years or so I got my haircut once a week and never gave it a thought.  A dear lady we knew in the eighties told us that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut was about two weeks.  

Since I left the Army in 1992, I have kept my hair pretty much the way it was when I was still in the Army.  Not so much the white side-walls of my youth, but shorter than most civilians I worked with.  I have come to the attitude that if I find myself "standin' in front of my mirror",  I cut it off.  The lady who told us about the good/bad haircuts also showed me how to cut my hair...sort of.  So when I catch myself "primping"...I get out the scissors.  Sometimes I do a good job and sometimes not so good.  I have had compliments on occasion and have been ridiculed other times.  One time I was told I had messed up in the back and my response was that I didn't have to see it...

So when Steve posted on Stevesplace about growing his hair out to make a statement, I chuckled.  That was what the hair thing was all about back in the day...Long hair was the statement ...flashing in the face of "the Man". 

Nowdays I have a couple of places where the hair seems to be deserting me.  If I did grow it out it would probably still start curling in the wrong places and be missing in others.  And then I would cut it off again.