Do Bald Men Get Half-priced Haircuts? Vince Staten Chapter 6

The bank’s only open two days a week in Buford, Georgia. That’s the kind of town it is.

Hanging in there two blocks from the bank, on the railroad side of the street, I visited a tired little clip joint. In the shop, off to the side, are arranged an assortment of hair-care products: shampoos, cremes, rinses. And there, next to the Lucky Tiger hair tonic, is a bottle I haven’t seen in thirty years. Sur-Lay, it reads.

It looks the same, it smells the same. I have to buy it. It’s a bargain even at $5.15.

You see Sur-Lay was my father’s hair tonic, and by extension, my own, as a boy.

Sur-Lay was pronounced almost like the woman’s name Shirley, by my father anyway. It was as if Shirley were French, and it came out Shur-Lay. It was a wonderful, exotic-sounding name for what was essentially colored, scented alchol water.

Sur-Lay was – and still is – reddish in color with a unique aroma. It smells like my father. It has a crisp, biting oder with notes of cherry and whorehouse. It is one of the oldest smells in my life, sniffed while riding on my father's shoulders.

My father kept it on the floor under the commode, in the back near the wall, and I can remember watching him reach for it in the morning after he’d finished shaving. He’d pour a thimbleful into his hand and then rub it through his hair till it glistened.

Sur-Lay lived up to its name; it gave his hair a sure lay. It would have taken a hurricane to move my father’s hair out of place. I know that because as soon as he had rubbed the tonic into his hair, he would pour another splat into his hand and rub it into my hair. Then he would lift me up and let me comb my hair in the mirror.