Casey the Barber

When Casey Harrington turned 18, his dad shook his hand, passing him a couple hundred bucks and telling him it was time to go. “I love you, son, but you’re spinning your wheels.” Casey asked for a couple of weeks to get his shit together, and the next day, he enlisted in the US Army, serving from 1996-99. “Most of the guys are from the midwest and the south. That’s how they get out of the hellholes they came from.” Casey’s been cutting hair in Monrovia for as long as I can remember. He’s been my barber for years and has always been there for me, even in my wild man of Borneo days in the spring of 2020, when the health department was running roughshod over small businesses that dared to remain open. My hair was far too long and sprouting in tufts along my neck. I hadn’t shaved in weeks. Casey met me on his driveway and brought me back to humanity. That haircut in the midst of the pandemic, a simple act, changed my entire attitude. The world can be a boatload of stupidity grabbing us by the neck, but we don’t always have to play. We can go down to Casey’s Barbershop and sit out a couple rounds.