Barber shares words of wisdom on work, welfare

Monday I was running errands, getting ready for a business trip to Hancock and Washington counties. I filled my car gas tank, deposited a check at the bank. The last item on my list? Haircut.

Last November, when family friend, Danny, was visiting, my girlfriend Eileen took him to a barber near where I was parked. Using my smart phone Google Maps to search — H. Williams Barber Shop was but a stone’s throw away.

The sign out front said “$12 Haircuts.” Approaching the front door I see through the front window a middle-aged man sitting in a barber chair reading an open newspaper. I walk inside, say hello, and ask, “Do you have time for a haircut?”

I’m talking with Greg Williams, the third generation of the Williams family to run this shop. Greg’s father ran it before him. Greg’s grandfather started the business “right after the Korean War,” said Greg.

It’s a small shop with two barber chairs. The barbering tools are well-organized, shiny. Greg knows just where to find the right scissors, clipper blades, straight razors, neck dusters – everything.

Greg asks, and I answer, some questions:

Q. Have you been here before? A. No
Q. How’d you find out about us? A. My girlfriend, Eileen.
Q. What do you do for a living? A. Communications and marketing. (That’s my short answer.)

He asks where I live. I tell him. Greg asks if I fish.

“I used to,” I say, “but I don’t much any more. I like to snorkel and look at the fish.”

By now I’m sitting in the chair where Greg was reading his newspaper. He asks, “How would you like your hair cut?”

“If it was up to me, I’d just shave my head,” I say.

Nodding, Greg adds, “Yeah, but your honey has to like it.”

I laugh.

Where did you grow up? Greg asks. I tell him I was born in Mass., grew up on Long Island, NY. Been in Maine over 30 years.

Out of the blue Greg tells me the country is headed in the wrong direction. He’s not ranting or venting. He’s not worked up, but reflective. Sometimes he talks staring out the window, as if looking at — or for — something outside.

He says America now “has it backwards. We punish people who want to work for a living, and we reward people who won’t work for a living.” Greg speaks as if he’s seeing someone having trouble walking with their shoes on the wrong feet, wondering, “Why don’t they switch shoes to the correct feet and make walking easier?”

What’s at the top of Greg’s “backwards” list he would reverse first? “The welfare system,” he says, “is all messed up.” Like me, Greg grew up in a family of five kids. “As a kid, if you wanted something you worked for it. You had to get a job. You did whatever you could,” he says.

True enough.

Greg said again, “A lot of the kids today, they don’t want to work. They think work is beneath them. You can make more on welfare than you can as a productive citizen working.”

That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Not welfare recipients who legitimately can’t work. It’s others, in short, scamming the system.

The 8×10 framed photo on the barbershop counter of a thin man wearing sunglasses, baseball cap, and long white beard? Greg said, “That’s my grandfather. He’s going to be 84, and every Friday he’s in here cutting hair at that other chair,” said Greg.

“The older generation (his father’s and grandfather’s), they don’t want to stop. The current generation doesn’t want to get started.”

I thank Greg for my haircut. “The stock answer around here,” he says, “if your honey doesn’t like the haircut — tell her you got it at Walmart.”

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.