January 21, 2021

Tried to get a vaccine. Buncombe County was out and not making appointments until they get some more. 

Tried again. They gave me a waiting list number and said they phone someday.

Having gone full Einstein hair-wise, on Zach’s recommendation I decided to try the new barber shop in the Walgreen’s parking lot. Got a ginger good old boy named Hunter, whose hair was wilder than mine. Hunter is an ex-cop who got disillusioned with policing and started to cut hair. Everyone in the room, except me and the one female barber, were cops or ex-cops, and all knew each other and each other’s stories. Hunter has two kids and a wife who likes to read but throws the book against the wall if a dog gets killed in it. The little girl is afraid of everything and reads all the signs when they’re hiking, for fear they might be trespassing. I liked Hunter, and got the best haircut I’ve gotten in North Carolina. I’m not sure it looks the best on me, but the process of getting it was pleasurable, relaxed, thorough, almost, one might say, loving. I sensed something fascinating. Coppy-ness was palpable. Cop jokes, cop gossip, cop-speak, but also cop affection. The men liked each other and felt liked in return. There was real community. My instant reflex is to excoriate “coppy-ness” and to hate things like Police Benevolents, but the sweetness of the atmosphere was hard to dismiss. I don’t know that this can change my mind about the evils of the “thin blue line,” but it can allow me to give those operating outside of it a break in my regard. One of the cops (who had been Hunter’s firearms instructor) was talking about some old guy he stopped on the road and his demented ramblings. “What do you expect” He was born in 1950.”