The Wet-Head is Dead, I Said
Gary Phillips
Rabbit Moffit, a sweet old man who was almost bald himself, was the only person who cut my hair until I went my own way as a teenager.
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He had a tiny one-room barber shop about a mile down the road from our house, overlooking the South Carolina line. Rabbit opened up to a full house every Wednesday and Saturday. All haircuts were 50 cents and the only services on offer were buzz-cuts.
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I wore a flattop until I was12 or 13 years old, then I fell in love with The Beatles and tried to grow bangs, but my father made me stiffen my hair with pomade so it wouldn’t “fall down in my eyes.” I had to take it all apart on the school bus with a washcloth to get it the way I wanted. One day I stopped my dad as he came in from his third shift at the cotton mill in Spartanburg and said: “Don’t you know the wet-head is dead?” which was the theme of a famous ad in Life Magazine, and my father laughed and let me keep my hair however I wanted.
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Hair was political in western North Carolina in the 1960s.
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My favorite uncle was an alcoholic car mechanic. Uncle Clyde became cool toward me around the time I turned 16 and I couldn’t understand why, then suddenly one night when I was out at his house for home-canned green beans, mashed potatoes, meat loaf and dinner rolls he suddenly hit the table and burst out “Gary, why don’t you cut your hair so I can like you again!”
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He relented later and apologized by rebuilding a pickup for me. Not just any pickup, but a cobalt blue 1955 flathead V8 Custom Cab with a three-speed column shifter and a double bar central grill, the most beautiful piece of machinery I have ever driven.
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I lost that truck to a skinny mountain girl from Sylva in the 1970s who liked my long hair. She would scoot over so close on the long bench seat that my momma would say every time we drove up in the yard: “That’s a funny kind of truck that takes two to drive.”
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Our favorite place to eat was a little shack on the other side of Bryson City with a sign on the door that said NO LONGHAIRS, but they let me put mine under a cowboy hat and walk right in. I suspect my girlfriend worked that out. She could work out a lot of things, like driving down the mountain in my beautiful blue pickup truck and never coming back.
Gary Phillips is a land-based poet living in the community of Silk Hope, and the former poet laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina. He lives in a rammed earth house with his wife Ilana Dubester, who is a community activist. His book of poetry and occasional pieces, The Boy the Brave Girls was printed in 2016 by Human Error Publishing (Wendell, Mass). His newest chapbook is titled Subjects Suitable for Poetry(Charlotte Literary Press, 2023).