Truth, nothing but the truth

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The importance of truth in everyday life is something that each of us are responsible for upholding.
When thinking on the topic of honesty, I fondly remember back on the Andy Griffith Show episode where “Opie” wants to sell his bike without mentioning all the little things that are wrong with it. “Barney” decides to take on selling real estate and the Taylors are considering selling their house and buying another in the same episode.
Andy neglects to mention the little odds and ends wrong with the house until Opie brings these things to the attention of the buyers. While Andy becomes frustrated by Opie’s honesty, Opie is confused by Andy’s separate rules for adults and children. Andy finally realizes that Opie is right.
When we are in our late teens, we sometimes add a few years to our age so we can do things adults do. As we get older, we tend to shave years off our age so we can appear younger. Are these lies?
When attorneys are faced with defending people that they know or suspect are guilty, does this strain their ability to be honest when they stand in front of a judge or jury to defend a not guilty plea?
While extreme situations like war can sometimes bring on the need for good people to be faced with challenging choices concerning their convictions, it is often on faith and truth that they must rely to get through the bad times.
But there are, no doubt, times when honesty may be strained.
Members of a generation of Americans were disenfranchised by the feeling that our government was lying to them in the 1970’s during Watergate and the latter part of the Vietnam War.
Were they lying?
There is an old joke about how you can tell when a politician is lying — their mouth is moving.
I wonder sometimes what happened to good, old-fashioned honesty.
Honesty does exist in each of us. All we need to do is remember each and every falsehood we utter has an effect on someone else.
It may only be ourselves we hurt as we build a house of cards trying to remember each and every white lie we have told so as not to be caught.
What is the point of being dishonest? Do we gain anything?
There’s an old song called the “Royal Telephone” where the singer asks the operator to get Jesus on the line.
Would you tell a lie in exchange for a conversation with our Savior, Jesus Christ himself, on the phone? I wouldn’t. If I did, what would we talk about?
Remember: “From your lips to God’s ears.”
If you remember that he is listening, it does make you think more heavily about what you do and say each and every day.

Come as you are

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If there is a place where folks come as they are these days, it’s on social media and often it does not reflect our best. Have you ever wondered what happened to dressin’ up when you go to town or when placing yourself in an environment to be seen such as online? When I was growing up in Chamblee, Ga. we would often make the trek to town.

In our case, town would either be downtown Atlanta or Decatur. Whether we were out for a day of lookin’ and feelin’ at Rich’s department store or a trip to Starne’s Barber Shop for a shave and a haircut on the square in Decatur, when we walked out our front door, we looked our very best.

Notice how I said “lookin’ and feelin’” rather than shopping. That is what women folks would do with youngsters in tow. They would look and feel, only occasionally would the trip bear fruit with something being bought. In those days, many folks, like us, didn’t have air conditioning at home. A trip to the store on a hot summer day was a welcome relief.

I never did get a shave at Starne’s but I sure did lose a lot of hair. Mr. Starnes gave me my first haircut as my cousin Arthur, who was in barber training, watched. I would soon be turned over to Arthur for several of my early haircuts. In looking at early pictures, I can only say they were fond of flattops.

Course as a child, being dressed up often would include a little bit of dirt within just a few minutes of putting on those clothes. I can still hear my mom saying “What am I going to do with you, you get dirtier than an east Tennessee coal miner.” But what is a young boy to do when there is a perfectly good mud puddle just waiting there to be jumped in?

I can still see my mom in a pretty dress gray gabardine outfit with matching black hat, gloves, handbag and high heel shoes.

Maybe the concept of being dressed up has changed. Maybe folks look at designer jeans and a T-shirt or sweats as the fashion of the day. All of them are ridiculously expensive. They are a lot easier to upkeep than walking out in a crisply starched shirt, tie and slacks each and every day.

I just don’t understand what happened to the custom of looking your best. I remember even when we would spend time on my grandparents’ mountain farm, folks worked hard and wore clothes that would carry that load. But when it came time to go to town for something, I remember grandma Kitty going to her cedar wardrobe and pulling out her blue Sunday dress to put on.

Even if folks were dirt poor, they made sure that when they went to town or school or wherever they looked the best they could afford.

Folks generally still dress up to go to church. However, in some churches they don’t even do that anymore. They just say ‘come as you are.’ Now, there is nothing wrong with this. Cause I know God welcomes anyone no matter if they are in overalls or hole-y jeans. But there is just something to be said to giving God your very best effort.

In the past, folks took pride in the way they looked, their dress, their grooming. My dad would never leave the house with a hair out of place. Was that vanity, possibly. But that is one impression of him that people who knew him still remember today.

Now I am not saying that I have never left the house without being perfectly dressed and groomed. I do occasionally run out to the grocery or the gas station in a less than dressed-up fashion.

While I never owned a pair of blue jeans until I was in my teens, I do wear them to town with a nice shirt and even on stage when appropriate.

My parents use to say “We’ve worked hard to get off the farm and out of overalls, there is no reason for you to wear them.”

That was no slight on farming or farmers on their part. When they were coming up, farmers like other country folk were looked down upon by city people and I am sure they endured their share of negative comments from those well-meaning city folks while trying to make a place for themselves in the city. While nostalgic to us today, their roots of walking barefoot behind the mule as the fresh-turned earth came up between their toes was something many folks worked to get away from, especially during the depths of the depression.

With some pairs of jeans these days costing more than a pair of slacks, in a way, I guess they are dressy in their own right. If you really want to get fancy you can buy them with holes already worn in them. I heard of folks in east Georgia making a fortune by firing buckshot at jeans for some company. They can be pre-washed and I imagine somewhere you can buy them pre-worn and be charged extra for somebody else breaking them in. No matter what, they are here to stay.

I guess the days of everyone wearing their best when they go to town is a thing of the past. It is amazing what new coat of paint and little fixing up can do to a house. It only makes since that we do the same for ourselves or we can just “come as we are,” no matter where we go. It could be a little embarrassing for some folks though, depending on what they were doing when they get the invite.

A shave and a haircut

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As I sat and squirmed in my chair trying to scratch a place in the middle of my back, I wasn’t very happy that I made a trip to get a haircut. Have you ever noticed when you go to the barber that those little hairs that fall inside your shirt collar can make you itch for the rest of the day?

It kind of makes you understand the “hippie” movement, at least the hair part of it. Although I never understood my middle brother Alan’s desire to have a six-inch afro, it must have been somewhere in the early 70’s, I ran in from playing down the street to find my brother sitting in the living room looking like he had a fight with an electric toaster and lost.

One thing that makes me wonder is why folks go to a salon to get their hair styled. They can do most anything there from your hair to your nails. They even got them places where you can get a full body wrap.

Now when I was growing up, men didn’t go to a salon. A salon was for women. That’s where women folk went to get their hair glued in place before they went to church on Sunday.

Back then, men folk went to barber shops. If a man was caught going in to a beauty salon, it took a month of Sunday’s to live it down.

While memories of my first haircut have faded, I am told that I was really not too much of a squirmer in the barber’s chair. I knew that if I didn’t behave that would be my last time sitting down for a while.

After our family moved from the big city of Little Five Points out to the country in Chamblee, my Dad and I settled on going to a barber named Mr. Saxon. I don’t believe I ever knew his first name, but Mr. Saxon cut my hair from my third birthday all the way through my senior year in high school.

One thing I have learned in my life is that loyalty to a barber is one of the most important choices a man can make. No matter where Mr. Saxon moved his practice through the years, that is where we went to get our hair cut.

Haircuts back then didn’t cost an arm and a leg either. It took me years to not cringe when pulling more than $2 out of my pocket for a haircut.

Initially, the old barber shop had been in business since the days of Civil War reconstruction. As I sat in a red leather swivel barber chair, I would look up above the mirrors on the wall at the shotguns which were mounted above each barber chair in case some restless mountaineer needed to be reminded that he was in town.

Hill folk would ride into town and not only get a haircut, shave and a boot shine, but  take a shower and house their horse out back while they were in town.

Mr. Saxon always managed to keep my Dad and I properly trimmed. After my cut, I would always help out by sweeping up the hair clippings on the gray tile floor. Through the years, it was amazing how I always seemed to sweep up a dime or two to put in the old red carousel Coca-Cola machine when I was done.

Through the years, Mr. Saxon imparted many words of wisdom on this impressionable lad. Probably the one that stuck the most was “Always remember, no matter who you meet in life, your mom and dad will be the best friends you will ever have.”

By the time I had reached my senior year, Mr. Saxon was growing near retirement. While he was once a whiz, time was taking its toll. The loyalty within me insisted that he would be the one to cut my hair before my senior photos were taken. Unfortunately, that haircut left a lasting memory and was not a great testament to his many years of talented barbering.

By the time I reached Georgia State University, trends in the outside world were making franchise style shops the place where people went for a trim. It was difficult for me to take my first steps into such a place, but eventually I did. Unlike the old barber shop, almost every time you went in there would be a different butcher on duty.

As my musical star began to rise, a fellow musician from Chicago, Sue Koskela, had taken up the trade and become an award winning stylist. Thankfully for me she was kind enough to take me on as a client and would always travel in to handle photo shoots and album covers. She settled near Knoxville for many years, and I would regularly make the six-hour round trip from Atlanta to have her work her magic. I am not exaggerating; what she did was magic. I knew when I walked out of there, I would not have to do anything to my hair and I would be sporting whatever latest style suited my look and shape of my face. Every time I went elsewhere, I usually looked like a cross between the Frankenstein monster and “Mo” from the Three Stooges.

When I joined the cast of “In the Heat of the Night” as “Officer Randy Goode,” my head and hair became the responsibility of whichever hair and makeup artists were assigned to oversee my look. They had to make sure that we actors looked consistent throughout scenes that were filmed out of sequence. In one of those happenstance moments, we got a new and short-lived hair artist who decided to give me a different look for an episode entitled “Heart of Gold.” I had one of my largest feature appearances of the early series. It was amazing to me how detrimental that look on camera was for me. I never realized until that point how much a person’s hair style has to do with how they are perceived by other people.

Good grooming is something we can all do to make the world a better place, but finding a good barber these days can be as hard as finding a six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola for a dime.