Our plan for the holidays is to head north to Wisconsin...and a haircut. Nothing says Happy Holidays like a haircut. Now, I first have to mention that I have a great barber right here in town. He has an old-fashioned shop filled with magazines and smart talk...well, smart-alecky. He is always in a good mood and does a great job...considering it's my head he has to work with. However, as I've mentioned before, my mom is married to a man who has been a world-class barber for more than half a century. When we know we are going to be heading up that way, we tend to put off getting the boys' haircuts. They love to have Grandpa cut their hair and have since they were little. He has a singing fish on the wall and comic books on the table. He hands out Juicy Fruit gum. He also does a great job on their hair. When you're a little kid...or even a big one...you can sort of get a way with being a bit shaggy. It is not as easy when you're a so-called adult. But, I'm trying.

I was really due for a haircut right around Thanksgiving, but I let it slide. Then, I noticed that we were only about a month away from going to Wisconsin and decided to see if I could wait and get my haircut there. As of now, I have about two weeks to go. Years ago, when my hair would get a little long, I would hear from a viewer, telling me I was looking shaggy and I needed a haircut. As I've gotten older, I don't get that call anymore. I think the viewer is amazed I still have any hair at all at this point and doesn't want to make light of it...my folly of follicles or, maybe, just "folly-cles." Also, either my forehead is expanding in an effort to hold my constantly growing brain or my hairline is receding like a bunch of bunnies marching backward. (Get it...Receding Hare-Line....wow, I got to use my one Easter Joke twice this year.) But, whatever the reason, I have been asked by several local billboard companies if they could rent out that space over my eyebrows.

My wife has been helpful in my efforts to not get a haircut. She mentioned that gray, white and silver hair has different qualities than dark brown hair and may require special care as it gets longer. Notice how she was able to draw attention to my advancing age while making it appear to be an effort to help? She has been urging me to use something called pomade. It reminds of the stuff George Clooney's character requires in O Brother, Where Art Thou? That is where the George Clooney comparison ends. Well, I've tried it a couple days now. My wife insists that there is no odor. Yet, my co-workers, Donna Pitman and Jere Gish, arrived at work with gas masks this morning and I'm being pursued by horse flys...in the middle of our cold snap. I don't mean these are flys that usually hang around horses, I mean they are flys as big as horses. Of course, I am also surrounded by dogs and cats when I take a walk but that's probably due to the bacon grease I use on my shoes.

You'd think, being around TV people for over 20 years, I'd have succumbed to their insatiable desire for hair-care products like mousse and gels and hairsprays. But, I've never used that stuff. I grew up being instilled with the fear of looking like I had greasy hair. Now, it seems, that greasy hair is a "look" people go for. I never went in for the pony-tail or mullet rage when I was younger or the super short cut, with it sticking up like a broken picket fence in the front, styles as I got older. I always wanted my hair to look like Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Since most of my TV viewing consists of old Columbo, Andy Griffith and Rockford Files episodes, I've always felt my hair was in line with the times. But, now, as I'm trying not to get it cut, I am forced to put this foreign material in my hair. I may have overdone the pomade today. It's a little hard. A woodpecker stopped for just a moment this morning before sighing heavily and moving on. I think I also got some on my forehead which makes it feel like I'm wearing an invisible headband.

(I have shown great restraint in this hair-raising tale by not dwelling on what I know is an ever-widening bald spot on the back of my noggin. My wife humors me by saying it is not there. But, I know better. I feel the draft. Al Gore called to ask if he could use my head as an example of the effects of global warming. I told him that the truth about my thinning hair just wasn't convenient.)

So, I will continue to batten down the hairy hatches over the next couple weeks. If the stinky pomade and hairspray don't do the trick, I may move on to Super Glue but I will draw the line at a hair-net. Maybe.