Thread: The Man

I found myself in Scranton, SC, today.

Now, SC is a rural, some would even say backward state. Yet most places in SC seem like Manhattan compared to Scranton.

There is a gas station and a feed store. I always ask in these small towns if there is an antique store, and there usually is. Usually down a back road in an old farm house, often the only going concern in the area.

"Do you have any shaving items?" I asked the gentleman behind the counter.

He did. Four straights, all either seriously damaged or honed down to about 1/4" or both. A Wade and Butcher swayback Barber's notch with a large chip starting at the edge and extending about 1/8" into the blade. Otherwise in great shape. Heartbreaking.

A man who seemed to be a regular wandered over. "Sam, you shave with a straight, don't you?"

Big guy. Maybe 6-3. I'd guess somewhere around 60, but very trim. Shaved head. Linebacker shoulders. Somebody you don't talk to unless introduced, and even then with care.

We spoke for around ten minutes. His story was that he had been given a straight and a strop by a barber in Pennsylvania, where he grew up, when he was a teenager. He'd been using these two items every day, ever since.

His straight shave, which included his entire head ("I don't have time for hair anymore," he said) was meticulous. I asked him how he cared for one razor all that time.

"I just strop and shave every morning. You have to use both sides, you know." He seemed surprised I knew he meant both the linen and the leather sides, that I even knew what a strop was.

He gets his soap from a man whose mother learned to make soaps as a child in Africa. When he gets low, he takes a container over to the guy's house and gets it filled for $5. It lasts him maybe six months.

"What do you use for a hone when the razor gets dull?" He told me that the barber had given him a hone along with the blade and the strop. He still had it, but he'd never used it. "I tried an oilstone once, I guess maybe in the 80s?" His face conveyed disgust. "Didn't do any good. I just use the strop. It's got cracks all over it, but it still works fine"

"Back where I grew up, near Lancaster, we didn't have anything. We didn't have tractors or combines. We used horses, sometimes mules. We didn't waste anything, and we made what we had last. People don't understand that anymore."

I had a sense that he had had enough talk. I had many more questions, but he was tiring of me. I shook his hand.

I've thought about this guy all afternoon. Since starting with straights just a few months ago, I've bought probably a dozen blades, four hones, a Dremel, and endless quantities of soaps and creams. I've read Wikis and threads and watched tutorials on YouTube and Lynn's DVD and talked with countless individuals, and I worry costantly about gold wash and lapping hones and progressions and pastes and if I should do one or two WTG passes and whether T&H Ultimate is really worth the cost compared to say RSCo and whether there will be another Dovo price spike with all the straight mania, and dozens of other trivial concerns.

Meanwhile, this guy just takes his 40 year-old straight out every morning, sharpens it on his cracked strop, and shaves.