Twenty Fourth Day On The Camino Thursday, October 11, 2018

Second Rest Day In Leon

It was a cloudy and rainy morning. I sacked in and by the time I got up, showered and had breakfast it was almost 10:00 AM. Abe knew I wanted to get a haircut and he said that he had noticed a barbershop 💈 close to our alburgue on the main pedestrian thoroughfare. We walked down to the barbershop and I was relieved to see this sign on the sidewalk outside the barbershop.

I told Abe I wanted to come out of the barbershop looking like the caballero on the sign. Abe told me that he has been practicing his Spanish and that he would talk to the barber to make sure that the barber understands exactly what I want, nothing more than a light trim.

I probably need to give you a little of my somewhat traumatic history with barbers. When I was just a little kid my father would cut my hair. That’s my father with St. Rita.

Those of you who know my father know that he has never been a barber, has no training as a barber and has no business cutting anyone’s hair. Although he has always had a good full head of hair and even now he has a pretty good head of hair for someone who is 90 years old, that does not now, nor has it ever given him license to cut other people’s hair.

If you know my father you know that he is pretty tight with a buck. He starts at frugal and then squeezes a nickel so hard the buffalo shits. Well, I think he got tired of taking me to his regular barber, Daryle, for a $1 haircut. I understood his concern with the cost of my haircuts. After a while, a buck a month adds up to real money. So my father sent away for a pair of electric clippers and decided he would cut my hair himself. As he said: “How difficult can it be?” As it turns out, it wasn’t very difficult for him to cut my hair as long as I didn’t mind always looking like a Marine Corps recruit on leave after graduating from basic training. Semper Fi indeed. It got to the point where he would need to chase me around the kitchen and belt me into a chair when it was haircut time. I would raise such a horrendous racket while this whole process was taking place that I am sure the neighbors wondered what in the world was going on at the Hansen house.

One of the best days of my young life was the day the clippers shorted out and gave my father a shock that would have made Frankenstein dance a jig. He threw down the electric clippers and said that he was now officially out of the barber business and that I could grow my hair as long as Rapunsell for all he cared. The only problem with that was that the nuns at St. Joseph expected us to show up for school every day, bright eyed, bushy tailed and well groomed. I did not need to have a Marine Corps recruit haircut, but long hair was out of the question. Now I had to figure out how to get my hair cut and pay for it out of the money I made cutting lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter. The solution to this dilemma was as ingenious as it was obvious, the Heck Barber College. At that time Jerry Heck’s father ran a barber college in downtown Springfield. It took six months for a neophyte barber to go from hair butcher to fully licensed barber. The students at Heck’s Barber College would go to classes in the morning and cut hair in the afternoon. Mr. Heck was always looking for people with a full head of hair who were stupid enough to come in and let these student barbers practice on them. You could get a “haircut” from a student barber in his first three months of barber college for a quarter. At first I thought this was a pretty good deal, until the student barbers started whacking off chunks of my ears as they were trying to give me a Vidal Sassoon haircut. When they would cut one of my ears I would give a yelp and they would staunch the ear wound with a stiptic pencil. That would stop the bleeding but it increased the pain and my yelping exponentially. And the Barber College haircuts weren’t much better than the buzz cuts I had been getting for free from my father.

So with that history I approached the barbershop in Leon with a great deal of trepidation. Abe told me to stop being a weenie and said that he would handle all the Spanish palaver with the barber and ensure that I got a great haircut and that I would come out of the barbershop looking like this dashing caballero.

And not this nightmare.

This is what I looked like before the haircut.

This is the gargantuan mound of hair that fell to the barbershop floor during my haircut.

And this is what I looked like after my haircut.

I haven’t had hair this short since I used to get buzz cuts from my dear old Dad. I won’t need another haircut for months. Abe and the barber thought the whole thing was funny. Apparently Abe told the barber in his fractured Spanglish that I wanted just a little taken off the top and sides and the barber thought Abe said cut all the hair off and leave just a little on the top and sides. This is the last time I am going to let Abe help me get a haircut in a foreign country.

After the haircut debacle I decided to go next door and get a massage.

This particular massage guy, Reynaldo, is a legend on the Camino. He takes battered and broken Pilgrims and massages then like a baker massages a lump of bread dough. You are not as good as new after one of Reynaldo’s massages, but you do walk out of his office believing that you can walk the remaining 300 kilometers to Santiago. I got a ninety minute massage and it was a miraculous experience. I am still sore and feeling a little beat up, but I am now looking forward to tackling the Camino tomorrow.

After the massage I had a nice leisurely lunch with Marco from Italy, Andrea from Sweden and Francisco, a Ph.D physicist from Brazil. Francisco is interested in the American West and trains and knows very little about either subject. I am interested in Brazil and physics and know very little about either subject. As you can imagine we had a very interesting series of discussions over our two hour lunch.

Remind me to never order a hamburger in Spain. My hamburger turned out to be an ox burger. No matter how many times I sent it back to the kitchen, it came back raw. That is what I get for straying from the tried and true jamon sandwiches.

This is the Gaudi museum in Leon. Gaudi is the Frank Loyd Wright of Spain. I took a two hour guided tour of the museum and learned more than I ever wanted to know about Gaudi the architect.

This is the view of Leon from one of the towers in the Gaudi museum.

This is the lobster paella we had for dinner. We got the lunch group together and decided to celebrate our imminent departure from Leon with a nice dinner. With my new haircut I got a military discount.

This dinner is the best meal I have had since the last tasting menu in Sweden. If you like lobster, and who doesn’t like lobster, you would love this lobster paella 🥘.

This is the Leon Cathedral at night.

That is it for today.

I hope everyone is having a great Thursday.

Good evening from Leon, Spain.