An Aside of Sorts

When I was 12 or so living in Seth Ward, TX,
you know the place, a bit north of Plainview.
My barber was a sweet woman with a home shop
who needed only combs and scissors to do the cut
and saved her brush for a final flourish.

She was Mrs. Dean, a friend of my Grandmother.
She was just walking distance from where I lived,
near the gas station that paid .02 for rescued pop bottles.
It was an easy walk, the haircut cost 2 quarters and a dime.
(or something like that, I don't remember, but that sounds fair).

During school, I walked to see Mrs. Dean every other Saturday;
after school, I waited to walk until sometime in late August,
but always walking and looking for pop bottles in bar ditches.
I never met Mrs. Dean's famous son James, some movie guy
who later moved back to Plainview and started a sausage mill.