There is a folk saying - "shave your head and pick a hot head", which means that a person is wishful thinking about a certain thing. What is a shaved head picker? Today's young people may not know much, and people over the age of fifty should know a lot, that is, the picks picked by people who walk the streets and alleys to shave their heads.
In the 1970s and 1980s, especially before the reform and opening up, there were few barber shops in rural areas, let alone any beauty salons. The average person cuts hair, who has a manual pusher, let the people in the line give a haircut, then the haircut is not called a haircut, but called a push head. Some towns or markets have barber shops, not called barber shops, called pushing heads, or shaving shops, haircuts are not called barbers, called pushers or shaved heads. The masters who push people's heads are all men, and women do not do this line. The more elegant title for the barber is "shaving the head". "Craftsman" is the name given to a person who has a certain craft, such as carpenter, blacksmith, mason, and so on. Calling people who shave their heads "shaving their heads" means that pushing and shaving their heads is also a craft, and without special training, ordinary people can't do it.
Rural women in that era generally did not cut their hair, most of them pulled a bun behind their heads, put on a green silk mesh, inserted two or three wires bent into A U-shaped pins, and inserted a hairpin in better condition. The hair grew, and the women and the women hinged each other with scissors. So in rural areas, it is generally adult men or boys who only get haircuts. Adult men cut their hair, nothing more than hair length cut short, there is no hairstyle exquisite. Some people like to push all their hair out, called pushing the head, using a manual fader. If older people want to push their heads bald, they generally do not use a pusher, but use a razor knife, which is called shaving the head.
Pushing the head with a fader is not difficult, there is no great danger, one hand presses the scalp, the other hand holds the pusher, while holding two pusher handles with the thumb and four fingers, while pushing forward against the scalp, just like the harvester that cuts wheat, the pusher passes, and the hair is "harvested".
And shaving the head is not the case, the razor knife is very sharp, the need for two hands to work closely together, one hand not only to hold the head (can not move around), but also to use the thumb to wrestle the scalp, so that it is flat, the other hand pinch the razor, along the flat place to scrape the ground, the sharper the knife, the more skilled the faster the scraping, the better, so the shaving of the head This job is not simple, the skill is very strong, a little attention may scrape the scalp.
In order to meet the needs of the elderly people in the countryside to shave their heads, some people have made a special career of shaving their heads, going to various villages to walk the streets and alleys to shave their heads. At that time, there were generally no cars, so I carried a pair of picks, one end was a toolbox, which contained razors, scissors, soap, towels, etc., all available, and the other end was a stove for boiling water, a hanging (kettle), a washbasin and a basin shelf.
Come to a village, the shaver in the crowded area, choose a more spacious, and in the winter can be leeward and sunny, in the summer can have a shady street entrance, set up a stall, set up a fire to start a water, just wait for customers to come. As people come and go, some people come to shave their heads, some people go to others to say that the shaved heads are coming, and before long, the whole village will know that the one who picks the pickers and goes to the countryside to shave their heads is coming. Those who needed to shave their heads gathered one after another. If there are not many people shaving their heads, everyone does not have to wait too long, if there are more, they will have to queue up and come one by one.
Shaving the head has a program of shaving the head, first wash the head with warm water, and then rub it with soap, rub it up, rinse it with clean water, wipe it half dry with a clean towel, put on a special apron under the neck, the shaving master begins to shave piece by piece, starting from the side first, step by step, faster than ten minutes to shave the hair on the head, slow it takes more than twenty minutes. After shaving your hair, washing it again with warm water, drying it with a dry towel, and a customer is finished.
At that time, there was no razor, usually the old man's beard was long, generally he took the scissors to the mirror and hinged, but it was only a rough reamer, the hinge was not neat, and the hinge was not complete. When the shaver arrives, he shaves his beard and his face as soon as he catches up with the shaver. Shaving the face, is also the use of a razor, and the action of shaving hair is almost the same, but also needs a certain amount of technology, and more need to be careful, can not be careless, so the shaver can not be absent-minded during the operation, otherwise the blade is oblique, and it is troublesome to draw a line on the face. Although there was no claim at that time, due to the scratches caused by mistakes, customers complained, which would also affect their reputation and then affect business.
At that time, there was no market economy, the price was very low, people were not rich, the cost of shaving back was not high, generally two or three cents, counting shaving, the full set of services was only fifty cents. If there are more people who shave their heads, shave their faces, and if they can have more than a dozen customers in a morning, remove the cost of charcoal, soap money, etc., a shaving headmaker can have a net income of seven or eight yuan.
People shave their heads, their hair takes months to grow again, and the shaver has been to a village and needs to come back for a long time, so the shaver has to pick a pick to go to the village.
By the early nineties of the last century, the reform and opening up was getting deeper and deeper, the market economy was getting more and more lively, people were dressing more and more fashionably, not only dressing and wearing hats, paying attention to fashion, the awareness of beauty salons was getting stronger and stronger, and the flat-headed and teapot lid hairstyles that young people usually kept were less and less, and the mid-head (the hair on the front of the head was separated from the middle to the left and right), the partial head (left three right seven or left seven right three points), or the back head (all the hair above the forehead was combed upwards and backwards), and the barber shop began to become more. Later the rise of perm curls, the beginning is women's curly hair perm, slender and smooth hair permed into wavy curls, and then the rise of men also perm curls, which also gave birth to the beauty salon industry, from the city to the township, a variety of facades of beauty salons (some called hair salons), mushrooms after the rain, opened all over the streets, there are female barbers opened, there are male barbers opened, there are called "look back at the barbershop", there are called "good hair salon", there are also called "sister hair salon", "a cut hair salon", there are many signboards, In a township, there are at least a dozen barber shops, some villages also have barber shops, barber tools have been replaced by electric faders, and electric hair dryers have also been replaced.
In a variety of barbershops, in addition to being able to cut various hairstyles, they can perm their curls, and later they have risen to dye their hair. Some people dye white hair black; some people dye black hair brown and blonde; some people dye their overall hair color unchanged, only one or a few strands of them are dyed into other colors, some are dyed red, some are dyed green, and so on.
With the beauty salon industry more and more prosperous, hairstyles more and more trendy, tools more and more advanced, most of them are young people engaged in the beauty salon industry, young customers can receive, old customers can also receive, child customers also receive, it is natural, the elderly people pick the pick to go to the countryside to shave their heads for a living without the market, there is no one to do, "shave the head", "shave the head", "shave the head" and other terms have become historical terms, representing the memory of history, gradually withdrew from people's vision, into history.
For more than forty years of reform and opening up, the time has stepped into the twenty-first century has been more than twenty years, for people over the age of fifty, especially in the countryside, the shaving head is a figure they are very familiar with, shaving the head is a very familiar object, the scene of shaving the head on the rural street is still vivid in the eye, has become an unforgettable memory, because it was a unique scenery on the rural streets in the past.
The author is a Shandong native, his hometown is in the countryside, he has seen a lot of shaving heads before, I don't know if other provinces before the 1970s and 1980s, is it the same as the rural areas of Shandong, is it also common to pick pickers to go to the villages and villages, is there also the same situation as all over Shandong?
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(Description: The author's pen name is Ma Li, the original article, the first appearance of this headline number, and the picture of this network. ）