Haircuts at Hogan's Inn

Migawd!   Is it really 55 years ago since Bob McWaters and his father Dave, cut my hair in the barber shop that is now Hogan's Hunt Pub in King City?   The answer is yes, and it is 55 years since I last saw Bob McWaters, the barber, until this week, that is.   Bob now resides in the Maple Health Centre on Keele Street North in Maple, a few kilometres south of King City.   Hogan's is a fine, upscale dining room and pub, in what was Armstrong's Variety store in the mid-1950s.  The barber-shop was in the basement.   It had 2 barber chairs as I recall, a pool table, and a big old pop cooler with the tall bottles of Coca-Cola, 7up, Pepsi, and Orange Crush (my favourite), etc., standing in icy cold water, up to their pop-off tops.   There was also a white barber's towel attached to the cooler lid for drying off your bottle of pop.   There were also mens' magazines.   No, not that kind of magazine, but real mens' magazines about huntin', and fishin' and cars. The reunion with Bob came about as a result of a picture I had put into a blog, a few weeks ago, of a King Township farm pond.   I thought Bob's father, Dave had constructed this pretty pond but during my research discovered he had not.   But I was surprised to discover the McWaters family had lived there for a little while.   A chat with Bob's sister, Jane, who lives just outside King City, led to me enquire about her father Dave, and brothers Bob and Jack, who I had lost contact with long ago.   She told me where Bob was and suggested I drop in on him.   Bob suffered a bad accident a few years ago which left him with what appears to be damage to some fine motor skills.   He also speaks slowly and softly.   None of which kept him from reminding me that we played on the same baseball team, nor asking about numerous guys with whom we had gone to school and hung around with.   Bob only mentioned one girl by name and I was surprised to hear her name, because it was my wife's older sister.   He described her as "... a really nice girl".   Bob and his brother Jack were lifelong bachelors, but here was what I mused might be a decades-old infatuation re-surfacing for a moment.   We were both quite capable of discussing the here and now, but we both seemed content and comfortable to dwell in the past, on this occasion.   Next time, who knows?   We shook hands and agreed to see each other again.   I hoped, as I left, that it was as pleasant a visit for Bob as it was for me.   I mentioned the name McWaters to my friend Ken McQuarrie, the proprietor (for the last 50 years) of Clearview Motors, on Keele Street South, in King City, and he of course remembered the McWaters clan.   He told me also of another barber from that era.   Half a century ago, if Dave or Bob McWaters didn't cut your hair, then the next nearest barber was in Maple.   His name?   It was Mel "Clipper" White, from whom you were pretty much guaranteed to get a haircut that never looked the same twice.   Finally, I must mention Bob's brother Jack.   Several year ago, Jack retired to Elliott Lake in northern Ontario.   One day he drove into the backwoods and got involved in trailing a moose to take photographs.   He was with an acquaintance and they got lost in the woods.   The other fellow found his way out the following day but Jack wasn't found until the third day.   He had tragically passed away from hypothermia.   When I mentioned to another old King City friend, John Dew, who new the McWaters's well, that I thought I might write a blog about the McWaters's, he quickly suggested, as a title: "Still McWaters run deep".   In a strange way, it seemed entirely fitting, but rather as an epilogue, I think.   Please comment if you wish.

BtheB                                                                                          (Photos by BarrytheBirder)