Tonight I met Patsy Cline's hairdresser. He walked into the
laundromat where I wash my clothes in Portland.
Jerry had an air about him - lunatic, eccentric, mysterious. His white hair was thick and full and combed back
like Liberace’s. He wore large white ,green, and blue stones on his fingers and black rope
like chains around his neck. There was something
about his eyes, endless blue and clear. He was mumbling to myself when he
walked into the place, and I thought he was one of the crazies you run into in
Portland, but he wasn’t all that crazy.
He was a man who had many great, long-ago experiences no one would believe
or even now care about.
He told me he now spent his time between Ft. Lauderdale and Maine, and in Maine he visited with his older sisters and brothers and volunteered at the shelter in Portland. He preferred Ft. Lauderdale where it seemed he got his start after he learned to cut hair when he was 15. At one point, he cut Johnny Depp’s hair when he was still a young boy living in Miramar and his father was the mayor. He told me Depp’s mother had it hard working as a waitress night and day after her husband left her, but she also knew her son would make it.
He told me he now spent his time between Ft. Lauderdale and Maine, and in Maine he visited with his older sisters and brothers and volunteered at the shelter in Portland. He preferred Ft. Lauderdale where it seemed he got his start after he learned to cut hair when he was 15. At one point, he cut Johnny Depp’s hair when he was still a young boy living in Miramar and his father was the mayor. He told me Depp’s mother had it hard working as a waitress night and day after her husband left her, but she also knew her son would make it.
Jerry seemed to know many people.
At one time he was hanging out and sleeping with Johnny Mathis and his
crew. He told me "ya know, girl, they were all gay.” Once he fell into that group he met Elizabeth
Taylor, and he is still best friend with an 80-something-year-old Connie Frances, who
now lives in Boston. But his favorite girl was Patsy Cline. I couldn’t believe it. Patsy Cline is one of my favorite singers of
all time. He said he cut her hair, and
she would always say, “Jerry, not here. “ “A bit here, Jerry.” “No too much in the front, Jerry.” He loved that girl, especially her song “Sweet
Dreams." And so did I. I remembered I first heard her voice in a movie, and I
went out and bought her disk and listened to it night and day until I memorized all
the lyrics to all her songs.
Before I knew it Jerry was cutting my hair in the Laundromat,
and I allowed him to do it because he once cut Patsy Cline’s.
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