The quarried stone of Mertzon School building of 1909 vintage faces east. Ambitious school boards led by resume-building superintendents have all but surrounded the handsome edifice and killed the aura of time with modern brick extensions. However, leading to the southeast from the front entrance, a dim trail to downtown is visible after leaving the parking lot and crossing a draw angling toward the courthouse.

Only a segment of the trail leading by the Methodist Church remains. Houses conceal the other passageways of these long-ago pedestrian and mounted students, who walked and rode horseback to school. Six oak trees stand in front of the school as monument to being the hitching limbs or livery post for the kids lucky enough to have four-legged transportation. There were no school buses then. Country kids boarded in town, or were brought in by private transportation.

Of the traces remaining, the trail crossing Courthouse Hill to downtown is the most important to my past. Somewhere close to the end of the 1930s, David Farrington and I used that route to make our shine stand at the barbershop after school. We split company right behind the drugstore and bank.

If the right kid was working at the grocery store, Dave's detour was often worth a couple of slices of bologna through the back door. The drugstore soda jerks were harder to promote for free ice cream or root beers as the doctor's office and the pharmacist guarded the back of the building. On Saturday nights, however, one of us had to stay late to sweep the floor and clean the public bathtub. Timed right, the soda fountain was an easy mark after the druggist had gone home.

After all, we were street kids, wise to the green felt of the racked balls at the pool hall and aware that a red-headed guy across the tracks sold fierce bootleg whiskey to the sports who shot dice on the work bench at Harkey's garage. Shine boys hear everything stooped over the stand facing the floor. We missed a few fights, but were always on hand if Doctor Deal had to sew up a loser. We knew the beauty operator dyed her hair blonde and was better looking than a movie star. Dave claimed he heard the pistol shot the night an old boy shot through the operator's window up behind the shop in a jealous rage.

Things were lively downtown in those days. The trapper working on the Middle Concho was the biggest act to hit town, including carnivals and medicine shows. Along with chasing one of our customers down the street half-shaven with a barber's apron tied around his neck, he would go down on all fours in the center of the highway leading through town and paw like a bull at the traffic coming down the hill from the west.

Might take three days for him to spend his money and be docile enough to be hauled back to his camp. Just before leaving, the barber would shave the different growths of whiskers and I'd finish shining his boots. He'd give me a dime tip and the barber whatever was left from his spree.

The amount of the trapper's leftover whisky determined the length of the next act. Business fell way off on the mornings we opened and found the barber asleep in his chair. Barbershop shaves were popular, but the popularity didn't extend to being shaved by a shaky hand holding a straight razor in the throes of a hangover.

Our mothers never had the vaguest idea of the goings-on at the shop. Ladies weren't allowed in men's haunts. In fact, part of our job was to answer cars honking out front to tell the wives how long their husbands were going to be getting a haircut.

Dave was the first to quit to go to day working. Soon after, I began to take a lot more time cleaning the polish from underneath my fingernails than shining shoes. The girl in the café down the block started walking different passing by the shop. Had more of a swing to her gait. She also smelled different, leaning over the counter to fill my tea glass. Music on the nickelodian began to cut into my profits. More and more, I developed a lot of different business at the café.

Every time the barber stepped out, I used a squirt of Lucky Tiger tonic to smooth down my cowlick. I didn't miss Dave as much as I thought I would. And then the Saturday came when I had to ask the barber to leave early to go to a dance. The café girl's name is lost to mind, but the soft touch of the first date's hand ended this shine boy's career as it has, I suspect, many a man ...

October 12, 2000