Cracked Window

A photograph would convey more than words, but I don’t have one of a barista at Peet’s Coffee at Northeast Broadway and 15^th. You can’t miss him: the young guy with a modified mohawk, traditionally cut on top but with checkerboard-patterned sides and back. By Portland standards, the haircut barely rates a second glance. But the doo is striking in its geometric precision and attention to detail.

I asked him who cut it. His brother, he said, first drawing a carefully measured grid and then following the lines.

The barista had no idea that as I looked at his haircut I was transported back to 1963. Beatlemania was sweeping the nation, and boys were going for that mop-top look, which seems preppy and conservative today. My hair was getting close. Then my father ordered me to the barbershop.

I’d have trouble persuading the twenty-something barista how much controversy Beatle cuts stirred all those decades ago, and how many parents were driven to irrational -– and ultimately futile — acts to preserve decorum and order.