As much as we all joke about how we can forget about why we walk into a room, WHILE we are walking IN to the room, we all have the ability to remember things, sometimes from years ago.
I am currently digitizing old cassettes that I made beginning from when I got my first cassette recorder...must be almost 50 years ago...I have also been transferring old video tapes...AND, if you've known me, or followed what I have done through the years, you know that old photographs are a treasure to me.
And it is these elements that can help trigger those deeply-buried memories. I have two photographs attached to this story. Both relate similar situations...one was taken just BEFORE I got my first haircut, and the other was taken a year ago, AFTER I got another cut. The gentleman who gave me both of those haircuts was my Uncle, James Hattan Mifflin.
Uncle Jim began cutting hair when he was 15 years old. He gave his last haircut, last month...71 years later...
I was due to see him, for another, about this time. I had gotten into the tradition of visiting him at least once a year up at his home in Carnarvon, north of Highways 118 and 35 (now known as Algonquin Highlands, Ontario.)
Uncle Jim, whom I was named after, passed away on Tuesday, he was 86.
He was around for a lot of firsts in my life. He gave me my first haircut. He gave me my first job (I worked as a pump jockey) at his gas station/marina on Highway 35 at Boshkung Lake...way back when gas prices were a horrendous 26c/litre (and that was expensive!). On my many visits, he would also send me off with boxes of his preserves that he was ALWAYS working on.
He began cutting hair in Belleville, then Whitby, Ontario where the 'eastern Ontario' Mifflins had congregated. Around the mid 1970s, he moved his family to a fledgling community north of Minden, Ontario, where he purchased a Shell fuel station/marina/general store...you know the place... He took it one step further when he carved out a corner of the store for his barber shop. He operated that location for about 15 years before retiring and building a homeon a dirt road, just up the highway. It was one of those situations where the municipality gave him the opportunity of naming the road that he lived on...being the first one there - and Mifflin Road (see my profile banner) was born.
Jim and his wife Millie lived there for over 30 years. Jim continued to cut hair, for either $7/head or whatever you could donate to the local wildlife fund...which he ran. He had bird feeders, squirrel feeders, salt licks, and a trough where deer could come by and assuage their thirst, or get a quick snack. It was like walking into my own private safari park, any time I visited. His profile pic on Facebook is a close-up of one of the deer who visited.
If you had your hair cut at a local barber anywhere within a 50km radius of Minden - chances are it was Jim who gave you that cut. You just had to head up to Mifflin Road, and look for the car that that the 'Mifflin' license plate.
Today, I salute him, and all that he did for me and everyone that he ever encountered. You would have never met a more kind and giving person.
Stay safe everyone
