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Area teen given straight haircut despite howls
of protest
By BILL WHITAKER
The new haircuts being demanded at the Ben Richey Boys Ranch
are catching.
Kerry Fortune, the ranch's executive director, recently began
encouraging a more clean-cut look among his young charges. In
fact, he went so far as to insist on it the very next time house
parents took their boys to get haircuts.
"That's a good thing," ranch public relations director
Saundra Carriker said. "Some of their hairstyles were getting
a little wild."
So when house parent Jim Baxter took four high school-aged
boys to Hair Lines, 3436 N. 1st, he told staffers there to give
the lads "regular, good-looking boy haircuts," and that
they should not be dissuaded by the boys' appeals to the contrary,
however impassioned.
I imagine those impassioned appeals must've been considerable,
too.
Later, after the deed had been done and hair littered the floor,
it was reported that all of Jim's young charges were ready for
inspection. But Jim noticed there were now five boys, not four.
"Well," a Hair Lines staffer asked, "this boy
is yours, isn't he?"
Well, no, he wasn't.
Apparently, hairstylist Jennifer Dawn Sherry at Hair Lines
wound up giving a very basic haircut to a high schooler who wasn't
part of the Ben Richey Boys Ranch bunch but had simply happened
by for a so-called "wedge cut."
In fact, several times the youth, Jason Ferguson, protested
he wanted a wedge cut - and several times Jennifer said no.
Last weekend, while house parent Josh Richardson and another
group of ranch boys were at Hair Lines for equally "regular"
haircuts, they learned from the hair-cutting staff what had become
of the extra boy.
Seems the lad's mother, Pam Ferguson, called Hair Lines when
she saw how her son looked. "I don't know how you did it,"
she said, "but I want to thank you for his haircut. I'm so
proud!"
"And we thought she was going to be mad," Hair Lines
barber Rosa Delarosa said later.
Looks like Kerry Fortune's notion of how boys should look in
West Texas is already spreading beyond the ranch.
ART THOU HOME?
Judging from comments from both organizers and spectators,
last weekend's Celebrate Abilene! is itself worth celebrating.
For the record, many of the artists felt the same, especially
Austin artist Daryl Howard.
During her first visit to Abilene, the energetic artist wowed
locals enough that they invited her to do a proper exhibit at
Museums of Abilene come 1998.
If that wasn't enough, she wound up being invited to perform
a "house call" by yet another local art-lover enchanted
with her colorful woodblock prints, embossings and collages.
"It was kind of unusual, but I was happy to do it,"
Daryl said during the festival. "They asked if I could come
over to the house this morning, just to see how my art looked
in the place. They bought several things, too.
"It was kinda like art delivered to your door," she
said.
THE COMPLETE MAN
At first I figured the bumper sticker I saw on the back of
a pickup truck at North 1st and Willis the other day was biblically
oriented, but then I took a closer look.
It read: "No man is complete until he's married. Then
he's finished."
Bill Whitaker, who is finished if the above saying is true,
can be reached at 670-5293, ext. 325. E-mail him at whithous@abilene.com.
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Copyright ©1996 or
1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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