It was late on a Friday afternoon and I was desperate. I was heading far north the following day and I needed a haircut. I needed a haircut immediately. You can get flogged in northern Maine if you arrive looking like a hippie.

My usual barber was booked for the day. Other businesses I sought in my desperation billed themselves as salons or stylists. I cringed at the thought of stinky hair sprays and weird gels globbed into my hair. I considered thrusting my head into a shredder to get the job done.

Then I saw it. Hanging from a storefront on Lisbon Street, a swirl of red, white and blue that always reminds me of drinking straws. A by-God barber pole beckoning and promising an old-school cut, without the girlie-smelling accessories. It was Frenchy’s, though to me it looked like Haircut Heaven.

Mock me all you’d like. I simply prefer the nostalgic smells of tonic and disinfectant to the disorienting aromas of the salons. I prefer to sit in an ancient barber chair in a room full of cronies when I’m getting a routine cut. None of that nightclub, bebop atmosphere of the stylist shops, with their techno music and ferns everywhere.

I found Frenchy’s and I found a manly place filled with manly people. There were niceties, but not a cloying excess of them. Frenchy asked: “Can I do for ya?” He didn’t wheel me to a sink and subject my head to a lot of avocado-based junk that reeks of a fruit basket. No sir.

I ordered up a flattop and that’s what Frenchy provided. The sound of the electric razor was like music. The snick, snick, snick of the scissors as he evened the top hearkened me back to the day when all men and boys went to such testosterone-rich places.

Typically, getting a haircut for me is like going to the dentist. I don’t like sitting in a chair while another person inflicts techniques upon me that I don’t understand. There was none of that at Frenchy’s.

The chitchat was just right. A few old-timers in the corner bitched about the Red Sox. Another man asked Frenchy what he had heard about some recent nastiness downtown. The language was rich and colorful, dialogue that lulls and captivates you like a well-told story. In between were thoughtful silences from men who don’t believe it’s necessary to fill each second with babble.

On the walls hung a few old records, a picture here and there, signs hanging slightly askew. No advertisements featuring painfully pretty models. No glossy posters with hair-swept men and women frolicking on exotic beaches few of us will ever visit.

Just the snick, snick, snick of scissors, the reassuring buzz of the razor and manly talk about manly things. This is how a haircut should be. And before you accuse me of being too particular about the snipping of my hair, let me stress that I’m not alone.

Most men yearn for a manly haircut. We just don’t go around spouting off about it. Because we are manly men who don’t like whining any more than we like avocados or anything that smells like them.

“We don’t go to these places to have our hair styled and to have mousse dragged through it,” said a hulking and grumpy cop I know. “We go to these old-time barber shops to be guys. It’s a bastion of testosterone. We’re there for haircuts, not perms or other fancy crap. We’re not there to talk about celebrity gossip. We want a haircut and we want a place where we can be men.”

Well said, my manly brother. You find an old-school cutter and you stick with him. As long as that barber pole is out there, you’re safe. There are a few such places around, but they’re fading fast. There are no barber schools anymore, or at least not many. It’s all about styling these days. It’s all about $35 haircuts and trendy looks that will cost even more to maintain.

Yep, fewer barbers all the time. But the demand for them is not diminished. I went asking around and there are more people like me than I realized. They talk about Smitty over in Auburn. They talk about Blais Barber Shop in Lewiston. And they talk about Frenchy’s and how the world was a better place with him in it.

So, Frenchy gave me that flattop and absolutely no nonsense at all. When he was done, he wheeled me toward the mirror and said: “That good?” It was. He didn’t try to sell me any weird ointments to maintain the wet look. I didn’t ask for any. I got the feeling someone might have punched me in the jaw if I had, and I would have expected no less.

Frenchy loosened the bib around my neck and gave it a professional shake. The haircut was over. He asked for five bucks.

“What?” I asked him. “Did you only cut half of it?”

Nope. Five bucks is what he charged and what he would always charge. Try getting a rate like that at that conditioner-reeking, hip-hop-playing, estrogen-heavy place you visit for a snip. Or better yet, wander around in search of a barber pole and step inside.

Ferdinand Langlois, better known as Frenchy, gave his last haircut last Thursday at the shop he’d run for 40 years. He died unexpectedly the next day.

But the spirit of his profession lives on.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his blog at www.sunjournal.com.

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