Barber snips off a little too much

By Tracy Farr
Editor, The Daily Spittoon

Every Thursday morning Tommy Holinger slips into Fred's Barbershop for a quick shave and trim, but this past Thursday he got more snipped off than he bargained for. 

"I've been coming to Fred's ever since I was a little squirt," Holinger said.  "I remember sitting on that booster seat and Fred giving me the once over with his clippers.  Sometimes the hair would get in my eyes, but for the most part he did a good job of keeping it off my face."

Fred Neeley is practically an institution in Stinky Creek.  His barber shop opened in 1940 and has been in the same location for 67 years.

"I started barbering when I was 18," Neeley said.  "I'm 85 now and nothing like this has ever happened to me before.  I am so deeply embarrassed."

Holinger came into the barbershop like usual, was getting his hair trimmed like usual, when he suddenly felt an excruciating pain on the side of his head.

"I was listening to some other fellows talking about hunting and at the same time was keeping the other ear attuned to a rerun of Gunsmoke on Fred's black and white TV," Holinger recalled.  "All of a sudden I felt like I'd been slapped on the side of the head with a sledge hammer,"

Holinger jumped out of the chair screaming in pain, holding his hand to the right side of his head, and watched as blood splattered all over the linoleum.  Lying on the floor, right in the middle of a mound of freshly cut hair, was Holinger's right earlobe.

"It was all my fault," Fred said.  "I was paying too much attention to that dang TV and it just happened.  I thought I was trimming hair and SNIP, off went his ear."

While Fred and the other customers were taking care of Holinger, quick-thinking Dwayne Teller picked up the earlobe and plopped it into his Extra-Large Cola Icee cup that he'd been sipping on.

"The first thing I thought of was keeping it cool until we could get him to the hospital so it could be re-attached," Teller said. "The loss of an icee is a small price to pay for helping someone in need."

Holinger was rushed to Crappie County Regional Hospital where doctor's successfully re-attached his earlobe.

"I feel no ill-will to Fred about this," Holinger said from his hospital bed. "Things like this happen every day.  In fact, this will probably bring in the younger crowd to his barber shop.  He just might have a bright future ahead in the barber and body-piercing business."

And will Holinger ever return to Fred's Barbershop himself?

"Well, of course I will -- in time," he said. "But for now, I'm going to let my hair grow out a bit and see how I like it."