I've been needing a haircut because my barber died.

It was so convenient before. We lived together. But since April 1, I’ve worn her wedding band in her memory. And I put off getting a haircut.

I didn’t want to let go of this thing we did together that gave us years of laughs and warm moments. I was so happy with my barber. Each time, I’d put a twenty-dollar bill in a teapot.

I’d say, “Baby, that’s your mad money. Next vacation, you gotta spend that.” She’d giggle. Then she left me, quite unexpectedly, at just 60. I’ve been in shock, and I haven’t cared how I look.

But after four months of shaggy, I decided it was time. I realized even she would be saying, “B, you need a trim.”

Yes, and I needed a new barber. Happily, I found one. And I think my sweet lady would approve because he’s just two blocks away, so I'm supporting our neighborhood.

We're in the Jefferson-Chalmers part of Detroit’s east side, where we’ve tried to help nudge our area's come-back. Really, it’s her neighborhood. It’s where Eren grew up, in a small house not far from us, one still occupied by her “moma” — that’s how she spelled it. I adopted the area when we started dating in 2012, and then we married in 2015.

We always tried to spend some time and dollars nearby, at the hardware store, at the gas station, at the new restaurant. Yet, although there was a barbershop three blocks from our house, I never went there. Right at home, I had my forever barber.

But we were curious. Whenever Eren and I drove past, which was often, we’d look over at Johnson & Co. Salon, and we’d remark about something.

“Oh, good crowd in there" or "Hey, they’re still open and it's Sunday night.” The place was thriving. We were glad.

Through big windows facing East Jefferson, we could see that it was a black barbershop, just down the block from Moe’s Bait Shop and a dive bar. Now, I’d love to tell her: It’s my new place for haircuts. I’d tell her because, on a recent Saturday, I integrated the place.

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Just like she did with church services and restaurants that I took her to in northern Michigan, where she was the only African American, although with us that was never the point. The point was that race didn’t matter. So I’d tell her: I found a new barber, at the shop we always drove past, and the folks who work there are from our neighborhood. She’d like all that.

I’d tell her I got a warm welcome from everybody, starting with my new barber, Terrez Taylor.

“It’s a family business, you know?” Taylor told me, right off. “And we all live in the neighborhood, on Manistique and Marlborough and Newport,” he said. I told him we live on Marlborough too. Or, I should say, I live there. Alone now.

“You do?” he said with a big smile, nodding.

He went on: “We always said we wanted a family business, so we’ve got one and we’re real happy about that. We never argue, you know? It’s been real good for everybody.“

But would it be good for me? Looking around at the shop, I saw only African Americans — barbers and customers and artistically shorn heads on posters. I thought of the countless haircuts I’d gotten in my life, in suburban Detroit and downtown Detroit’s Penobscot Building, in northern Michigan, in New England at college, on trips abroad. Always, everybody was white.

Strands of segregation

It’s easy to argue that segregation remains alive and well. Across the nation and metro Detroit, most residential areas are still “largely white” or “predominantly black,” as the sociologists say. Schools are much the same, although that’s starting to change.

Then again, when most Americans think of institutional segregation — in work sites, in shopping and dining, in transportation and government — we think it’s mostly bygone. Not so at our barbershops. I have to wonder: Are barbershops the last bastion of legal, voluntary segregation for Americans, outside of our churches? There are white ones and black ones.

Of course, there are exceptions, plenty of spots where whites trim blacks and black barbers style whites’ hair. And plenty of sites where blacks worship side-by-side with whites. Eren and I went to such a church.

Yet, examples abound of the two institutions — churches as well as barbershops — clinging to this voluntary form of segregation in which black and white “stick with their own kind.”

The history of the black barbershop is one of quirky segregation, said Quincy Mills, author of the 2016 book “Cutting Along the Color Line.” His book chronicles the evolution of black barbershops from 1830 to 1970. It’s widely known that the black barbershop played a special role in black history, said Mills, a professor of history at the University of Maryland-College Park.

"It has long been an important place of black entrepreneurship and also a public space where black men during Jim Crow were not under surveillance," he said.

The black barbershop has evolved radically in who it serves, he said, "moving from shops primarily serving white men in the 19th Century to black men in the 20th." So, will black barbershops ultimately become integrated, if the nation’s black neighborhoods continue to, well, gentrify.

Nope, declared Mills.

“I don’t think gentrification of our cities is going to result in gentrifying the black barbershops. I think most of them are going to remain predominantly black, but they’ve always welcomed anyone to enter,” he said.

Gotta say, I felt welcome at Johnson & Co. although out of place in my first haircut after my wife’s death. Of course, with her loss on my mind this spring and summer, I’d felt out of place many a time.

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As I waited my turn, I recalled the one other black barbershop in Detroit that I’d been to, just to peek inside. It’s one that whites frequent, although none gets a haircut there.

It’s the shop recreated from the 1930s and ‘40s inside Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History. Visitors encounter it as part of the museum’s walkable depiction of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, areas of Detroit where blacks once lived and owned businesses until they were evicted by what author James Baldwin called “Negro removal” — better known as urban renewal — and the construction of I-375.

The museum’s recreation even has an audio track, museum educator Douglas McCray notes.

“There’s banter going on, talk about Joe Louis the fighter,” McCray said.

“Back then, some men who didn’t need a haircut would still show up to play checkers and sit around and talk. It was a necessary place because if they congregated on the sidewalk, they could get picked up by the police for vagrancy,” he said.

So, the black barbershop became “that safe haven” for black men, and it still has the feeling of a refuge, McCray said.

What of the practical differences? All men may be created equal, but white hair is not the same as African-American hair, my wife used to point out. White barbers presumably get very good at cutting white guys’ hair but, I wondered, how many of them would be flummoxed if a black guy walked in asking for a “twisted curl with a blow-out fade”?

Conversely, black barbers I assumed were adept at cutting black guys’ hair but, maybe where I was headed, they wouldn’t be familiar with my hair texture.

Turns out, I was wrong. Barbers in Michigan must be licensed. To get a license, each must attain 60 hours of classroom study plus 1,000 hours of “practical experience in hair cutting and hair styling,” according to state regulation. That adds up to cutting “a variety of hair types during their studies,” said a spokesman for the state agency in Lansing that oversees barber colleges.

So, every barber in Michigan gets at least a few hours of schooling in shearing all kinds of hair.

Finding a new normal, and barber

Back to Johnson & Co. Salon on Detroit’s lower east side. I’m relaxing with the calm snip-snip of Terrez's shears. I take in the freshly painted walls, white on two sides, and on the two other sides a deep red — my wife’s favorite color. Beat-up tile on the floor. Smooth R&B on the radio.

On one wall is a poster, showing 30 ways to go with haircut styles, on the heads of 30 male models, all of them black. Terrez assures me he can cut my hair.

“Oh, yeah. Not gonna be a problem,” he said, with a very confident smile. Confidence is good, I’m thinking, because he’s got a tough act to follow.

My late wife always cut my hair, going back to when we were dating. It was my idea and she ran with it. After all, she was a cop, with a wall upstairs of framed citations. Not much flustered Eren.

She'd charge right in, brandishing my electric clippers like a Glock, and I'd be taken aback at how fast she went at it. Then, she'd switch to scissors and get very meticulous around my ears, and finally stand back, comparing one side with the other.

I always told her I was so grateful. I liked the privacy, the intimacy. And the convenience — free parking, no waiting. I’d tell her, as far as stray hairs here and there? Not to worry. We both enjoyed the time together. We had it down to a science until multiple sclerosis hit us.

As her MS worsened, and it did so very quickly, taking her neurologist by surprise, Eren got so she couldn’t stand without holding onto something. So, we’d put two bar chairs in our downstairs bathroom, back to back. There was just enough room to squeeze both of us in there.

Toward the end, which neither of us saw coming, her hands would shake. I’d hold my ears out of the way of the scissors. Snip-snip. Sometimes she’d gouge a spot and go, “Ooh!” as if it hurt her. I’d tell her: “Girl, don’t worry about it. Hey, you know the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut? About two weeks.”

Dumb joke. I’d laugh. She’d make this noise, “Mmmm!” that she did when she questioned something. I’d laugh some more. Afterward, I’d help her back to the couch, where she’d have a cooking show on TV, and I’d sweep up my hair. Then I’d sneak back to the mirror for some touch-ups with the scissors, evening up the sides. Everything seemed fine, despite her illness.

But the intervals between haircuts grew longer, and so did my hair. The job was getting hard for us. She’d say, “I like your hair long,” running her fingers through as we watched “Chopped” or the series on African-American history that’s been on public TV.

I’d say, “Girl, I gotta have it shorter,” because longer hair takes too long to dry after a shower. I’d say, “I’m the opposite of Samson. I’m stronger when my hair is short!” She’d give me her skeptic’s smile and say, "Mmmm. That doesn’t sound right.”

In early spring, I was overdue for at least a trim when she went away, forever. For quite a while afterward, I was only vaguely aware that I needed a haircut. Only vaguely aware of anything.

Then I got some therapy. At a government meeting in Pontiac one day, I got talking to Oakland County Commissioner Helaine Zack, a social worker who lives in Huntington Woods. Somehow, she knew about Eren. She told me, “One of these days, you’ll get through this. You’ll get to a new normal.”

Those words stuck. Not long after, I realized: My lady would want that for me; a new normal. That meant a new barber. Wouldn’t she be pleased if I found one right in our neighborhood?

She and I were sometimes aware of race. But the more we were together, the more it melted away. Together, we’d integrated a slew of situations and stopped paying much attention — a jazz club and birthday parties in Detroit where we later realized I was the only white, church services in Petoskey where she was the only black. We’d quit mentioning it. So I hardly noticed as it melted away again after a few minutes in the chair at Johnson & Co.

“So, what’re you thinking?” Terrez asked, as I settled into his chair. I was thinking about her, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said: “Not real close on the sides. Keep it a little full.”

With that, Terrez got to work. He did so with what felt like great patience and deliberation, as he tried to make an aging guy with thinning hair look his best. Minutes ticked by. I got very comfortable. I heard a voice.

“You want me to trim your beard?” Well, sure.

More minutes, more snip-snip, more relaxing. I was almost disappointed when Terrez finally said, “OK, that should do it.” My reverie ended.

But after he lifted the cape from my shoulders and brushed me off very thoroughly, I looked in the big mirror on the wall and realized — I’d been in the hands of a pro.

“How’s that? You OK?” Terrez said, punctuated with his ever-present smile.

"Oh, yeah. That's gonna work," I said. And meant it. I said I’d be back. Paid him, plus a tip.

When I got home, I stood in the quiet of our living room, with her pictures all around, looking in her gold-framed mirror over the sofa. And I thought: She would’ve been pleased.

Pleased at how I looked, and pleased that my new barber is right in our neighborhood. Still convenient, with free parking too — a good start toward my new normal.

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