A Barbershop Quartet...of photos.

While visiting Clayton, NC looking from my friend Sam Robertson, the WWII ball turret gunner, I decided to take a walk down Main Street.  I enjoy these opportunities to just meet and chat with people and more often than not, I am enriched by the experience.   I was telling my wife last night that sometimes in order to create these opportunities, the very first thing you have to do is to open the door.  It's becoming somewhat of my mantra these days.  Doors don't always open by themselves, sometimes you have to turn the handle yourself and push.  In fact, the best opportunities are usually those doors that you open yourself rather than waiting for someone else to open one for you.  I decided to open the door of Kirby's Precision Cuts right around the corner from Robertson's Mule Company.  Bill Kirby was trimming the beard of Darrick Muldrow and obviously I got the suspicious look one always gets when one enters an environment with a camera in hand.  Bill warmed up to me quickly though and told me he had been cutting hair there for 13 years...spending his entire life in Clayton.   After leaving and walking up the street, I came across another barber shop run by Donna Tyler.  She was cutting the hair of Corbin Deans on his first birthday...his very first haircut.  He slept through the first few trims then he opened his eyes and just couldn't stop staring at that strange photographer.   "KB" came in during this.  He had been hoping that Donna was around so he could get his hair and beard trimmed.  Talk soon turned to who was dating who...the typical chatter you might expect in such a place.  I left so they could go into more detail without a stranger around.  Another block found Glen's Barber and Style Shop, the largest space dedicated to the craft.  Inside Mark Felton was trimming Christopher Reynolds, while Marcus Agnew waited on a customer.  I felt a little guilty not getting a haircut at one of these places, but I wouldn't have any hair left nor money in my wallet had I allowed them all to trim my quickly becoming scarce topcoat.
None of these opportunities would have availed themselves to me though had I not turned the handle and opened the door.  I have a friend in public relations that told me her little secret is that she is very shy around people and couldn't do what I do.  She's wrong of course.  It's all about just opening the door.  What follows is an adventure.