Everly Lamar Golf doesn’t sound like an appropriate name for a World War I veteran. After serving our country why would Everly Lamar want to return to the doldrums of being a barber in Nokesville? To the milk farmers, accustomed to first names like George, Fred, Mike, the handle “Everly Lamar” seemed like an appropriate name for a woman or a doll. So, the name was caste upon him (over silent objections) was “Doll.” The name stuck, so everyone called him Doll.
Perhaps the annoyance of being referred to as a “doll” caused the pitch of his voice to increase so that it was unusually high when he became irritated. This occurred frequently because everyone knew he would react with this shrill voice upon certain stimulants, such as finding a piece of fake dog poop under his wood stove in his tiny barber shop across from the failing Moline Tractor dealership and near the Southern States co-op.
Another thing that irked Doll was an unflattering reference to one of his favorite baseball players from a neighboring team that would occasionally oppose the Nokesville Bluebirds. The player’s name was Chick Ball and, for the young fellas in the barber shop like me, we would always refer to Chick as “chicken balls,” whereupon Doll would say in his high-pitched voice, “My God, boys, it’s Chick Ball! Not chicken balls!”
Everyone knew that the reaction to the fake dog poop and “Chick Ball” would often engender a shrill and sharp rebuttal from Doll Golf. Another thing that particularly bothered him was when young fellows like me forgot to pay before leaving the store. So, one day as I was walking home after getting a haircut, I heard a high-pitched voice saying, “My God, boy, you forgot to pay me!” Whereupon I retrieved the $.25 from my pocket that my mother had given me and deposited into his hand. Only Doll could make such a scene over a 25-cent error.
Surprisingly for the 1950s, there was one fella who came to town every Saturday on a buckboard wagon pulled by a horse. This was interesting because, by then, most people were driving automobiles, but not this weekly patron who would appear with his scraggly beard—and horse—to get his weekly shave. The horse got no attention from the children or the adults.
The maximum coup d’irritation for Doll occurred one Halloween round 1955. The members of the senior class—all young derelicts—decided they would gather as much junk as they could find and pile it on the roof of Doll Golf’s barber shop porch. Fortunately, the shop’s front porch had a shallow slope that was ideal for displaying the junk placed on it by these miscreant high school students. As luck would have it, the night that we placed the junk on Doll Golf’s roof was also the night of Nokesville’s first snowfall of the year.
Not being versed in clandestine-prank activities, we used our first names as we called out to each other while gleefully assembling the junk on Doll’s roof. We forgot that next door to the barber shop was a house that rented a room to one of the female teachers who, of course, knew the names of all the male members of the senior class, which consisted of approximately 10 to 12 boys.
To our great surprise, the next day at school, one of the sheriff’s deputies appeared in full uniform and asked if we wanted to “help” remove the junk off from Doll Golf’s porch roof. As if we had a choice, we said we would be glad (a lie) to help and then accompanied the deputy sheriff to the barber shop. We were irritated at Doll’s nerve to call the Sheriff regarding what we considered a Halloween prank. In those days, the Prince William County Sheriff had little to do except stop the vandals of Nokesville whose car mufflers were too loud and ruined the serenity of cosmopolitan Manassas. Of course, at that age, we thought we might even go to jail for putting junk on his roof; if we were caught, that is. Since it had snowed, we still had some fun completing the mandated task. We made every effort to kick snow down on Doll’s neck whereupon he roared, “My God, boys, stop that!”
Another reason we didn’t care about Doll or his sartorial talents was the 1950’s craze for “flat-top” haircuts. These strange haircuts were not around when Doll fought in WW I, and he refused to mess with them, so we all migrated to the big city of Manassas, with appropriate mufflers, for our crazed-hair uniformity needs.
We did not put any more junk on Doll’s roof the next Halloween for fear of banishment and a possible life in confinement as hardened criminals!