Bastrop Bad Hair

I write this blog to talk about Bastrop, Texas and what's it is like to live here. Like everywhere, there's good and bad in Bastrop in lots of different ways. Some people think it's paradise and some think it's hell and the rest of us are somewhere in between. It's where we are, and it is what it is.

I call it Bastrop Bad Hair because there is lots of Bad Hair in Bastrop. My friend Ruby, a native Bastropian, once made me nearly choke to death over lunch when she used the term Bastrop Bad Hair the first time around me.

We were dining in the Deli Depot and some folks she knew walked in to get something to eat. Ruby observed, in her exaggerated southern belle-ish style that she often affects when being humorous that "Oh, that's so and so and her new man, what's his name. They've got the Bastrop Bad Hair."

As I spat out the food onto my plate because I was convulsing with sudden laughter, I finally became composed enough to ask "What the hell is Bastrop Bad Hair?"

Ruby responded that this term is how she and her friends, dating back to the days of junior high school, have been labeling their fellow Bastropians as either good haired or bad haired. Good hair doesn't mean that it's cutting edge style, it just means it's been washed that day and is in a reasonably well-maintained format in some semblence of order on a person's head.

To illustrate Ruby's term Bastrop Bad Hair, let me return to the folks who inspired the comment when they entered the restaurant. One of the women had hair sort of like Kate Gosslin, who currently has the "big lump o' hair in the rear of the head leading observers to wonder if she has some huge growth on the rear of her head causing this horrible look" hairstyle.

The wearer of the hairstyle is one of the "elite" of Bastrop, and she sported that particular hairstyle long before Kate did on her reality show. So I guess that counts for something, at least in the world of Bastrop Bad Hair.

The Kate look-alike was accompanied by a male suitor sporting a mullet. Now, sporting a mullet cut in this day and age is offensive enough to warrant exclusion from restaurants and other forms of social interaction, but this mullet was not only "stringy" due to old age and thinning hair, but it looked like it had not been washed in several days. Had Exxon or Chevron been present that day, immediate negotiations for oil drilling rights would have occurred for the chance to mine the heavy oil on MulletMan's unwashed hair.

It was not attractive.

I myself occasionally suffer from Bastrop Bad Hair, and when that occurs, you see me with a cap or cowboy hat on. Although as a general rule, I do not leave the house in the morning until the hair has been washed. It's just the way I was raised. If you've spent any time around Bastrop, you'd know what I mean. There's just a lot of folks with unfortunate coifs on their heads. Either they are not aware of the horrendous nature of the style and/or condition or they just don't care. Sometimes you can even tell.

Other places in this great nation have Bad Hair within their populace. I've seen it in Miami and I've seen it in San Francisco. North and South, East and West. But after spending many years here in Bastrop, I've come to the conclusion that we are undoubtedly in the top statistics as far as Bad Hair.

I haven't always lived in Bastrop. I lived in some other towns large and small across this Great State, and it's nice to be back in Bastrop. I have a lot of interesting friends in this place, some old and some new. With having a family and a job, I don't get to see many of them as much as I used to or as much as I'd like to.

Some of the folks I write about on this blog are real and some are composites of several people and some only exist in my own mind, but they are inspired by actual folks I know, or at least my bullshit opinion of them.

So that's me, and who are you?