In a recent update to this blog, I mentioned the barber pole — when I was young essentially every barber shop had one. I learned at a very early age that the barber pole had more to do with the medical profession than the hair cutting business. The origin of the red and white barber pole is associated with the service of bloodletting — representing bloody bandages wrapped around a pole.
Barber-surgeons were medical practitioners that provided a wide range of services during the medieval and early modern periods of history. Traditionally, they learned their trade via apprenticeships and many had no formal education and were often illiterate. Barber-surgeons provided a variety of medical services for their communities — they also had relatively cheap prices, adding to their popularity.
So what could a barber-surgeon do for you? These guys tasks ranged from the mundane — like picking lice from a person’s head, trimming or shaving beards and cutting hair — to the more complicated — such as extracting teeth, performing minor surgical procedures and bloodletting.
The original barber’s pole has a brass ball at its top, representing the vessel in which leeches were kept, or the basin that received the patient’s blood. The pole itself represents the rod which the patient held tightly during the bloodletting procedure to show the barber the location of the veins. The red and white stripes represent the bloodied and clean bandages used during the procedure. Afterwards, the bandages were washed and hung to dry on the rod outside the shop. The wind would twist the bandages together, forming the familiar spiral pattern we see on the barber poles today.
Spinning barber poles are meant to rotate in a direction that makes the red (blood) appear as if it were flowing downwards, as it does in the body.
Call it progress, or whatever, barber poles have pretty much gone the way of the wooden Indian. They tend to be more decorative that useful/informative today. Well, that’s not quite totally true — in the best American tradition, barber poles have become political. In some states (Michigan is one example) legislators have proposed that barber poles should only be permitted outside barbershops, and not traditional “beauty salons.” There have been several legal battles between barbers and cosmetologists — each claiming the right to use the barber pole symbol to indicate to customer that their businesses offer hair cutting services. The barbers’ argument is that they are entitled to exclusive rights to use the barber pole because of the tradition tied to the craft. Cosmetologists argue that they are equally capable of cutting men’s hair. It’s interesting to note that some state laws prohibit cosmetologists from using razors….
But politics aside, the barber pole has found it’s way into our lives and culture. In some parts of Asia, the barber pole is used as a symbol for a brothel. In fact, in South Korea, barber poles are used for both (real) barbershops and brothels. (Brothels disguised as barber shops usually have two poles next to each other, usually spinning in opposite directions.)
Pilots, especially test pilots, use the term barber pole to refer to flying an aircraft at the maximum safe velocity — probably because the airspeed indicator of aircraft that can fly at higher altitudes looks like a red/white striped needle resembling a barber pole. Pilots have a phrase — “on the barber pole” means they are flying the aircraft as fast as safety permits given the current conditions.
When I was young, we got peppermint sticks that were long and round – bigger than a cigar. We often referred to those as barber pole candy.
Anyhow, barber pole or not, and whether you refer to the person as a barber or not, it’s someone you visit on a fairly regular basis. And, if you think about it, maybe that’s not so bad — a barber is the only person whose conversation you can follow, even if he talks over your head…..
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