Looking at this photo after a long period of not seeing it, I’m struck at how big Den’s eyeglasses are for him. Since he looks so boyish (he was just/already 30!] he looks like a boy trying on the elders’ eyeglasses and not caught yet, except by the camera.
I’m also struck at Den’s do-it-yourself hairdo. Definitely, he had cut his hair himself, since we hadn’t joined him yet–this picture was taken by auto-focus sometime during November 1967-January 1968. When we followed him in February 1968, he excitedly showed me the hair-cutting set he had bought. He probably thought I’d get excited, too, and learn to cut his hair. Unfortunately, I’m one person who dislikes cutting other people’s hair, for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s a desire not to be associated with Delilah, of Samson fame?
So, eventually Den began to cut his own hair, but one time, he accidentally lost the attachment (it fell off, or something) and the naked blades cut a clean swath through. Whereupon, Den decided to cut off all his hair, much in the style of young men nowadays. But back then, only inmates on death row sported such ‘do. So Den had to buy a ski cap to cover his shaved head. One time, our neighbor in the Devon-Strafford Apartments saw him without his ski cap and asked him, with a straight face, whether he was a Buddhist monk. I had to suppress a smile–a monk, with 3 kids, and another on the way! Shades of Heloise and Abelard, or those surreal movies by Ken Russell, starring Oliver Reed!
