RICHARD LUTZ on how his  beard  cost a night in a cowboy jailhouse

Probably if you are like 99% of this site’s readers, you are looking at the picture above and noticing only one thing: this guy has a big  beard. Who is it? Why is he famous? What were his values or his accomplishments?

Forget it. Who cares?

The guy has a long long beard.

Beards on men make them beardy-guys…and that’s about it.  And this week in the UK  newspapers, in the dead days of August, journalists  are merrily  filling the pages (thankfully for irascible editors) with news (?) that rottweiller political tv interviewer Jeremy Paxman has not shaved off his holiday growth. He cross examines ministers, Mid East experts, arms dealers and dubious financiers with his hairy chin. He said he has no idea when he will become clean shaven.

Let’s get it straight. Men grow beards because  they are lazy. Women and kids just don’t understand this. It is far far easier not to shave in the AM than to stand crumbled and crumbly in front of a  blurry mirror. Far easier to let it grow.

I have been in and out of Beard-dom for decades.  My first one (through absolute laziness) happened in my early twenties. I think it saved my life.

I was driving through the wastes of southern Wyoming near the Rockies. I crashed the car (another story). The local  sheriff kindly offered me a lift into the town of Douglas and said I’d have to spend a night behind bars.,

What, I asked, for smashing up my car?  No, he answered patiently, pointing to a wall calender, because  it’s Friday night and the boys around here don’t like fellers with beards and like to give haircuts, he explained. I took up the offer he took my belt and shoelaces.

The next day my brother showed up  to get me and my crumbled car and take me home. The sheriff saw me to the jailhouse door, waved goodbye  and smiled quietly.

Now, I don’t know if Paxman had a jailhouse moment during his holidays or whether he is plumb lazy. But beards and the male are inextricably bound. Every man has either tried a beard or thought about it. Or, more to the point, not thought about shaving.

For me, happily beardless now except for a holiday lapse or two, I shave.

Or, more specifically in a moment of pleasure, I go to a Pakistani or Turkish barber  to get a professional lather up and clean face with a cutthroat razor.

But the beard gene is still deep inside me, welling up ready to spring into life. It’s the inner beard in me. In all men.

PS: The guy in the picture? Well, I’m just not telling.