by Harold McMillan

'Almost cut my hair
it's getting kinda long.
-- CSNY

I cannot remember if I had any kind of plan when I started my locks, my dreads. It's been so long ago that I don't even remember exactly when I started them. For the past couple of years, when people ask how long I've been growing my locks, it seems my automatic answer has been "about ten years." But it's been about 10 years for the last few years. I do have some chronological milestones I can point to, but as hard as I try I cannot remember a significant, official start date, month, year.

Up until recently, it's never been really important to me that I pinpoint the birthday for my locks. If I really wanted to figure out the precise years or month or holiday season I suppose I could just ask my mother. She'd know. The thing that I do remember is my mother's first comment. It was something like, "Good Lord, Harold! What do you think you're doing with your hair"?

I remember offering to run an errand for her on that particular trip home to beautiful Emory, Texas. I think I was gonna jump in her car and go to the store for milk, bread, and eggs or something. Before I got out of the house she suggested -- no demanded -- I wear my cap (crown, hat, tam). I did. Just for her.

I don't think she wanted neighbors, friends, and relatives to see my pointing-straight-up-in-the-sky baby dreads. What would they think? Like I said, nailing down the start date of my lock growing is generally not something I spend time thinking about. But now I really am trying to give my grandfather locks an age. I've been almost cutting my hair for years now. I now want to know how long it's been, because this time I'm gonna do it.

Gasp! Harold McMillan is finally ready to cut his hair!

Imagine this. You're in line at the Wendy's, waiting to order a chocolate Frosty. You feel, first, a nonspecific sensation somewhere around your heard and shoulders. Disregard it. Then there is that uninvited warmth you feel when someone invades your "personal space," but doesn't actually touch you. You're in line at Wendy's, that's normal, maybe, so you don't have to look around and tell them to back off. Dammitt, next thing you know, the over-friendly high school cheerleader, with the long straight hair, from Alpine, Texas, has your dreads between her fingers and is twirling and twisting -- then she speaks: "Excuse me sir, but I ain't never seent hair lak iss up close and I jes had to tetch it. I hope you don't mind. Do y'all worsh hair lak att?"

I tell her no. I do not wash it with water, at least. We Rastas work at mixture of ganja-herb-juice, mashed sacred avocado and healing Blue Mountain coffee paste into our dreads every night. We then smoke a big fatty and mediate while listing to Bob. Keeps us connected to I and Eye and Jah, Rastafari.

The cheerleader from Alpine removes her fingers from my hair and minds her own damn business. Works every time, I swear.

The thing about having dreads, now in 2002, is that a lot of folks have them. Used to be kind of novel here in Austin. A few locked-up heads have pretty much always been here. Folks from The Islands, Africa, South America, reggae musicians, and a hand full of real Rastas have called Austin home for years. Then there are those of us who are Black folks from Texas or Arkansas who are decidedly not -- not trying to portray ourselves to be -- Rastafarians.

Specific and personal motivations for growing dreadlocks vary, of course. At some level, if it is nothing else, having a head full of kinky, uncombed, twisted hair tendrils cascading from ones scalp is indeed a fashion statement. If you ain't Rasta, face it; chances are pretty good that your dreads fall into the category of "fashion dreads."

"But what is the motivation for this particular fashion statement?", one might reasonably ask. Being the reasonable person I am, I assume the answer to that question to be as individual as the folks who sport the various versions of planks, clumps, sistah curls and twists, thin locks, mats, and dread-fades. It depends on the individual. In my experience as a dreadhead, though, I keep finding that many folks in the non-dread world assume a whole set of character and personality traits about me (us) simply because of my non-combed mop head.

I am walking down the sidewalk on the Drag, headed to Metro for my late afternoon injection of strong java and youth culture. In front of the Baptist church there are five new arrivals for the "My folks live in a big house in North Dallas, but I live on the streets in Austin to be cool" Club. Youth #2, a mohawked, skinny boy with multiple piercing and tattoos, who wears a black t-shirt with the image of Bob's head floating in a cloud of smoke, fatty at his lips, and text that reads "Legalize Freedom," see me coming. He stands up, as if to offer a handshake and hug to an old friend. Youth #2 makes eye contact with me, offers his hand and says, "whatsup, my brethren? Care to share some of your bud wid I and I. It's cool."

To this kid my long, graying locks are the same things as me having a sign on my forehead that reads, "I've got good pot and I live to smoke it on the street with you." Sometimes I do think, if I were a serious, smoke-all-day, everyday pothead, I'd probably have a lot less gray hair right now. But I'm not. That ain't me.

Years ago I had a six-inch tall Afro. Then I had cornrows. Then I had long braids (that started in my cornrows), three of them, running down my back. Then came the stop-combing-your-hair-and-dreads-will-follow period. The rest is history. My longest, oldest locks now reach all the way to the small of my back, to my waistline.

Through all of those changes, at first it always seemed that I was doing something to be different from the norm, trying to be other than that that was expected for the mainstream. And, at the base of all of those changes of fashion, there was always this thing of trying to hook into an esthetic that was somehow not based in what Middle America deemed appropriate for a young Black man. I grew dreads because, at the time, it seemed like an expression that was reserved for Black folks (or kinky-haired anybody) only, Black folks who were very intentionally not headed to the whitewashed cultural wasteland of corporate Middle America. I allowed my hair to lock-up because most of the folks around me would not or could not do it, even if they tried. And when the inevitable questions of why would I do this to my hair came to me, it was an opportunity to answer in such a way that advanced a cultural/political agenda. There really was a reason for growing dreads that had absolutely nothing to do with being part of a fashion trend. It was about partaking in an esthetic that was very specifically Black, global, Pan African. Now anyone who has $200 and three or four hours to sit at the barbershop can have their very own fashion dreads.

So, you might ask, am I talking about cutting my hair for some cultural/political reason? Am I pissed that Youth #2 assumes I am a pothead or that the cheerleader from Alpine wants to touch my hair? No. I love my dread locks still. They're just too long and hence take too long to dry.

I'm cutting the length of my hair (yet keeping my dreads) for a very important reason: My mother wants me to. And after all that she has done for me, it's really a very, very small thing to do just for her. Happy Mother's day, mom.