GULF SHORES – It’s hard to believe, sometimes, what a fellow has to do to get a free haircut.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Haddox “Sunny” Autrey said. “But I’m getting a free …
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GULF SHORES – It’s hard to believe, sometimes, what a fellow has to do to get a free haircut.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Haddox “Sunny” Autrey said. “But I’m getting a free haircut.”
On Thursday Autrey, born on July 28 1916, walked into Wayne’s Barbershop on East 23rd Avenue in Gulf Shores, a place he’d been to many times during the past 20 years or more.
But on Thursday there was just a little bit more fanfare. Gulf Shores Spokesman Grant Brown was on hand to declare Haddox Autrey Day in the city, there were birthday balloons and cake and ice cream.
“Get up here in this chair and I’m gonna start this 100th year birthday,” owner Wayne Johnson told Autrey.
The day was the culmination of a running joke between the two friends that started 20 years ago on Autrey’s 80th birthday.
“I told him he could get free haircuts at 100,” Wayne said. “I’ve been telling him that for 20 years. He said ‘What if you don’t make it?’ I said I’ll make it if you make it.”
Autrey had his doubts as recently as two weeks ago after taking a tumble.
“I had a collision in the house there,” he said. “My ol’ big feet, I tripped over ‘em and chest of drawers did a number on me and broke my neck.
“I guarantee one thing, I’m gonna slow down a little.”
He’s not a big fan of the neck brace he has to wear for two months.
“That thing’s terrible,” Autrey said.
But on the big day he was smiling and chipper and discarded the brace for his haircut, pictures and some birthday sweets.
“How many people get their neck broke and up walking around in two weeks?” Wayne asked, smiling at his friend. “You still got that video on your phone of him dancing? They tried to put him in a nursing home but he said he wasn’t going to no nursing home to rot, he was going home.”
His neighbors are glad. They sometimes gather in his yard in the evening to hear him make music.
“You know he still plays a harp, a harmonica,” Wayne said. “That takes some air and he can play it, too.”
On the last night of his 100th year on earth, those neighbors came by to be serenaded.
“I was sitting on the banister out there just playing away,” Autrey said. “I let the neighborhood hear it. There were standing around outside there listening to it. I played a lot last night.
“The neighbors, they don’t fuss about it. They enjoyed it, I think. They were real nice.”
Autrey said he started his day on a melancholy note, thinking of his past morning routine.
“I woke up this morning with momma on my mind,” he said. “You know I was married for 70 years. To the same woman. First thing I did was get up make coffee and bring it to the bed. I did that for 50 years.
“I was a little lonesome.”
Then his thoughts turned to the day’s celebration.
“I knew he was going to have something going,” he said pointed to Wayne. “I was looking forward to coming here today.”
Autrey reminisced about past times, how he was one of 12 siblings, struggling through the hard depression, riding a reluctant mule to school and his failed attempts at barbering when he was 7 or 8 years old.
“He rubbed out of the bridle while I was at school and he stayed just ahead of me all the way home,” he said of the mule. “After that my transportation was hoofing it.”
He’s the patriarch to five generations of family including his four children, 8-10 grandkids and too many great and great-great grandkids to count. His son Larry, 74, has great grandkids. Other children include Ken Autrey, Linda Garris and another son who passed away.
Autrey himself grew up in the Great Depression, but that doesn’t mean he was depressed.
“We really had hard times growing up, but everybody was happy,” he said before digging into a piece of cake.
Wayne set aside the clippers and said “All right, anybody got anything they want to do with him, I’m through with him.”
A proclamation was read and ice cream and cake passed around.
Somebody asked if it was all right for Autrey to have ice cream.
“He’s 100 years old,” said granddaughter-in-law Tommie Autrey. “He can have anything he wants.”
