Every man in a small town in Oklahoma has one crooked sideburn. The left one. On purpose. Let me explain. My wife's uncle Kenichi is a barber. In 1989, in Osaka, he cut the hair of an American woman who was teaching English there. He did it badly. She came back four times to complain. They got married in 1990. She took him home to her town in Oklahoma. Population: about 4,000. He opened a barbershop on Main Street. Within a month, the whole town was calling him Kenny. Here is what Oklahoma did not know about Japanese barbers. In Japan, a man's haircut takes an hour. The cut. The shampoo. A hot towel. A shave. Your face, your forehead, and your ears. Yes, the ears. Then a shoulder massage. Then a small bow. Kenny's first customer was a cattleman named Dub. He asked for "just a trim." Fifty-eight minutes later, Dub sat up, touched his own ear, and said: "Son. Nobody has ever touched my ears. Not even my wife." He tipped twenty dollars and drove straight to the feed store to tell everybody. By Friday, men were driving in from Tulsa for the ears. Thirty-five years later, here is what Kenny says Oklahoma taught him about running a barbershop. The TV stays on the Weather Channel. Nobody watches it. Everybody needs it on. The three chairs by the window are not for customers. They are for men who are not getting a haircut. One of them has been not getting a haircut since 1997. Never cut a boy's hair the week of homecoming without written permission from his mother. Never say a word about the Sooners in front of a Cowboys man. Or the other way around. If you're not sure who you're cutting, talk about the weather. It's on. When a little boy gets his first haircut, save a lock of it in an envelope for his mother. Kenny has filled over a thousand envelopes. Some of those boys are grandfathers now. Then, four years ago, Kenny's hands started to shake. Parkinson's. He was seventy. The haircuts started coming out wrong. Mostly the left sideburn. Crooked, every time. Kenny did what a Japanese man does. He taped a sign in the window. "I am very sorry. My hands are not good anymore. I will close at the end of the month. Thank you for 31 years." Nobody let him close. That Saturday, there was a line out the door. Dub was first. He sat down and said, "Ears, too." Kenny's wife stood behind him and held his wrist for the ears. She still does. The left sideburn came out crooked. Dub looked in the mirror for a long time. "Perfect," he said. It kept happening. The pastor. The bank manager. The sheriff. Every one of them walked out with one crooked sideburn. Not one of them fixed it. Last fall, a young guy from the city opened a fancy barbershop out on the highway. He offered a free "cleanup" to anybody from Kenny's shop. Nobody went. A teenager at the gas station explained it to him. "Nah, man. That's a Kenny." Homecoming week, the high school football team came in. All 44 boys. With 44 signed permission slips from 44 mothers. In the team photo, every single boy has one crooked sideburn. The left one. In Japan, a crooked haircut is a mistake. In that town, it's a membership card. Kenny is 74. He still cuts hair three days a week. His wife still holds his wrist for the ears. Dub is 88. He says the ears are still perfect. He would know. Nobody else has ever touched them.