The movie-like story behind a 70-year-old electric shaver

Mrs. Brad and I drove to our hometown a few weeks ago to visit my dad. He's 90 and still going relatively strong: He still drives. He watches a lot of golf on TV. He has opinions on sports and politics and pop culture. He has a flip phone. He has a girlfriend.

As we were sitting on the couch in his apartment, Dad suddenly remembered something.

"Do you need a satchel?" he asked me. Quickly trying to remember what a satchel is (a briefcase!) I initially said no, then realized he wanted to give it to me. So of course I need one. I'm sure I could use it someday.

He brought it out, explaining its origin. He received it when he became a manager at Arthur Young & Co., the old accounting firm, in the early 1960s. He got a new leather satchel and a raise, he said. The satchel was in good shape, with some old accounting ledger sheets in it. I took it and smiled. His story made it cooler. Maybe I'll use it.

Then he remembered something else. "Oh, do you want an electric razor? It's my old one."

An electric razor?

My dad brought out an old Norelco plug-in shaver. Cool, right? The story is better.

My dad won the shaver in a poker game. On a ship. Coming back from the Korean War in 1953.

Is there a better story than that behind what's ostensibly an electronic device of the 1950s? Having left his hometown in eastern Montana, my dad joined the Air Force ahead of being drafted into the Army. He spent time in Korea (where he picked up habits that continued into my childhood, including really short showers and a love of Spam) and then came home. At that point, he was in his early 20s and hadn't met my mom. His whole life was ahead of him.

During a poker game on the trip home, one of his fellow passengers ran out of money and offered a Norelco electric razor as collateral. An electric razor! New technology!

My dad won the hand, taking the shaver.

I remember the shaver from my childhood and may have even used it on some of my early shaves. Since it's from the early 1950s, it's not rechargeable. As my dad said, in those days, if something was electric, it was plugged in.

Back at our hotel that day, I plugged it in and it worked. It was sluggish and probably wouldn't be very effective at shaving a beard without a new motor, but it was a SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD electric razor, still trying to do its job.

Before my dad was a 90-year-old living in a senior apartment complex, before being married to my mom and stepmom (both of whom died), before having any kids – heck, before getting a leather satchel for being promoted to manager on his way to being a managing partner of an independent CPA firm – he was like a movie character: A guy coming home on a ship from a foreign war, winning an electric razor in a poker game.

Maybe when I'm 90 I'll pass something like that on to my sons. Except it will be a CD that I burned on my desktop computer or something like that.

Or maybe . . . it will be an electric shaver that my dad won on a transport ship in 1953, coming home from the Korean War.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.