For those who blame it on recent liberalism and over-regulation, allow me to recommend you to the 1945 Green Hornet radio show “What Price Glamour” about the need for licensing in the beauty salon business and the attendant horrors in an tonsorial unregulated industry.

Kind of hard to believe. One would think that at a very steep hill ending in trees and rocks, there likely were some injuries.

I say this because i am conflicted about this trend. At least when I was growing up and sledding, 60s and early 70s, sledding was actually rather dangerous. I saw plenty of shredded skin, several nasty knee injuries, broken arms and noses, not to mention one kid who had his testicles about ripped off completely. I saw sleds shattered and twisted steel runners and indeed a friend who was impaled (thigh) on the back of a steel runner. I permanently damaged my own knee and one time missed a moving car so closely that I actually travelled under the rear quarter. If I had launched a second earlier, I would have been a dead sledder.

But hey, I’m over-cautious with kids anyway.

Under the circumstances, for a simple lapse, the equitable thing to do is to make the barber pay for all his previous years of lapsed license fees with interest and possibly a financial penalty to discourage others from letting their licenses lapse.

On the other hand, if a barber is unlicensed because the state yanked his license because of a filthy barber shop, then a “criminal barbering” charge may be in order.

One of my favorite childhood sledding slopes we still call “Chicken-Out Hill” due to the very steep incline combined with the multiple trees and plentiful rocks at the bottom. Fortunately it is on family land. There were no injuries.