Columbus, Ohio – It was the middle of the afternoon. I was killing time in a coffee shop, just a short walk from the spot in downtown Columbus where John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger were scheduled to speak at an evening rally. I looked out the window and noticed an old-fashioned barber pole outside a storefront window across the street. It had been awhile since my last haircut, so I decided to stop in for a trim.

The sign out front said “Walk-ins welcome.” Another, taped to the door, announced that prices had recently gone up — $17.25 was the new cost of a men’s cut. Increase or no, it sounded reasonable to me. I walked in and saw two empty barber’s chairs. A middle-aged barber rose from a chair by the door to greet me.

He had a kind, weathered face, and he smiled. “You must be my 2:30,” he said. I didn’t have an appointment, but I assumed he was making a joke about the empty shop. I played along — “Yep, that’s me” — and started to sit down. Then another guy walked in, and the barber looked confused. He asked the new guy, “Are you my 2:30?”

It turned out that neither of us was. The other guy rescheduled, and I agreed to sit and wait. Minutes later, the person who had actually made the appointment walked through the door and greeted the barber as though the two were old friends.

The 2:30 was a jumpy man in his early 40s, clad in flannel and jeans and slightly balding under a wool cap. He had clearly been to this barber before and made several references to his “tab”; from their repartee I gathered that the barber often cut this man’s hair for free.

The barber asked the man where he was staying these days, and the man replied that he was still at the YMCA. The barber said, “Well, it’s warm and dry,” and the man nodded: “Yeah, you know I’ve had it worse.”

The man asked about the barber’s wife. From his tone, I gathered that she had been sick. The barber said that she had passed a week ago. “It’s O.K,” he said, “because now she’s not in pain like she was.” But he said it wasn’t easy to lose the person you shared your life with, and it was hard to get used to.

Getting out of the chair, the 2:30 said, “You know, you two were married longer than I’ve been alive. I’m 41.”

“Yes,” the barber said. “A good long time.” The two men hugged and wished each other the best, and the 2:30 went on his way.

The barber turned to me and apologized for the wait. He said that things had been a little crazy lately. His partner at the shop, a woman, was out having to babysit for her mother, who had broken her ankle. Also, his wife…

I told him I was sorry to hear about his loss and about his wife’s pain. He said, “Yes, but we’re Christians, so we know where we go, and we know heaven is a lot better than earth.” I asked him if he had any children. “Three kids and seven grandkids,” he said. He told me that the funeral director had complimented him on his family, and that he had taken this as high praise. He said that funeral directors see a lot of families and probably know from the dysfunctional ones.

He also mentioned a brother to whom he was close, and I told him that my brother had just moved to New York, where my wife and I live. He asked, “Are you in town on business?” I told him I was a journalist in town to cover the McCain rally up the street.

His friendly demeanor never changed, but his tone got firmer. He said, “Well, McCain’s my guy, and I want you to know something. I know the media don’t like her, but I think Sarah Palin is wonderful.”

He softened when I told him that I work for National Review. I asked him if he thought McCain could pull it off. He said, “There’s two things I usually don’t talk about, and that’s politics and religion,” (which I found funny, because we had talked about both.) “But without giving my side away, I usually ask people who they’re going for, and this year it’s been mostly Obama.”

After he was done cutting my hair, we chatted for a bit longer about Ohio politics. He said he was afraid there would be riots if Obama lost, but that, “It would be fine with me if McCain won this thing and decided a few months later to retire and let Sarah run the show.” I thanked him for the haircut and shook his hand. On my way out, he told me to make sure to take care of that wife of mine.

Outside, I spotted a homeless man wearing a clean Obama t-shirt over his ragged clothes. I discovered two parking tickets on my rental car. I looked up at the National City Bank building, looming like another financial domino about to fall. In the rearview, my hair looked about the same. But none of this stuff really mattered. You can never be reminded often enough of what does really matter, and for that, I probably owe that barber more than $17.25.

— Stephen Spruiell is an NRO staff reporter.