Say hi to Leonard Wallulis, champion wood chopper and faller of the ‘30s, and as evidenced by what’s above, men’s grooming god whose name echoes in the annals of awesomenes.

Disclaimer: This article was wrtiten for your entertainment and edification. We’re looking at you, history nerds and grooming aficionados. That means we don’t want you to take an axe to your face (or your head). Okay? All right.

Here’s an axiom you’ll like: Hard times make beasts of the weak.

And if history’s any indication, it’s the hairiest of times that forge the toughest of us.

The ‘1930s was such an era, for perhaps no other has kicked our species’ ass as hard or with less mercy.

While the Great Depression technically took hold in the summer of ‘29, its real wrath reared its face in 1933, when the United State’s unemployment rate soared to 20%. In fairness, America’s economy would start its slow, yet eventual climb later that year. But before then, swaths of rotting farmland had been abandoned by farmers strapped for cash and bread lines multiplied by the day.

And as you know, 1939 saw the slow, but eventual rise of a certain psychopath of Bavarian descent, the likes of which sustained the second of two known world wars until its end in 1945.

But it was around the middle of this dark decade — 1934 to be exact — when a certain breed of man did one of the most badass things a man can do: he shaved other men’s faces with axes.

At the time, North American tool manufacturers sold their wares in the cleverest of ways; They went all experiential marketing on everyone… well before experiential marketing was even a thing.

If you want to know what the aforesaid means, check out this passage from the 2007 book, Nature’s New Deal by Neil M. Maher (a Professor of History at Rutgers University), about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (and possibly the birth of environmentalism in America as we know it today):

“In late October 1934, the American Fork & Hoe Company sent Paul Criss, the ‘Spectacular Axe Man,’ to a CCC camp located near the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Surprisingly, Criss did not journey from the company’s [former] headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, down to the Rockies to train Corps enrollees in the fine art of chopping wood, nor to teach them how to properly fell a tree. Instead, the ‘axe man’ went to make an advertisement for a particular brand of axe manufactured by the company that would run in newspapers in magazines across the country.
In the photograph for the ad, smiling young men from the Corps camp line up behind Criss, who stands holding a double-sided axe just above the exposed neck of a seated and understandably nervous CCC employee. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the face and neck of the seated enrollee are slathered in shaving cream.
‘Axes are not going to replace razors,’ explains the copy just below the photograph, ‘but this again demonstrates the fine quality of Kelly Axes [a then subsidiary of AF&H].’

Basically, America’s 32nd president rallied the beaten spirits of young, American men to build their country’s national forests “as we know them today.” Legend has it the planted tree count alone totalled upwards of 300 million across 800 national parks, and the entire project’s still known as one of the most successful in environmental history.

While the CCC did their thing at the time, a clued-up group of axe, hatchet and scythe companies seized the chance at exposure. So they’d send “salesmen” in the form of beasts like Mr. Criss, whose talent would leave his test subjects’ faces so clean you’d think he used a razor. Random fact: Paul Criss was one hell of a polymath. Not only could he sell axes and use them to shave men, he wrote some of the best prose you’ll read.

Here’s a few lines from the man himself (courtesy of Purdue University’s historical archives):

“Once again I would feel my old Kelly steel
cut true as a perfect die,
While the polished bits throw out more chips
At the will of a woodsman’s eye.
Then I would raise the call as it leaned to fall,
And swing my trusty axe,
Like a fatal dart cut the thin white heart —
the thrill of all lumberjacks.”

Where the suit and tie is de rigueur for today’s salesman, the equivalent of the ‘30s wore undershirts tucked into trousers and shaved faces in the woods.

Guys like Paul “Bunyan” Criss were the Greek myths of their time. Back then, a “career” could’ve meant dodging bullets all day in Europe or lugging coal as a yard labourer. But even those who sold products got their hands dirty, too, and in doing so, that exchange of hard earned dollar for good was all the more honest.

These guys didn’t hawk plastic on late night TV.

They shaved faces with goddamn axes.

You know else did? Leonard Wallulis, maybe Oregon’s most legendary of lumberjacks. The Pennsylvanian son of Russian immigrants, this beauty could do it all, from fall trees fast (which was invaluable since chainsaws weren’t around yet) to chop logs even faster. On labour day in 1932, Wallulis halved a 14-inch Hemlock in 41 seconds in front of a cheering crowd. After that, he shaved his face with his axe. He’d do it again (the shaving part) in 1936 when he entered a Ripley’s Believe it or not contest. Wallulis didn’t win the thing, but finishing as a finalist out of 3,200 dudes? You take your hat off to that, never mind his uncanny feats of strength.

These men are the Siberian tiger of human beings today. Good luck finding any.

Julius Mwangi, the Kenyan Axe Barber of Kiambu County.
Photo: @_kendi (via Twitter)

And yes, shaving with an axe flirts with schlock. It’s the bicep flex of men’s grooming. But even bicep flexes matter — they remind us of who we are and the heights to which ought to aspire.

By the way, since you know we love a twist, here’s a good one: Last fall, a man by the name of Julius Mwangi made Kenyan headlines when he started using an axe to shave his clients’ beards and heads. Mwangi works out of Clippers Kings, a shop in Kiambu County, and he’s been in the business since 2014. But last July, the guy figured he’d go as old-school as one can go.

So far, Mwangi’s got no hiccups for which to report.

These Are The Men Who Shaved With Axes