Ray Isn’t One to Split Hairs on Unique Ideas for Change

Ray Bradley comes out of north Florida, but he sounds more like Georgia. Sixty-two years old and with a Big Daddy drawl that to a Yankee’s ear turns every sentence into a quiz, ol’ Willie Ray can tell you stories till the cows come home.

Like how his daddy had the still down by the creek on their truck farm in Okaloosa County, and how the local law enforcement people in the then-dry county would buy the stuff. In exchange, they’d tell Ray’s daddy when the revenuers were coming.

“I’ve been a law-abiding citizen all my life,” Ray says, “but I was brought up to make money, and I realize it was illegal to make money (from moonshine), but we had to have something to survive. Truck farming was not all that good.”

He did learn the wages of sin, however. “We were furnishing them alcohol, and it seems to me every time a year’d go by, one of the members of the family had to be operated on. I was talking to Daddy later, and he figured it was the good Lord who was the one that was punishin’ us because of that, see?”

Like I said, Ray probably has a million stories. I can’t decide if that makes him woefully under-utilized cutting hair in a Costa Mesa barber shop or the perfect guy for the job, but that’s where he’s been for the last several years.

But what drew me to his shop on East 17th Street wasn’t barbering, but politics.

Although he was oh-for-four in elective office in his native Florida, Ray is seriously thinking about running for sheriff of Orange County next year, Brad Gates and his 20 years in office notwithstanding.

“I want to see what backing I could get,” Ray told me Thursday. “I’ve talked to different ones, and they said it would be hard to beat Gates because he’s got so much money and money men behind him. A lot of people are not satisfied with Gates, you know. I think I can do a better job than Gates has done as far as taking people’s money.” By that, Bradley means the department’s big budget and Gates’ past support for a new tax-supported jail.

Ray says he’s got some other ideas, too. “My best idea would be to get all the surrounding counties to go along with us and take these gangbangers, gather ‘em up and set a designated area, either out here in the desert or San Clemente Island, drop them off there with C rations and water in their one-man tent. By doing this, we let them have their own war games and they settle their differences over there, and it gets them away from the freeways and residential areas.”

The gangbangers, he says, would supply their own guns and ammunition. If they surrendered their guns, they could be returned to civilized society.

With all due respect, are you pulling my leg, Ray? “It’s a serious idea. If I got in as sheriff, I would push toward this. I know the Civil Liberties Union would be right against me on this, but I think it’s what people would love to see happen. Another thing I’d be for, and I don’t mind you telling this--everybody who’s never been in trouble with the law, and if they own a business, they can have their own firearm with them at all times.”

I don’t know how this sounds in print, but it wasn’t said with a trace of malice.

In fact, Ray thinks he’s too soft-hearted. “People come in here, even street people with no money and if they want a haircut, I give ‘em a haircut and I don’t question them other than to say if they ever have money, come back and pay me.”

You talk to people all day, I said to him. What do you see when you look out at the world?

“Let’s put it this way. I feel when I see people out there, they’re in a struggle like I was reared up in. I struggled to make my go. I left home with $14 in my pocket. There were seven of us and we were sharecropping most of my time. I was plowing since I was 9 years old, with an ox. I like to treat people better than what I feel we were treated. When we were sharecropping, it seems like people were taking advantage of us all the time.”

That’s where we left things, other than me telling Ray that people might not take him seriously if he runs against Gates. “I’m serious in anything I do,” he said. “Now, it’s according to how much effort the people are going to give me to help me get more enthused. I figure if I get enough money behind me, I’ll beat him anyway.”

Interesting that all these years, I told him, he hasn’t lost his accent. “I don’t want to lose it,” he says, grinning, “and I’ll tell you the reason why--I either amaze people, or they don’t understand me.”