John's barber shop

Found myself in town this afternoon with a little time to kill. The Farm Manager had to take the Bubbinator to the hearing clinic to have her new hearing aids dialed in. Thought I’d head over to John’s barber shop for that long-overdue haircut.  After all, they just opened up and I’ll bet they’re hungry for clientele.

Not that hungry. I walk in and there’s a guy in the chair and another guy waiting.

“Hey John! Good to see ya! How much wait time am I looking at?”

John consults his laptop. His apprentice, Noah, is busy with the scissors. “Hey Moses, great to see ya!” It’s so easy to get the biblical patriarchs mixed up, but Noah is used to it. I’ve known both these guys since they were kids.

“Well, we’re booked solid for today… Saturday’s looking kinda tight… but we could maybe squeeze you in next Tuesday.”

WTF? These guys just opened the door a couple months ago and they’re booked solid days in advance? Tuesday didn’t work for me, but I’ve got an appointment for next Thursday.

The barber shop must be making a come-back, and why not. For far too long too many guys have had to take a chance at their local First Choice, where everybody makes minimum wage and nobody gives a shit.

Back in the Guelph era I used to go to Nat’s barber shop on Macdonell. Nat’s brother Terry had a great reputation as a quality house builder. I never needed an appointment at Nat’s.

Then I was a regular at Rod’s barber shop in Walkerton. Rod Dahm was an old-school barber too. No appointment required and none taken anyway. Rod just retired a year or two ago, but we used to have extended (well, extended to as long as it took to get a haircut) conversations about the barbering trade.

When Rod put out his shingle in Walkerton back in the day, there were five barbers in town. Self-respecting males would get their hair trimmed once a week, or every other week on the outside. All five of those barbers made a decent living in a community of three or four thousand souls.

Then the hippy-dippy era arrived…

Hey man!….

Let it all hang out… and by all means, let your hair grow out at the same time. I remember those days. Never mind once a week; I was getting by on one haircut a year for the longest time. You’d start with a buzzcut and you’d have a full hippy-dippy head ‘o hair half-way down to your ass before you thought about another haircut.

Those must have been lean years for Rod and every other barber. Nevertheless, Rod was able to regale me with tales of his family’s adventures on their twin-engine Sea Ray on a regular basis. Even in the darkest times some barbers managed to fare out OK.

I suspect Rod may have been the model for Chilton’s books about the wealthy barber. He ran a cash-only business, and as my pal Jimmy Lippert used to say, nobody’s the wiser about how much income you report and how much you don’t. In Jimmy’s word’s; “that’s gotta be a great business if you don’t mind running your fingers through another man’s cooties.”

I’m guessing the modern barber doesn’t run into much in the way of cooties. And the cultural pendulum has swung back to a place where most guys want a haircut more than once a year.

John and Moses just might be in the right place at the right time. More power to ya, lads!

See ya Thursday…