By Deane Erts

One of the charming things about a barbershop quartet is the nostalgia factor. The four-part harmony takes us back to times gone by, to simpler times when men were men and women, well, weren’t, and the two genders most certainly did not get their hair “done” in the same place. Women went to the parlor; men went to where there were ashtrays in the arms of the chairs and spittoons in the corner and you could get a shave with your haircut.

Those times are long gone. Hairstyles are more unisex now, and four guys crooning “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree,” a capella, no longer makes the maidens swoon. Now, alas, it would be hard to find four barbers in Tecumseh, let alone four barbers who can carry a tune.

Tecumseh still has barbers, of course, but their numbers are considerably diminished from their heyday in the first half of the last century. Most of the barbers in town are men “of a certain age,” to put it politely, or aging, to put it more bluntly. None of them that we spoke with would argue that they are getting younger or that their profession is on the upswing. In fact, all of them can remember a time when there were as many barbers in town as there were service stations. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “service station,” (demographically about half of the population now) that’s what we used to call gas stations before the days of self-serve. In other words, barbershops could be found on just about every other block in Tecumseh or any other town.