Shave and a haircut , two bits

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.

Now, there are two full-time barbershops in town. One of them, Gregory’s, coincidentally used to be a Standard Oil gas station before Joe Gregory bought it and set up his barber pole in 1960. The other is Jack’s, which opened its doors soon after A.J. (Jack) Silberhorn returned from the Korean War in the early ‘50s.

From his vantage point at the corner of Chicago Boulevard and Ottawa Street (his chair is closest to the window) Joe has watched the city and the styles change for nearly five decades. Besides time passing, a steady stream of people have come and gone, car makes have appeared and disappeared, and hair styles have gone from “whitewalls,” meaning close-cropped on the side so you can see the skin (called “high and tight” in the military) to long and loose. “You meet a lot of people in this business,” Joe said, “and you end up cutting the son’s hair and the grandson’s hair. We once cut four generations of the Barrett family in one day in here.

“The sixties and the seventies about killed us,” said Joe. “Everybody started letting their hair grow long and nobody was getting their hair cut. It’s never really rebounded to where it was before that.”

Joe said that the barbers who survived, like those who work with him, adapted by learning how to do the new cuts. “A lot of us went back to school to get trained in the longer styles,” he said. Barbers all over the country not as forward thinking as he, lost a lot of customers to beauticians in those decades, but Joe’s customer base has remained stable, as can be witnessed by the cars in his parking lot.

Gregory’s further distinguishes itself as a throwback to a former era by being a three-chair operation. Joe has employed a succession of barbers, many of whom have worked their chairs for decades. One of those stalwarts was Dewey Francisco who retired after about 30 years at Gregory’s. Joe instills loyalty in his employees as Dewey’s duration of employment testifies and he likes to tell the story of when Dewey was recovering from a difficult round of chemotherapy and taking his ease at the “club” when he got word that Joe (only about a block away) was “swamped” with customers. “Dewey heard that I was backed up, told his buddies he had to go, and was here in a couple of minutes,” Joe said. “He cut a lot of hair that day before I told him to go home and get some rest.”

These days, Joe is working with Dick Covell, who’s been at his post for 17 years, and Rodger Warren, who’s been working at Gregory’s since 1973, part-time when he was working at Ford; full-time now. He has also worked with Jack at his shop on North Evans. All of the men are graduates of barber college where they learn more than just cutting hair.

“We also learn professionalism,” said Dick. “That includes looking professional for the job interview and on the job. We are taught that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. One of the things that kids are not being taught nowadays is to look their best on an interview and that includes a good haircut.”

Even though Gregory’s Barbershop has occupied its spot in the downtown business scene for nearly 50 years, it is a bit of an upstart compared with Jack’s Barbershop, which has been in business since the Truman administration.

Before he bought Ray Hinkel’s shop on the north shore of Evans Creek, Jack was working a little farther south on the street that bears Musgrove’s name. His first shop in Tecumseh was in the Masonic Building, now known as The Wild Iris at the main intersection.

“Yes sir,” said Jack, “those chairs are from that shop. I brought them here when I bought this shop,” Jack said, motioning to the vintage Koken barber chairs with the lever that operates the hydraulic lift to raise the customer’s pate to the optimum cutting level. Generations of men can remember gazing past their shoes through the intricate chrome-plated scrollwork footrest bearing the company name for their first haircut and, if they still can find a barbershop, for their last trim.

Jack was drafted into the National Guard in the Second World War and also served in the Korean War. He is proud to show customers a reunion picture of himself and some of his local comrades-in-arms: Mac Tennant, of Deerfield, and Gladwin Spohr, of Britton, in the April 2009 issue of Foxhole, a military magazine.

Jack began barbering in the ‘40s (he doesn’t remember the exact date, understandably) and worked at a barbershop in the Michigan Theater on State Street in Ann Arbor, back when fedoras were a must and they use to have barbershops in convenient places like train stations and bus terminals.

Those days have drifted away like an autumn leaf on a crystalline stream under a familiar nearby bridge but they linger in men’s minds as a picture of a slower time, a more respectful era, when a smile, a shoeshine, and determination were enough to launch a career and, in a good barbershop, you could get a shine, a shave, and a haircut without moving from your chair with a tip about where they were hiring as you were walking out the door.

Oh yeah, those were the days.