10/19/06
Shave and a Haircut, 6 bits
By Darla Bracken
The beginning
It was in 1903 that 11 year old Jack Anderson came to Parmer County from Mullin down in Mills County. He got a job on the XIT Ranch doing odd jobs around the cow camp at Bovina. One such cowboy-appointed job was cutting the cowboys hair. The cowboys would have a seat on the wagon tongue to receive their ‘hair clippings’. Jack used a set of hand clippers, and with all the hands-on experience he received, he got to be pretty good at cutting hair. “No schools back then, I just had to learn the hard way,” he quipped in a 1956 Star article. He got to be good enough cutting hair by coal oil lamps that by 1908 he had moved into Bovina and opened his own barber shop, one of the first in Parmer County, if not the first. Jack said that he was always a drug store cowboy “there just wasn’t a drug store to go with it.” His first shop was across from the Hotel on Main in Bovina; there were 2 chairs, haircuts were 35 cents and a shave cost 15 cents. He sold his shop in 1912 and moved to Friona at first locating in Mrs. Martin’s café on Main. Reflecting on 44 years of barbering in Friona in 1956 (then 30 years at the same location), he said he had cut hair for several generations of several families and one of his first customers, F. L. Spring, Sr. included F.L., his son Frank Spring and his grandson Frankie Spring who was pictured in the article. He was hoping to cut F.L.’s great-grandson’s hair. His first prices in Friona were ‘shave and a hair cut, 6 bits’—50 cents for the haircut and a quarter for the shave.
He remembered Friona when it was a very young town and that ‘it was a long way to Friona on horseback’. He prized a 1908-1909 Friona brochure which told early land seekers about ‘what a beautiful little town Friona (the fair one) was’. The barber-client relationship is one of trust and respect and he recalled some of his clients. There was a particular cowboy with a mustache that he remembered clipping. He also recalled when a very short 1920s bob hairstyle brought women into the barbershop. He was very proud of his old Friona photographs and memorabilia ‘mini-museum’ and could reminisce with the best of the old-timers.
Shine begins his career
In 1951, 9 year old Lee Gibson came to work at the barber shop at 6th and Main. He was to be the shoeshine boy and general caretaker of the premises. One of his jobs was to clean and to keep fresh towels in the shower area in the back of the barber shop, a building which had been moved from behind the old drug store building at 6th and Main. He graduated from Friona High School in 1962 and went on to O’Neil Watson’s West Texas Barber College in Amarillo to earn his barber’s license. Lee began working in February 1963 (almost 44 years now) and his first prices were $1.25 for a haircut and $1.00 for a shave. He and Jack barbered together until Jack’s death in 1969. Lee purchased the barbershop in September 1969.
Jack had told Lee as a new barber that he was going to be really ‘nice’ to him and that he was going to give Lee ‘all the flattops, all the crying babies and all the shaves.’ Talk about learning the hard way! Lee said that you got some first hand experience in barber college but not that much. One tradition that Jack started and that Lee had continued is giving a piece of chewing gum to each child at the end of the haircut; it has always been Juicy Fruit. There were five barbers in business on Main when Lee started: Ralph Taylor, Hop Lewis, Kenneth Watkins, Jack and himself. Now he is the only barber in Parmer County. Lee also has seen many men’s hairstyles come and go. He said he nearly ‘starved to death’ in the late 60s and early 70s when long hair was in vogue! The styles have ranged from the fifties flattop, which has reappeared from time to time, to the ‘chili-bowl’ to today’s ‘high and tight’ military styles. All the while some still preferred the familiar traditional cut. Sideburns and mustaches have changed as styles were in and out of vogue. He also has barbered for several generations of the same families now as had his mentor and predecessor, Jack Anderson. Honored in 1998 as Citizen of the Year for his benevolent acts of barbering his clients in private homes and at Prairie Acres when they no longer could get to the shop, Lee has continued to demonstrate a very caring attitude.
His health problems may have curtailed his hours of operation a bit now, but the wit and friendly atmosphere of Lee’s Barber Shop remain the same. 80 years of barbering have taken place at the same location at 6th and Main this year. Customers scramble to try to meet his schedule and some drive from many miles away for one of his haircuts. The price of a haircut today is $8.00, only recently raised from the $6.00 he had been charging for several years. We appreciate all of our barbers who have served our community over the years.
End of an Era?
A few years ago there were 100,000 barber shops in the United States and now there are only 85,000. New shops are no longer being opened. The only barber pole business left is the William Marvey Barber Pole manufacturer. Mr. Marvey died in 1996 and the business is now operated by his son. The Marvey business was one of only four such manufacturers. A barber pole is required by state law as is the license, Lee told me and he remembers the first ‘barber pole’ at the barbershop as Shine. It was an old hot water heater core painted red and white mounted in the dirt out in the front of the shop. The state made him remove it when they put the new sidewalks in a few years ago. Lee purchased the barber pole on the north side and two new chairs for the shop when he went into the business in 1963.
Barbering is one of the world’s oldest professions and has changed considerably over many centuries. Razors have been found in the tombs of the ancient Egyptians. The word barber comes from the Latin word, barba, which means beard. [Barbarians means bearded ones]. A beard in battle was not necessarily an asset as the ancient Macedonians discovered when they were pulled down by their beards. Alexander the Great required his warriors to keep their beards trimmed. Various royal families have required shaved heads, clean shaven faces, etc. so the barber has always held an elite place in society. Early barbers also performed what ‘surgery’ was done, dental work, and also the practice of bloodletting. Bloodletting was considered the cure-all for many ailments. In fact the origin of the barber pole comes from the bloodletting practice.
Barber Poles, Bloodletting
and Leeches
Razors and leeches were used in bloodletting which also required long linen bandages and a staff for the patient to hold in order to pump up the veins for cutting or using the leeches to draw blood. The bandages were then used to stop the bleeding. The leeches were kept in a brass bowl at the base of the staff. Legend has it that when the bandages were then hung out to dry on the staff, they became entwined around the staff in a spiral fashion of red and white. The wooden staff became a symbol of the practice and the profession itself much later symbolizing only the profession. Barber poles in America later took on the patriotic colors of red white and blue and it is said: red for the blood, white for the bandage, and blue for the blood veins. Our barber shop’s pole is red, white and blue with chrome caps.
Family tradition
It was a status symbol in some early shops to have your own shaving mug stored there. Early customers would have had complete bathing services also. Just imagine how good a hot bath would have felt. My dad, Cass Perkins, is an accomplished amateur barber in his own right. He cut my two brothers’ hair during all their growing up years. It was a distinct honor for him to give a little boy his first haircut. With his sons and many nephews in our family, it definitely became a family tradition and was certainly no easy task as Lee can attest. Daddy learned how to cut hair from his father, Audie Wade, who had six sons -- that’s lots of heads of hair to cut! Papa let my dad learn by allowing him to cut his father’s hair and helping through each hair cut. I’m not sure how and when my grandfather learned to barber, but he also had several brothers. Daddy’s youngest brother, Urschel, bought a barber book and the tools, but was not suited to the trade so Daddy actually got his original tools from Urschel. I remember him also telling about practicing the art of shaving on a balloon. Daddy has cut Lee’s hair once and Lee said that he also remembered my uncle Richard and Jack trading haircuts.