Shave And A Haircut, Two Bits

Like most children of the 70's whose parents like country music, I became an expert on the TV show "Hee Haw". One of my favorite bits they did was "Archie Campbell's Barber Shop". Archie was the barber and you always had one character in the chair and 3 or 4 people sitting in the waiting chairs, making jokes or talking the news of the day. I always related that TV skit to a very similar looking barber shop in Chaffee, Mr. Lee's.

I can't recall what Mr. Lee's first name was; we were raised to call adults Mr. so it never came up. The only exceptions were for Dr. Wehmeyer and Dr. Moudy, plus if the adult attended your church, you substituted "brother". Mr. Lee's shop was what a true barber shop was meant to be. Outside, you had the candy cane striped concrete pole, the beacon for dads everywhere that this was the place to drag your son when he started looking like a hippie. Inside, there were 10 chairs against the walls for the waiting patrons, all facing what was the stage of this show, the barber's chairs.

Mr. Lee had 2 chairs, although I never recall 2 barbers working there, or even if he had a backup when he was on vacation. I guess when he took time off, we all got a week of longer hair to enjoy till he returned. I love the barber chairs, they must have had great ball bearing pedestals because you could spin around at 60 rpm's with ease. You could also pump the pedal to raise the chairs, which was fascinating to me. I often wished we had one of those at home. While Mr. Lee's chairs looked fun, you didn't get to test out the features. He would warn you if you messed with the chair, or your Dad would give a quick "knock it off". There was an unwritten rule, if your Dad was getting his haircut and there were no others waiting in the shop, you could sit in the spare chair but again, no horseplay would be tolerated.

Usually, the kid went first and then Dad had his turn. You really didn't want to be waiting in the spare chair because there were plenty of distractions for an impatient child with a new buzz cut. You could go out the door and go to the Mobil station and watch them fix cars or watch people buy a 50 pound block of ice from their machine. You could go next door to the Laundromat and watch the big dryers tumble. If you have any money, the Laundromat also had a Coke machine with of course, glass bottles. When you had seen enough of that, you went back into the barber shop to check and see when Dad would be done. Then you got to view one of the most interesting areas of the 63740 zip code, the military items Mr. Lee kept in his counter.

Mr. Lee must have had a desire to be a museum curator because he didn't just display his historical items. They were laid out under glass in an ordered fashion, with little descriptor cards everywhere. Shell casings, including a bazooka shell were on display. Pins, cards, mementos, even I believe, a hand grenade were there to look at. There were pictures of guys pausing from World War II to have their picture taken. You wished the glass wasn't there because you wanted to hold the items. You also wanted to know more of the story, so you asked Mr. Lee about each item. He would act as though it was no big deal, almost as though he didn't want questions, but that was an act. He loved telling stories of the war in Europe and how it played into his life.

Chaffee had other places to get a haircut. Hank Whitfield had a place, Bill Hagan had a place, and for the guys whose mom took them to get a cut, you ended up at Heather's. I don't know why my dad always chose Mr. Lee, they were all going to put the number 2 cut into the clippers anyway. Now that I have kids, I think part of Dad's decision might have been that he wanted me to experience and enjoy the added bonus of the Lee Museum. Kids almost always hated haircuts but that trip to Mr. Lee's place was more like a field trip to the Smithsonian and the price of admission was 2 inches of your bangs. Today, I hardly have enough hair to warrant a haircut more than once every 6 months. When I go, I just pop in to the SuperCuts nearby, and when I wait, I thumb through "People" or "Newsweek". There will always be a part of me that wants to ask the employees "so where do you keep your bullets?"