An Hour At Tom’s Barbershop

by whiteray

I wrote this post for another blog about twelve years ago, but stuff keeps reminding me about it, and I thought that readers of the Consortium might enjoy it. Tom’s Barbershop was located on the gritty East Side of St. Cloud, Minnesota, where I grew up. 

I spent a pleasant hour late yesterday morning at Tom’s Barbershop, waiting behind three other guys as Tom trimmed their hair before getting to mine. We waited on two long benches along the wall, gazing at Tom’s collection of model cars and nodding in approval as classic country songs came and went from the CD player: Hank Williams (the original, not the son or grandson), Johnny Cash, Ferlin Husky and some we didn’t recall. 

“Don’t remember who did that one,” said one of the fellows across the way from me as the music played. “Heard it for the first time back in about ’48, I think.” One of the other two waiting men nodded. 

“Yeah,” said the white-haired fellow next to me, as he headed for the now-empty barber chair, “country was what there was back then. We didn’t have all this rock and roll.” 

“Not in my house, either,” said the fellow who’d heard music in 1948. “It was country music at home.” 

“And polkas,” said the customer now easing his way into the chair. 

Four other heads, including Tom the Barber’s and mine, nodded. I’ve never listened to polka music voluntarily, but down at Grampa’s farm, there was often a polka program playing on one of the two television channels available. 

“Yah,” said the dark-haired guy sitting across from me, near the CD player. Up to now, he’d only nodded. “I remember Whoopee John. And the Six Fat Dutchmen.” 

The guy in the chair spoke as Tom trimmed his hair: “Used to be lots of those ballrooms around, where those bands would play on Saturday night,” he said, talking carefully so as not to disturb Tom’s work. “Not many of them left, you know.” 

Heads nodded again. Tom held his clippers in the air as the man in the chair began to talk with a little more animation. “We used to go up to the ballroom at New Munich on Saturday nights, there.” (New Munich is a burg of about 350 souls forty miles northwest of St. Cloud.) “There’d be all them Stearns County farm boys standing around the edge of the dance floor ’til, oh, close to midnight, each one of ’em holdin’ a bottle of beer. 

“Finally, around midnight, just before the band was gonna shut ’er down for the night, them boys would get out on the dance floor and find some gal to dance the polka with.” 

We all laughed. “They had to have some Dutch courage, huh?” I asked him. 

He nodded. “Yah,” he said, “right out of the bottle.” 

I spoke up, told them I’d seen the same things – reluctant guys holding drinks ringing the dance floor until it got late – in the bars in downtown St. Cloud when I was in college during the early 1970s. “Take away the drinks,” I said, “and I saw the same thing in the junior high cafeteria as the records played during our dances!” 

They laughed. 

“Boy,” said the fairly quiet fellow sitting by the CD player, “thirty years ago, I’d have been there, too. Might dance, might not, but just past midnight, it’s ‘See you next week,’ and on out the door.” 

“For a while in college,” I said, “it was ‘See you tomorrow.’” 

“Yah,” said one of them, amid general laughter, “I done some of that, too!” 

The fellow in the chair stood, his white hair now trimmed. The dark-haired guy near the CD player rose, about to take his turn. “Boy,” he said, “I remember when Whoopee John and his band come to town. They used to come in three, four new Chevrolets. They got a bus a little later on, but when they come into town in those shiny new Chevies, boy, that was somethin’!” 

The CD changed, with the classic country being replaced by Tom’s beloved country-tinged gospel music. The white-haired fellow headed to the door. “See you boys later,” he said as he opened the door. “Don’t go dancin’ too much now.” 

We all laughed as the door closed. And then the only sounds in the barbershop were the strains of “Amazing Grace” coming from the CD player, the buzz of Tom’s clippers, and the very faint sound of Tom singing along under his breath. 

Tom retired for health reasons and closed his shop about five years ago. I live on the North Side now, and don’t get over to the East Side very often, but I think the building is still empty. So, for Tom, here’s a piece that might have been the one we heard that Wednesday morning years ago as we waited for our haircuts: “Amazing Grace” by country legend George Jones. It’s from his 1974 album In A Gospel Way.