The last barber

Barber Don Chowan, 73, will give his final haircut this week, sweep the floor one last time and shut off the lights in the business he has run since he was 31 years old.

It’s a business where his children, ages 8 and 10 when he started, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren have had their first haircuts. Where Chowan has lowered ears and heard a few tall tales. Where friends and bonds are made, and men continue to stop by to say hello, chat and enjoy their morning coffee.

Chowan was one of about 10 barbers in International Falls when he started cutting hair and giving shaves in 1968 at what would become known as Don’s Style Shop. Forty-two years later, the final red-white-and-blue pole in town will stop spinning Friday.

When he came to town, his first shop was in Nora Bendish’s building near Green Hardware, MacKenzie Studio and Pearson’s Bakery. “A handy place to be,” his daughter Debra Spry joked. He moved into his current location in 1979. He owns a portion of the downtown building and rents the front portion to The Hideaway. The other two sections of the building are independently owned.

Chowan attended the Moler Barber School in Minneapolis. His brother-in-law Jack Clarity was a barber, a profession that called to Chowan because of the independence and flexibility it offered.

“I think Jack had independence and that’s what I liked,” he said of owning his own business. “It’s so much easier to be on your own. You just take what comes and leave what’s there and you take off.”

Clarity and Chowan would cut each other’s hair for many years. Chowan said that he and Clarity never fought over customers or business. Instead, he said, there was plenty of work for each, along with the other barbers in town.

Clarity was the husband of Sue, who was twin sister to Chowan’s wife Sally. Chowan jokes that he has had two wives, the twin sisters.

Chowan said that although he has been the last remaining barber in town since Clarity died in 2004, he is limited in the number of cuts he can do a day and has kept just as busy as he is able. The other business has been absorbed by the local salons and hairdressers, who are licensed to do the same cuts and shaves as barbers.

But instead of being glad he had the mens market cornered, he said he would have welcomed a little company in the trade.

“I miss not having any other barbers in town. It was nice to have the other barbers in town because we all had something in common. Men got used to going to the barber shops.”

“You can’t handle all that business,” Chowan added. “You can’t take care of everybody ... You can only handle so many people. It’s nice if you have other shops in town where you can communicate with.

“It would be nice to say ‘Joe, so-and-so’s across the street or this guy’s over here’ so you’ve always got a place to go to. A lot of guys just like a barber. They don’t want to go to the women, not because they have anything against them, it’s just kind of a mens thing to go to a barber shop.

“I would really like to see a couple barbers come to town if at all possible.”

But he noted, barbers moving from larger cities to smaller towns is not common anymore. The number of barbers overall in the U.S. has declined in recent decades, as the trend moves towards all-in-one hair dressers and salons.

Spry explained that a century ago, as International Falls was founded, barbers were typically among the first businesses to set up in a new town. Therefore, she said, this will be the first time in about 100 years that International Falls has not had a barber shop.

But even with that trend, loyal customers have returned to the barber time and again for a trim and conversation.

“I would say that 99 percent of my customers are customers I’ve had for many, many, many years. I’ve had a lot of customers pass away, I’ve seen ‘em come and they were old and seen ‘em go.”

Spry added that generational business has been big — fathers bringing in sons as children, only to be followed years later with the next generation of the family.

Chowan still had two female customers who he has cut for a number of years, along with countless men. He can’t even estimate the number of heads he’s worked on. But sufficed to say, his 1910s antique porcelain chair has been raised and lowered more than a few times.

One thing that has changed over the years was operating by appointments. Chowan said he realized early in his career that it was easier to keep an appointment book than have a line of customers.

“It was much easier to work by appointments than to have a bunch of people waiting in the shop,” he said.

Nowadays, folks are used to making appointments for everything, including a haircut. But at that time, men were not used to making an appointment to get a haircut. They were more apt to drop in when convenient.

“Now the clientele I have, basically most of them make appointments. It’s so much more convenient ... Time is of the essence nowadays,” he said.

“Saturdays in the barber shop used to be where everybody just stopped in for hours, just visiting. That’s kind of a thing of the past now. We’re living in such a fast-rate society now. Nobody wants to wait, not even for fast food.”

Shift work at the paper mill changed the way that Chowan did business. Saturdays were once his biggest day of the week, but once the paper mill work hours changed, he was able to take Saturdays off because customers had different days off during the week. He has always taken Sunday and Monday off.

It’s been a hard decision for Chowan to retire, he said, from a profession that has been as much about camaraderie and friendship as it has about business.

“I have real reservations about quitting work. If my eyes would be OK I would probably continue until I dropped. I really hate to leave the trade. I don’t do it for money. I do it because I like being around people. I’ve been around people my whole life. And I have a lot of fun in my shop. I’ve met some good people and have been really fortunate to have a good family.”

Chowan admitted that he’s had his share of ups and downs. He battled cancer two years ago, taking a six-week absence from the shop. He’s also on his third pacemaker to regulate his heart. His eyesight, not what it used to be, was the deciding factor in his retirement.

One of the most important aspects of the barber shop is the camaraderie and “mens club” atmosphere and working with all of the different customers, many of whom he considers friends.

“Just give me a quick haircut because I don’t have time to listen to a whole haircut,” Chowan recalled an old joke he’d heard.

Chowan said he has all sisters on his side of the family, but he’s very close with his cousin, Jim Kuryla.

“He’s the closest guy I’ve ever been to for a hunting and fishing partner. Him and I, in all the years we hunted and fished, we never had one harsh word. He’s just fun to be on the lake with and he’s fun to go hunting with. Just a super good guy.”

Kuryla comes into the shop almost every day to have coffee.

The barber shop has long been a good place to catch up on current events and to hear about what’s going on in the community.

“It’s really surprising to see how open people really are. They let you know how they feel about everything around town and what’s going on.”

Spry explained that in the past when something big would happen in International Falls, even the media would flock to the barber shops to get the pulse of the town. Political campaign managers would visit the barber to ask what issues were important to the community.

“I always speak my opinions whether you like it or not,” he said. But he noted that the one thing he would never do is run for political office — that he got enough talk of politics in the shop.

“You talk to your barber like people talk to the bartender,” Spry said.

A few haircuts have remained at the forefront of Chowan’s mind.

One of the toughest hairstyles for Chowan was the long Beatles-inspired mops that were popular not long after he came into business.

Still to this day, he remembers a long-haired teenage boy coming in with his father. The father asked Chowan to give the boy a short buzz cut that are now synonymous with the military. Chowan understood the peer-pressure the boy faced and the lack of acceptance of the shorter style. “To get skinned down like that was really a big deal,” he said.

Chowan tried to persuade the man to allow the teen to keep his long hair style, asking if the boy stayed out of trouble and did well in school. The teen, who the father said was a good kid, left with a short haircut and didn’t even attend his father’s funeral when he died years later.

“Now hair cutting’s really fun because everybody’s into the short hair,” he said. Those were the styles of Chowan’s youth, which, like all styles, have come in and out of fashion over the years.

Spry said she’s been lucky that her father was a barber because her four boys were able to get their hair cut from their grandpa, rather than paying for the trim. Now her grandkids (Chowan’s great-grandkids) are coming to the shop for cuts. He’s also the only person to ever cut Spry’s hair.

“I’m feeling like I might be in everybody else’s boat, like ‘What am I going to do?’” she said.

At about 11 years old, he gave Spry her first haircut. She went from very long hair to an ultra-short, spiky style. “I don’t know why he talked me into getting a haircut like that,” she said. Teachers at the junior high school asked the parents to come to school to identify the much-changed young lady, as she was hardly recognizable, she said.

“I’ve had short hair more-or-less for 40 years,” the 50-year-old said.

His favorite advertisement he’s ever run was based on Ray Stevens’ “Haircut Song.” The song talks about the various types of off-the-wall haircuts a man got in different barbers across the United States.

Based on that ad, he had a logger from Fort Frances come into the shop, with hair overgrown and a long beard.

“Oh my god, what do you want a haircut or an estimate?” he joked.

Those are just a few of the memories that Chowan will take with him as he closes up shop and settles into the hunting shack this fall, among other retirement activities.

“To me, this was not work, it was fun,” he summed of his career barbering.