those times because they refused to do the long haircuts,”
he says. “Ourselves, we just tried to do whatever the
customer wanted. Anyone’s welcome, and it’s fi rst come,
fi rst serve. Any day that we’re open, we’re open to anyone
that wants to come in.”
There is no arrogance or liberal preening about Owens’
tone; you can tell that, for him, any form of discrimination
simply runs counter to good common sense. “You treat
others how you’d like to be treated and you get along pretty
well in this world, for the most part,” he says.
Half-Assed Psychology
Owens is just a really nice guy, and his nice is the
opposite of used car salesman nice: He is genuinely kind and
agreeable instead of obsequious and ingratiating. Though
not opposed to starting up a conversation, more often he’s
a listener, interjecting a word or two to spur the monologue.
Owens claims there’s nothing all that tough about his job,
though he says that along with knowing how to cut hair,
“you’ve got to be a half-assed psychologist, too.”
Not to mention ready for emergencies, such as when
the electricity suddenly went out during the Columbus Day
storm of 1962. At that moment Owens had a gentleman
from Cottage Grove in the chair. “I told him I could do one
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of two things,” he recalls, which involved either having the
guy return when the power was back, or letting the barber
fi nish now with a pair of manual squeeze clippers from the
1890s. I ask Owens how he did with the old clippers. “I
tried,” he says with a grin.
Another time, there was an elderly customer who’d
just had surgery and, despite his wife’s protest, insisted on
getting a haircut. “While he was in the chair he passed out,”
Owens recalls. He dialed 911 right away, and as Owens
waited for the EMTs he administered cold towels and made
sure the guy kept breathing. The man lived.
But nothing beats the stories about Fred, the one-eyed
dry cleaner. Owens used to stay open Saturdays when he
owned the shop by the post offi ce, and every couple of
weeks Fred was in the habit of getting liquored up early
and then dropping by for a trim and a shave.
Well, this one time, Fred stumbles in particularly drunk,
and when it came his turn he plopped down in the barber
chair. Owens fi nished up with his hair and then, removing
Fred’s glasses, lathered up the dry cleaner’s face for a pass
with the straight razor. When he was through, he told Fred
to sit back while he put his glasses back on.
Standing behind the chair and in full view of the rest
of the customers, Owens took Fred’s glasses and applied a
thick coat of shaving cream to the lens for Fred’s one good
eye. He slipped them on. “Okay, Fred,” he said. “There you
go.” The man sat up in the chair, froze a moment, and then
started shouting: “I’m blind! Good Lord, I’m blind!”
Everyone in the shop busted out laughing. Finally
Owens removed Fred’s glasses and wiped them clean.
“God damn it, Larry,” Fred said, shaking his head, “you
got me good.”
Some years later, Owens recollects, Fred — who wasn’t
lacking in physical girth — went to make a call in the phone
booth that used to stand near the steps of the post offi ce.
Right in the middle of the call, Fred dropped dead, and his
body got wedged into the tiny space. “He was a good sized
guy,” Owens says, “and they had a heck of a time trying
to get him out of that phone booth.” If memory serves, he
said, they eventually had to disassemble the booth in order
to get Fred out.
Needless to say, that telephone booth is now only a
fi gment of the past. In fact, you’d be hard pressed these days
to fi nd a telephone booth anywhere — they’ve gone the way
soda fountains, voting booths and highway cafes, relegated
to the dustbin of our collective cultural history. We are not
necessarily better off for such losses, which put the squeeze
on what was once called social space — the places we gather
in person to talk, catch up, hear the latest gossip.
And get our hair cut. ■
EUGENE WEEKLY SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
13