HomeSouth Carolina Barber Hangs up His Clippers After 57 Years | South Carolina News | US NewsBusinessSouth Carolina Barber Hangs up His Clippers After 57 Years | South Carolina News | US News

South Carolina Barber Hangs up His Clippers After 57 Years | South Carolina News | US News


By MATTHEW ROBERTSON, Morning News

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — The barber to Florence mayors since David McLeod — not to mention athletes of note who found their way into Florence — ended his 57-year barbering career and closed a barber shop that was at least 120 years old when he and his wife left Patriot Barber Shop for the last time last Friday.

The shop, which started in Florence’s Sanborn Hotel, will go up on the auction block one piece at a time in the near future, Dan Phillips said.

It moved to its current location on the south side of Evans Street near the Coit Street intersection in 1957 — at least that’s what Phillips said he was told.

He didn’t start there until 1966 as the United States approached a pivotal time in hair history.

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But to appreciate the story — and Dan Phillips has many — you have to dial the calendar back to 1964 when he started his barbering career in a shop on Dargan Street.

“I started out in the third chair and worked my way up to the first chair.” Phillips said of his former shop. “I came here in ’66. The man that was running it, his health was bad. He said, ‘Any reason I have to quit, I’ll give you first chance to buy it,’ because my brother worked for him in ’63.

“When I came here in ’66, we had 13 barbershops in a mile radius, and they averaged four chairs per barber shop. (The shop’s owner) died in ’68. His wife told me what she wanted for the shop.”

Phillips said he went to his bank — he cut the hair of the bank’s chief executive officer — and was turned down for a loan, because, with the advent of long hair, 3,500 barber shops per month were closing nationwide.

Ultimately the former owner’s widow financed the purchase and Phillips was in business.

“Back then there wasn’t but one barber shop left in Florence that had five barbers, and that was Frank Ward at Florence Mall,” Phillips said.

“A lot of older barbers said they weren’t cutting long hair, and they quit,” Phillips said. “I’d been doing cosmetology shows with my wife, so I knew how to work with long hair.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE, AND THEIR HAIR

Phillips is quick with a smile and a laugh. Fifty-seven years of barbering have left him with stories about some of his favorite customer experiences — and customers.

One such encounter happened Memorial Day, 1965, when four men came into the barber shop. When his chair was open, the last of the four stepped up for a haircut.

“I ended up cutting David Pearson’s hair,” Phillips said of the late NASCAR driver.

“In the late ’70s, when the Holiday Inn was around on Dargan Street, the desk clerk called and said a man needed a haircut, and they sent him around.”

That man turned out to be Leo Ernest Durocher — the late infielder and manager who ranks fifth in the major leagues for all-time victories, second in the National League behind John McGraw.

“He stood around here for an hour or so signing autographs and talking to people,” Phillips said.

“The most interesting man, wish I could remember his name, he was retired and he used to be the editor of the Chicago Tribune, and he was a reporter during the time of Al Capone,” Phillips said. “He told us some wonderful stories.”

He has also cut many Florence mayors’ hair.

“I cut Mayor McLeod’s hair, then Robin Fowler’s hair, then Haigh Porter’s hair, then mayor (Frank) Willis’ hair — we’re still cutting his hair — and then we cut mayor (Stephen) Wukela’s hair. Cut his hair since he was in high school.”

Then there were the kids.

“I wish I had taken a picture of every kid’s first haircut,” Phillips said. He did with some, and they’re “back there” in the shop’s back room.

“I have folks I gave them their first haircut and I’ve given their kids their first haircut,” he said.

WORKING IN THEIR OWN MUSEUM

Hanging from one of several hat racks in the shop is one of the original electric clippers. It was designed to hang between barber chairs so that two barbers could use it, though only one at a time, Phillips said.

Look at that wall. It’s marble. The countertops are marble, Myrtle Phillips said of one side of the shop.

The wall, the mirrors, the countertops and the cabinets came out of the Sanborn Hotel.

The barber chairs also came from the hotel.

Then there is the huge hat rack in the front of the store, built by the same company that manufactured the chairs, Dan said. If it’s not one of a kind, it might be close, he said.

On a buffet in the shop there is a box of hair tonic bottles that have been there since the ’70s, Dan said. The design of the display, though, might indicate the bottles predate the ’70s.

The salesman, Dan said, marveled at what his company had sent and offered to take them back. They stayed.

That is the color they should be, and that’s faded by the light, Dan said as he held up a bottle of the tonic from the back and compared it to a bottle of tonic at the front. The colors don’t even come close to matching.

And that’s just evaporation. They’ve never been opened, he said of the missing tonic from several of the bottles.

There is a shoeshine box on the floor in the shop and a shoeshine stand in the back room, Dan said.

There is a cabinet of old barbering implements that are no longer in use at the store, and possibly some elsewhere still in use.

A box of slightly used singe sticks that date back to the shop’s early days are on hand and a rack of empty, mostly anyway, soda bottles sits in the shop — a relic of days when there was a soda machine that dealt in glass bottles.

A low-to-the-floor dining room table holds a collection of magazines, and a checkers game sits off to the side in the waiting area — right beside a flat-panel television.

CUSTOMERS WERE LIKE FAMILY, CLOSING LIKE A FUNERAL

Myrtle showed off a picture of a barber and a beautiful woman in the barber chair that a customer who hadn’t been in the shop for 20 years found somewhere and gifted to the couple.

“That’s just the kind of customers we have,” she said. “They’re like one big family.”

The parents of two children whose hair the couple clipped gave them a church Christmas ornament.

“And we kept it,” Myrtle said as she showed it off from its place of pride in the shop.

The couple has a 50-year-old Christmas tree in the back that they break out and use every year, she said.

“That means a lot because those two little boys are grown and have become very successful people. The father was in yesterday saying his goodbyes,” Myrtle said.

“We’d planned to skip out and not tell anybody. It’s been like a funeral,” Myrtle said of customers stopping by to say their goodbyes. “We had a customer today who was a 57-year-customer. They are upset.”

The couple has been slowing down this past year, taking more time for socializing in the shop and spending less time on hair.

“People come in sometimes and just play checkers,” she said.

In their retirement, Dan and Myrtle plan to travel while they’re still young enough to enjoy it.

Dan will be 79 years old in August; Myrtle is a few years younger.

She says she wants a VW bus with flowers painted on the side in which to travel and on the backroads of America.

Dan said he’d planned on passing his customers along to two other barbers in town only to discover their shops had closed.

Ultimately Florence’s hair will be in good hands with places like the Mail Room — a newer Florence barber shop, he said.

“I don’t know what’s around the next curve, but we’ll deal with it, no matter what,” Myrtle said as she packed up a cake a customer dropped off. She and the cake were headed home.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



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