Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 24, 1993 TAG: 9310260305
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER staff writer
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
But Jackson has been running her own shop in Wytheville for the past eight years. In fact, soon after she bought the 64-year-old Millwald Barber Shop, she has hired women barbers exclusively.
``The men like it. They say they would rather have a woman cut their hair,'' Jackson said. ``They said the men [barbers] kind of just scalped them.''
Her staff includes Sherry Jackson, a cousin, and Brenda Crockett.
``My father used to cut hair.
I used to watch him shave with a straight razor and thought, `Gosh, it'd be fun to do that,''' Jacks on recalled.
The first time she tried to shave her legs with a straight razor, she left cuts all over them.
The experience discouraged her not at all. In fact, starting at about age 5, she was cutting hair for neighbors along Peppers Ferry Road in the Stringtown section of Wythe County for a nickel. ``A lady paid me 50 cents to do pin curls in her hair,'' she said.
She would even trim the family dog and cats. So her career choice came as no surprise at home.
``My mother said I've done it all my life,'' Jackson said.
In Virginia, barbers are licensed either by completing a barber school course or by being apprenticed. Jackson chose the second way, working for a year and a half at the Fourth Avenue Barber Shop in Wytheville.
The previous owner of the Millwald Barber Shop asked her one day if she would be interested in buying it.
``I figure, if you take a chance and fail, at least you tried,'' Jackson said. Teddy Spraker, a friend who remains a frequent visitor to her shop, advised her to go for it.
So she agreed, and was supposed to work out the financial details with the owner on a Wednesday. He phoned her two days before that and told her, ``If you want the barber shop, come over here and get it.''
``When I walked in the door, I had $7 to my name. I put it in the cash register and that's how I started,'' Jackson said. The previous owner moved to Fairfax - ``He never even took his towels'' - and Jackson sent monthly payments to him until the shop was hers.
``I didn't think it was going to happen quite that quick. I wasn't prepared for it. It kind of caught me off guard,'' she said.
The first year was a tough one. Jackson invested everything she made right back into the business.
The shop originally opened in 1929, making it one of Wytheville's oldest continuously operated businesses.
Jackson said the first owner was Fred Farthing, who worked there for 65 years and retired at age 90.
She recently visited Floyd's Barber Shop in Mount Airy, N.C., the one supposed to have inspired its fictional counterpart on TV's old ''Andy Griffith Show.'' The owner bragged that his shop had been open since about 1956.
Jackson informed him that her shop had that one beaten by nearly three decades. Some of its fixtures go back even further.
The sinks behind the barber chairs, for example, are more than 100 years old, she said. The mirrors above them have the old quarter-inch thick glass and are mounted on inch-thick marble.
The cash register was bought used when the shop open ed in 1929. Some of the seats for waiting customers were acquired when it opened from an old town movie theater.
While keeping those old items that make the shop distinctive, Jackson has improved the interior over the years with repainting, wallpaper, drapes and a partition. ''We put a small sink back there where we could do women's hair,'' she said.
``But everything that's in here like the old chairs and things, I want to keep,'' Jackson said. ``New things are nice, but old things sometimes have a lot more value than new.''
Her customers have included the bearded lady from a visiting circus, and a customer who had a heart attack. Jackson had worked previously at a hospital and did what she could until medical help arrived.
''You just never know what's gonna happen at a barber shop,'' she said. ``You meet interesting people.''
by CNB