Corley’s Barber Shop in the middle of Main Street in Springhill was the busiest place in town on Saturday mornings.
Mr. Al Corley, a stern man with gray hair and a red face, was clearly the boss and did most of the talking. His son Alvin held down the second chair and smiled a lot.
Most of the customers at the barber shop were paper mill people, so it was surprising that so many of them crowded into the little storefront building on Saturdays.
Nearly all the mill folks worked shifts, which were “days” from 7 to 3, “graveyard” from 11 p.m. to 7 or what they called “3 to 11.”
Those work schedules left time on weekdays for men to get their hair trimmed, but Saturday mornings at the barber shop were a tradition and not just a time for haircuts.
Corley’s didn’t make appointments. People just showed up and waited their turn. When there were disagreements about which customer got there before another one, Mr. Al settled them.
Every Saturday morning when he was not working the day shift, my dad took me with him to the barber shop. He always announced to my mother that we were “going to get our ears lowered.”
My dad and most of the other men in the shop waited for Mr. Al to cut their hair. Nearly all the boys were assigned to the younger Mr. Corley.
We liked him better anyway because he always gave us what he called the “good smelling treatment.” That included some Fitch Hair Tonic on our head, a splash of after shave on our face and having talcum powder dusted on our neck with a soft brush.
Magazines were piled on a couple of tables in the shop. Waiting for our turn in the chair, we flipped through Readers Digest, Sport and the Saturday Evening Post.
Some of those pulp crime magazines were scattered around the room. When kids picked them up, Mr. Al made us put them back because they were “too racy.”
Men talked mostly about fishing and frog hunting at the mill ponds and the Springhill Lumberjack football team. They wondered why Coach Baucum called a running play instead of a pass on third and six against Haynesville that week.
There were conversations about big league baseball and rodeos that were popular in town back then. Cowboy comedian Smiley Burnette appeared at a rodeo one year, and that caused a stir.
He stayed with the Sleepy Haynes family. I missed him in person but saw him a lot of Saturday afternoons at double feature western movies at the Spring and Webster theaters down the street.
My dad got his hair cut to the scalp on the sides, but Mr. Al barely trimmed the top where a layer of black hair formed a gentle front-to-back wave starting at his forehead.
There was a multi-pronged hat rack at the entrance to the store where customers parked camouflage caps, sweat-stained Stetsons, New York Yankee and St. Louis Cardinal baseball caps, striped railroad engineer hats and other headgear.
The only hat my dad ever wore was a wide-brimmed straw hat with a built-in green visor. It was for yard mowing, garden work and bream fishing. Other times, he liked for his wavy hair to show.
After haircuts at Corley’s, my dad took me to Tennyson’s Drugs across the street to get a cherry coke and comic book while he went a few doors down to the pool hall for a beer.
When barbers in Louisiana raised their price for haircuts from 50 to 75 cents, we started going to a little shop a mile or so away just over the Arkansas state line.
Haircuts there were still just a half-dollar, but the place never had the feel and flavor of Corley’s.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES