WATROUS, Sask. — A hair cut cost 75 cents when Gross’s Barber Shop opened in this central Saskatchewan town in 1962. Today, it costs $14.
“The first day I opened I made $6.52 and I had a $96 a month mortgage. I didn’t think we were going to make it,” Ervin Gross said.
This morning, two men take their turn in the red and chrome 1960 Belmont barber’s chair, surrounded by family mementos and images of the one-time hockey goalie’s favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens.
With his back to the mirror and a razor and scissors in hand, he gets down to work. Minutes later, the first customer steals a peek at his trimmed hair.
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“I think I look good so I decided to pay him,” Barry Mensch jokes as the protective cape is removed.
The longtime client frequents the plain brown and white-sided building because the price is good and the location convenient to his house.
“I like to come a little early because you can visit,” said Mensch. “I know I’m going to get a good haircut.”
The seat is still warm as the next customer settles in.
“He never has to ask how I want my hair cut,” said Dale Brennan of Young.
Gross greets these customers like old friends, but he admits to a few nerves when dealing with first-time customers.
An instructor once taught him to avoid politics and religion in the chair, instead relying on conversations about farming and the weather.
“I’m told a lot of things I don’t repeat,” he said of the intimate relationship between barber and customer. “I’m kind of like a psychiatrist.”
He said most of his customers are at least 40 years old, although he cuts some children’s hair, including his grandchildren’s and some women’s. Most make appointments, some just walk in and others line up before the shop opens at 8 a.m.
“A lot of the younger school kids like to go to girls for styling,” said Gross of the Klip & Kurl hair salon that adjoins his shop.
“Some guys just like to go to a lady.”
Gross lives at the back of the shop in a refurbished suite of rooms where he raised four children with his wife, Carol. The former Salvation Army hall is one of the oldest buildings in the farming town of 1,700.
A barber does basic haircuts and maintenance, but also trims eyebrows, mustache and ear hair.
“Barbering is still more clipper work. Lots of hairdressers don’t use clippers,” he said.
“I don’t do (shaves) anymore because it takes as long to shave as cut hair and you can’t charge the same for both.”
Gross learned the trade at a barber school in Regina, something that’s in short supply today with only a couple remaining in Canada.
The barber business fell off by 50 percent and many barber shops closed after the Beatles popularized longer hair.
He went back to school to learn to cut longer hair to bring his business back.
The lean years forced him to work days in the shop and nights making beds for the railroad.
“We did it because we were short of money,” he said. “It was tough going there for a while.”
By the 1980s, shorter hairstyles returned along with his business.
“Everybody got rid of the longer hair and barbering got good again.”
Gross has been the only barber in town since 1992. Carol helps by sweeping floors, answering phones and filling the pages of the appointment book with customers drawn from an 80 kilometre radius.
“He has a terrific business,” she said.
She likes to visit and listen to clients giving her husband a hard time about his hockey team.
“She’s the best wife I ever had,” Gross said of his wife of 51 years.
He keeps in shape by gardening and walking, but has cut back his hours to four days a weeks
“It’s starting to play me out a bit,” said the 73-year-old.
Looking back, Gross said his only regret is his prices.
“We could have put our prices up a lot sooner,” said Gross. “I always felt we couldn’t charge city prices be-cause we were country folk.”
He said rotating between good shoes is the secret to his longevity on his feet.
“I never wear the same shoes two day in a row,” he said.
Every month or two, Gross and a retired barber from Wynyard cut each other’s hair.
“We have supper and a cut,” he said.
Gross would like to join his friend in retirement but can’t find any buyers.
“I’d like to quit by age 75, but I hate the thought of closing the door because I don’t know where they’d go,” he said of his customers.
