Charleston Had It All (((( The Series )))

Charleston Had It All        #7 More on Barber Shops
Mildred Reeves Burnett

When Richard “Soft Water” Logan was a young feller he hung around McCormick’s Barber Shop, until McCormick told him he may as well learn to cut hair.  So, McCormick taught Logan to cut his friends’ hair when they came to the shop. Logan became a good barber and worked at McCormick’s for quite some time.  However, in 1958 he became manager of Culligan Soft Water Company with the assistance of Irvin Cates, but still cut hair on Saturday for a time. 

Years ago Richard and his wife Jeanne stopped at the watermelon patch near the airport to get a melon.  The local undertaker, Elgin McMikle, was heading for the airport to fetch a body from Peoria.  He stopped to pass the time of day with the Logans—then said  “I’m flying to Peoria to fetch a body.  Would you like to go with me?”  Jeanne’s response was “I believe I will.” She went along and after the body was loaded, Elgin said, “You can sit in the back.” Jeanne quickly answered, “No way, you can sit back there!” During the flight home, she looked back and said, “Well, they’re both asleep.”  True story.

Joe Harvey came to Charleston in 1930 fresh out of barber school in Chicago.  He worked for McCormick Barber Shop in the early thirties.  Harvey apprenticed with McCormick, but after a while he began to get a hankering to cut the hair of business men who wore suits and ties. Therefore, he and Hartrel Brock opened B&H Barber Shop around the mid thirties.   The shop was right next to Brewer & Trickey Drug Store on Main Street, “The Silk Stocking Row,” until it moved across the street.

During the latter part of the war men with children were being drafted. Harvey heard about a five inch shell factory in Milan Tennessee, so he got a job there as a foreman.  It was a volunteer job, since people were being killed in factory accidents. It was considered a highly dangerous job. One reason was that they were using TNT in the five inch shells and there was TNT all over the floors.  Special static-free brooms were used so as not to cause sparks. Harvey was gone from B & H for two years.

After World War II and barber school in St. Louis, Earl Criss, who was from Charleston, got a job at B & H.  Around 1947 Criss became a full partner with Harvey and Brock.

When you walked inside the barber shop, after it moved to where State Farm Insurance is today, Brock’s barber chair was first to the right, next came Harvey, and then Chris. From across the room, numerous men sat cracking jokes, guffawing, and each waiting his turn. Men came regularly for a shoe-shine, a few came daily for a shave, and some came too often for haircuts—just to be midst the social life there. Always a man would be sitting with his feet propped against the window immediately to the left (from inside) of the door listening to jokes and shootin’ the breeze.  The window became highly marred after some forty years of shoe scratches.
 
One day Brock was stropping his razor getting ready to shave a fellow, when a beautifully endowed young lady walked passed the window.  Brock glanced up in awe of her, missed the strop, and slit his arm.  He dropped everything and hurried out the door in a flurry to get stitches.

Joe Harvey stormed in the barber shop fuming, “Buy me out! I quit! I’m not paying any more taxes for anybody to buy expensive watermelons that I can’t afford.”  Harvey had just come from standing in line behind a woman at the check-out counter in IGA grocery store who bought an expensive, out of season, watermelon with food stamps.

Harvey continued to take care of his old customers who were house-bound.  One of them was Mr. Trickey of Brewer and Trickey Drug Store.  Mr. Trickey remembered Harvey in his will with a special antique clock.

Not long after Joe Harvey left B & H, Hartrel Brock retired.  Robert Earl Criss son of Earl Criss went to work at the barber shop after the others had gone.  However, he didn’t care for barbering, so Earl Criss went it alone for a while, but finally retired.

Wrights Barber Shop was located next door to the New Theatre, on West Commercial Street. Merle Wright was the owner.  Wright began his career as a shoe-shine boy and was promoted to apprentice barber in 1910 in Lincoln Kansas. At that time there were no barber schools.  A man learned simply by cutting hair and shaving.  Shaves cost a dime and haircuts two bits.  
 
In 1928, Wright moved his wife Anna, and infant son Jack to Charleston. Anna was formerly Miss Anna Essary of Charleston.  The little family traveled by train to Cairo, crossed the river by boat, and then rode a bus to Charleston, as a bus-line connected the town to the river.