After 46 years, Woodstock barber calls it quits

 

By MIKE NEUMANN
The Independent

 

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Just more than two weeks ago, Harvard resident Jack Nolan woke up to a cold Monday morning, his legs aching.
The 72-year-old barber had spent the past 46 years in Woodstock working out of Nolans’ Barbershop. The years of standing, cutting hair and giving shaves had added up.
“I said to myself, ‘Why fight this anymore?’” Nolan said. That day, he drove to his on Benton Street barbershop to call it quits. His health had him thinking retirement for the last year or so.
“I put the sign on the door (that said I was going out of business), and I stood back and looked at it,” he said. ‘I asked myself, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ It was a hard decision.”
It’s fitting that Nolan is a Packers fan. Less than two weeks after his retirement, Green Bay’s legendary quarterback Brett Favre also decided to pack it in.
“I know what Brett Favre is going through,” Nolan said with a laugh, before reminiscing on past experiences.
After serving in the Navy and clipping hair in another community, Nolan moved back to the area and began working for Buck and George Perkins, who owned what would become his own barber shop a couple of years later. At the time, the city had nine successful barbershops, Only one remains.
After Buck and George left, Nolan hired Al Murphy. The two worked together until Murphy’s death in 1982.
“He was not only a working partner, but a good friend,” Nolan said with tears in his eyes. “Murph was a barber’s barber. He cut hair like a whiz and was a good conversationalist.”
Sitting in one of his two barber chairs, Nolan remembered some of his more well-known customers.
“(Dick Tracy creator) Chester Gould, he was a real gentleman,” Nolan said. “I remember when he came in the first time, he had plaid pants and a plaid shirt on that didn’t match. I couldn’t believe that was him.”
Nolan remembers another time when Gould came in “madder than a hornet.” He had just backed his old black Cadillac through his garage door, thinking he had opened it.
Nolan points to a reprint of a famous photo near the entrance of his shop. The reprint shows Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at the first baseball all-star game, with White Sox batboy Johnny McBride congratulating Ruth for hitting the first home run in an all-star game.
“Johnny was one of my customers. He was the first to shake Ruth’s hand after the home run,” he said. “Johnny was another real gentleman.”
Trying to make it as a barber was never easy business, Nolan said. Coming in as a new barber, he was given the rookie treatment. Unless it was busy, most customers would wait for either of the Perkinses to cut their hair.
“When they finally got in my chair, it was a test,” he said. “I had to do the best I could. Most of the customers you get (in a small town barbershop) are repeat business.”
Although he used much of the same or similar equipment throughout the years, Nolan has noticed some drastic changes in culture.
“The waiting chairs were always full,” Nolan said, noting that many times, people would stick around before or after a cut to socialize. “We don’t have the characters today that we had back then. Everybody is in too big of a hurry. If there’s one or two people waiting nowadays, it’s always, ‘I’ll be back later.’”
When asked if he had any parting words for his loyal customers, Nolan smiled, saying one last old Irish prayer for them.
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

 

This article was published in the March 12, 2008 edition of The Woodstock Independent.