Barbers -- and their signage -- have changed

By Betty Smith
TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS (TAHLEQUAH, Okla.)

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. Tue, May 13 2008

— Bob Stoops - no, not the Oklahoma football coach - took refuge from a gloomy Thursday afternoon and settled into the chair at Barney's Barber Shop, a downtown Tahlequah landmark.
"Just a little trim -- same as last time," he told barber Jim Davis. "Shorten it a little."
Turning on his clippers, Davis readily obliged, just as he has done thousands of times during the four decades since he graduated from barber school in Tulsa.
"I'll be back here next month," Stoops said as he left.
The comfortable scene appeared to be one the two men had repeated numerous times over the years.
But Stoops is a fairly new customer at Barney's. He began getting his hair cut there after moving here about a year ago.
He was looking for a barber and noticed the downtown shop. The traditional barber pole attracted his attention.
Barney's is one of only a couple barber shops in Tahlequah with the traditional rotating barber pole, a vanishing breed in today's world of unisex salons. Another is at Shelly's Fine Barbering.
The two chairs at Barney's center the shop's Spartan decor befitting the male bastion of a tonsorial parlor. Its knotty pine back wall boasts a Norman Rockwell print of Boy Scouts, while other photos depict a successful rattlesnake hunt.
A raised platform at the rear once accommodated a shoeshine stand. Davis said the last shoeshine man practiced his art in the shop before Davis began cutting hair there.
Why aren't there more barber poles these days?
"These hairstylists, they can't have them unless they went through barber school. That's what I was told," Davis said.
During school, Davis learned about barbers' role as surgeons over the centuries. But that's not something he often thinks of.
"That doesn't pertain to cutting hair," he said.
According to barberpole.com, the pole's red and white colors date to the times when the town barber and surgeon was the same man. Bloodletting was a common remedy at the time - it could cure the patient or kill him.
The barber hung alternate bloody red cloths and white cloths used to bind the wounds on a pole outside the door of his business. The wind twisted the cloths around the pole, leading to the contemporary design of the barber pole.
In 1745 in England, the growing sophistication of the medical profession, although primitive by today's standards, led barbers and surgeons to part company. The latter provided medical care, while the former continued to specialize in grooming services.
Some barber poles in this country are red, white and blue, reflecting the colors of the flag. But that hasn't always been the case. Until about 100 years ago, barber poles in Baltimore were black and yellow, the colors of Lord Baltimore - as well as the Baltimore oriole, once again not necessarily a sports reference.
Today the William Marvy Co. of Saint Paul, Minn., is the only manufacturer of barber poles in North America.
Some barbers don't erect poles because their cities ban moving signs. Others find them cost-prohibitive.
"Those things there cost you about $1,000 -- that's one thing," Davis said. "The bigger ones are more than that. There's just not too many regular old barbers any more."

Betty Smith writes for Tahlequah (Okla.) Daily Progress.

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