Herb Carner, the longtime barber whose shop sits at some odd address between 217 and 219 East Dewey Ave, is celebrating a milestone in a long career. Carner has been cutting hair for 65 years this week. Professionally, anyway.
“If you count full-time it’s been 65 years, but I’ve been cutting hair since I was a senior in high school,” Carner told Sapulpa Times during an interview on Thursday.
Carner grew up in Mounds, Oklahoma, which didn’t have a local barber. His job became one borne out of necessity. “I would cut my brother’s hair, my friend’s hair, the neighbor’s hair. Pretty soon I just became known as the local hair-cutter.” He graduated from Mounds High School in 1956 and moved to Sapulpa to make it official and begin his career as a professional barber, studying as an apprentice to local barber Harry McGrew.
There was only one problem: he didn’t have the proper tools. “He asked me what I had and I told him, an old pair of clippers and scissors and a comb.” McGrew told him he’d need more than that and sent him to a local supply shop to purchase the tools. Carner realized that becoming a barber would be more expensive than he thought. “I didn’t have but forty dollars on me, and to buy all the stuff to get started was going to cost me fifty,” he said. “When the guy at the store found out I was working for Harry McGrew, he told me, ‘you just pay me back when you can.’”
According to Carner, becoming a barber in the state of Oklahoma meant performing a haircut, a shave, and a rolling cream massage on a live person in front of a board, plus an exam of 150 questions. If you didn’t pass the first time, you could retake the test in six months. Luckily, Carner “Got it on the first trip!” as he would say. The large exam portion perplexed Carner, as he didn’t see the point of so many questions. “I asked the president of the board one day, why there had to be so many questions on that exam, and he said it was to keep illiterate people from becoming barbers. I told him, ‘Well, one squeezed by you!’” he joked.
Carner began his barbering career on North Main Street, but lost his shop when the cafe next door caught on fire. He moved just a block or two away, and then occupied another shop on Dewey, now called Hairology, before he landed at his current location, where he’s remained for the last 56 years. A notice in the December 3rd, 1964 edition of the Sapulpa Daily Herald announced the move in a short and alarming way: “HERB’S GONE,” it read in all uppercase letters, followed by a reassurance that he could now be found across the street from the Courthouse.
From 1958 to 1964, Carner was in the army reserves, and though they wanted him to cut hair at the post barbershop, he refused. “I would only cut hair on the weekends in the barracks,” he said. “Those guys at the post had a certain way they wanted things done, and I didn’t want to pick up any bad habits.”
So many things have changed since Carner began his profession. “There was only one woman hair-cutter that I knew of at the time, and she was in Drumright,” he said. When he started, the price of a haircut was seventy-five cents. “I remember when we had to make it a dollar, people thought we were robbing them,” he said. The price for a regular men’s haircut now is $11.00—still much cheaper than many of his competitors. “Too cheap, really,” he said.
His hours of operation have changed as well, Carner says. Whereas in his younger days he could be found at the shop almost every day and worked longer hours, these days he’s much more leisurely with his time, preferring to work from “noon to whenever,” as he puts it. “Sometimes, I get out at 5:45, the other night I was here until a quarter to eight. It just depends,” he said.
For all that’s changed, as much or more has stayed exactly the same. He still has the same avocado green rotary phone on his wall, and the same soda cooler in one corner, with a small space heater nearby. And as always, he remains notorious for not taking appointments, instead handling customers on a “first come, first served,” basis. Customers would step in and sit in the chairs lining the wall if there was one available. If not, they often left, hoping for a seat when they returned later.
Carner says his long line of customers have been varied and sometimes very loyal. “Robert McCormick showed up when he was about ten years old, and I had only been open a year,” Carner said. “I’ve been cutting his hair ever since. He still comes in every two, three weeks. I remember having [Sapulpa High School Principal] Seth Shibley up there on my board when he was getting his first haircuts. So many of the moms videotaped their kids getting their first haircuts here. So many.”
Family has been both in and behind the barber’s chair; Carner says he has a brother that also became a barber, but “only” lasted forty years. Carner and his ex-wife have one daughter, four grandsons, and “two dogs that will bite anything but me!” Though 65 years is a long time to do anything, Carner says he has no plans to retire. “I don’t even think about retiring,” he says. “I suppose one day, I’ll just up and quit, but today ain’t gonna be the day!”
