Retired barber reminisces local career

Retired barber Don Orton, 82, reminisced about dollar haircuts and downtown Poplar Bluff in the 1960s during a visit to Bluff Barber Shop on Wednesday to help his son, Mark, cut hair during the shop’s 56th anniversary.

Orton didn’t plan to be a barber, but, he said, “I had fun doing it, and I made money. If it hadn’t been an easy job, I couldn’t have lasted this long.”

“I went from the cotton field in the Bootheel to St. Louis, where I worked at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft for five years,” he said.

Orton admits family members didn’t like him living in St. Louis and they checked on the availability of barber school.

“I went six months and had a year and a half apprenticeship,” he said, adding his son studied nine months and had to take a test to get his barber license.

“In October 1960 was when I cut my first hair in Poplar Bluff,” Orton said. “I got a job in the VanNoy Hotel” on South Main Street.

Orton recalled Poplar Bluff had “13 barber shops when I came here. They were all over town. Now, there are six shops.”

He remembers three shops were on Vine Street, one on Maud Street and one on Davis Street. Smiling, he said, they were “anywhere you looked.”

The shop at the hotel was nice, he remembered. It was located across the street from the Dunn Hotel and 303 Package & Sporting Goods Store, and up the railroad stairs from the train depot when the trains still were running busy schedules.

His shop not only offered haircuts, there was a shower in the back. He charged customers 50 cents for a shower, and he provided a towel and bar of soap. Many of his customers were railroad workers.

When the trains were running, Orton said, “Fifth Street was different. We had a hardware store, lumber business, bars, Wallis Case Dairy, two or three grocery stores. One was a chain store. We had Bagby’s Tax Stand. We had anything.”

Haircuts were $1 when he began his career, and it cost $1.25 for a flat.

Cutting hair became a lot cleaner for Orton when he purchased clippers attached to a vacuum in 1966.

Adding the new equipment “saved a lot of cleaning,” he said. “You didn’t have to breath in all the hair.”

Equipment used today is about the same. Some barber shops cut with razors and offer shampoos.

While barbers “very seldom get long hair today,” he recalls when “hair went from short to hippie days with long hair. I never did like it.”

When Orton left the shop at the VanNoy, he worked with Marvin Moore at the L&M Barber Shop on Vine Street until 1962. He then worked with three other barbers in the Valley Plaza Shopping Center.

Leaving work at the Valley Plaza on a Wednesday, he opened Bluff Barber Shop on Fifth Street the next Monday.

He stayed for 56 years, and “Clyde Stone worked with me 35 years,” Orton said. “Mark has been here 24 years.”

A sign in the shop reminds everyone it is “The Workin’ Men’s Barber Shop.”

Orton said, his life has gone by “a whole lot faster than I thought it would.”

Along with barbering, Orton said, “I farmed a little bit. I had cattle; anything to keep busy and to make a dollar.”

Mark reminded his dad about him being a “cowboy and baseball coach.”

Smiling Orton replied, “I played cowboy for several years until my horse got too old.”

Admitting his hobbies “kept the kids busy, too. They showed ponies.”

His sons are Mark, Larry and David. He has five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Now, he’s retired and does “a lot of honey dos,” for his wife, Nickey, a retired teacher. He enjoys his woodworking shop where he turns bowls on his lathe and makes furniture.