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Palatka, Florida 702 Lemon Street Earl Guenther (white) Bill Dowda, writer Evelyn Werner, reviser
EARL GUENTHER
I went into Earl's Barter Shop in Palatlca for a haircut. Its walls were lined with mirrors; tarter chairs, calendars, church schedules, shoeshine chair, and polished cuspidors. A partition separated it from a beauty parlor in the rear.
Earl Guenther, the owner, waited on me. A talkative, heavy-set man, six feet tall, with a ruddy complexion and reddish hair, he did not work in the usual white coat, tut in shirt sleeves v;ith his collar open at the throat.
"Stranger in town? Thought so, never seen you round," he spoke with a slight drawl. "This is a good little town—progressive. We manage to make a living and still have time to hunt and fish."
It was a simple thing to get his life history—he liked to talk.
"I'm no native Floridian. I was born in Dayton Ohio, March 23, 1897. My father was Irish and my mother English. Their grandfathers came from Massachusetts into the Ohio valley, early in the eighteenth century, and settled right where Dayton stands today. I may he an Ohioan by birth all right, but I'm a Florida cracker hy emigration and adoption.
"I went to Buckeye Grammar School in Dayton and worked on my Dad's
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farm before and after school. We had a big farm and there was always plenty to do. I entered Stivers High School when I was fourteen. Dad didn't believe in me going to College, so when I finished high school, he gave me a job in the shop. I've wished since that I'd gone on to college, but didn't think about it much then.
"I was glad to get away from farm chores and couldn't wait to be a barber as good as my Dad. For the first year I swept floors, shined shoes, washed windows, polished cuspidors and lathered faces, all for $2 a week. I watched all the time and eventually I was allowed to use the clippers of scissors on one of the barbers during slack hours. It was another year before I was allowed to shave anyone.
"Barbers have come a long way since then. Now we have regular barber colleges in ost of the larger cities, where you not only learn to shave people and cut hair, but you're taught the science of treating the hair, scalp, and face. I've visited the Jacksonville Barber College and they have eighteen chairs where the students get actual experience. The first two chairs give you a shave and haircut for about two bits, the next four for twenty cents. The price decreases as you get farther back in the shop. In the last two chairs they don't charge anything and usually give you a bag a candy as consolation.
"Barbering is more of a science all right; new methods are going to revolutionize thebusiness. We feel that our treatments are as much for relaxation as for looks. "You know the history of that striped pole out in front of the barber shop? Well, in the sixteenth century barbers did almost everything. They did minor surgical operations, bled people, pulled teeth, trimmer hair, and shareppened knives. When a barber went to
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a house, you couldn't tell "by the way he dressed or the tools he carried if he had come to shave the master or inspect the plumhing. The striped pole is said to have originated from a pole in front where the barbers hung their bloody bandages to dry. The wind blew them, winding them diagonally around the pole.
"Yes, things have changed and so have prices. In Miami during the boom, in 1925-26, I used to get a dollar for a haircut and a dollar for a shave. The shop we had wasn't lialf as nice as this one but we did a land-office business becahse everybody was so busy making money they didn't have time to shave themselves. I made good money, invested it in land and got caught in the crash.
"After the collapse of the land boom in '26, I started back to Dayton. I stopped off here to visit some relatives and liked it so much I decided to stay. I thought the town needed another barber shop, so I opened up this place, and I've been here thirteen years.
"Soon after I opened, a girl came and wanted to rent the back of the shop for a beauty parlor. Two years later, she thought if I'd marry her she wouldn't have to pay rent, I fooled her. I married her and now she has to pay half the rent on the whole business and I've still got the best half. Imagine a man going through a beauty parlor to get back to the barber shop.
"The barbers in this tovm "nave a set price to exclude unfair competition. I don't make anything like I used to—about half as much, I'd say—but then it only takes half as much to live here.
"At that we make a pretty fair income. The first year after paying
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out for salaries, supplies, equipment and living expenses, I found tliat I'd managed to save about a hundred dollars. Since that time we have our equipment oaid for and have managed to hank about fifty dollars a month as an average. We both pay income tax.
"We take a month off every summer when things are slow and go up north for a visit. I usually spend a couple of weeks in and around Dayton with relatives and the other two weeks off touring somewhere.
"I'm always glad to get back no matter how long I'm gone. My wife can't stand the north. It's not the climate so much as the people and the customs. She's a Palatka girl, born and raised right here in the South, and can't stand a bossy Negro. When one crosses her up north, well,— she has a pretty hot temper, Ruth has.
"We don't have any children, but her nephew lives with us and goes to the local high school. He is a junior now and a star on the football team. He plays half-back and is slated to be next year's varsity captain.
"Besides the nephew, we've got two Chows, a Boston Bull and a couple of canaries. We live in our own home, right near here. It's only a five room bungalow but it's nice. We drive a Chevrolet sedan and manage to get a new one every year. That's the best way to buy cars, because you always get a liberal allowance on the one you turn in if it's well taken care of and the dealer knows what he's getting back. By the time you had new tires and minor repairs made on your last year model you would have spent enough to pay the difference between automobiles.
"My wife and I go out a great deal. We usually see a show a week and always go to the high school athletic games. They're all played at
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night because the football field and baseball park are lighted, and so we never miss. Because of our support and contributions to the athletic association we're invited to the annual football banquet, given in honor of the departing seniors.
"My wife has her bridge club and I belong to several civic and fraternal organizations. We are all working together right now to do what we can about getting an appropriation through Congress this session for the completion of the Florida Ship Canal. It will come down the St. John's River right by here and on to a point twelve miles below town where it will turn across the State.
"I was one of the delegates to meet the Harbor and River Committee from Washington that came down here last week. We waited all afternoon for them and finally about dark met them nine miles above here on the river with a convoy of botas. They came down from Jacksonville on a private speed boat and went from here to Ocala by car. If we get the canal it will shorten sailing time to New Orleans, Galveston and other ports in the Gulf by cutting out the trip around the Florida Straights. I would take so many of those heavy trucks off the roads. They are ruining the State highways and because of their size make it dangerous to drive on the road during the citrus season. A boy by the name of Powell was killed last week, just north of here, when his car ran into the rear of one of those trucks parked on the highway."
"Do you go to church, Earl?" I asked,
"Well we live a pretty leisured life around here," he replied. "I don't miss many Sunday nights at the Methodist Church, but I spend most Sundays fishing.
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