2

2.

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 bar-
ber 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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