A barber and his dog keep a bygone era alive

By Thomas Benn
Sun contributor
American males who hire someone to cut their hair can be divided into two indistinct classes. On one hand are those who go to a traditional barber shop, usually identifiable by the barber pole out front. And on the other hand are those modernists who patronize a styling salon, in the company often of womenfolk undergoing some form of beautification.
I can remember my father’s taking me to the neighborhood barber shop long ago as an important rite of passage toward manhood. The only women were in the well-worn pages of the Police Gazette on the magazine table. Those drawings of under-dressed, wonderfully mature ladies made the wait in turn worthwhile. If any of them were fitted out with hair curlers, I must admit that it escaped my attention.

With its enduring sense of the past, it is appropriate that the village of Empire should have one of those old-style shops and the more suave, sophisticated Glen Arbor should not.
For the last 13 years, Rich Gum has been commuting 22 miles each way every working day from his home in Frankfort to operate the vintage barber shop in Empire. During much of the year, the drive through the national lakeshore is a relaxing break before and after the day’s labors. Sometimes in the winter, however, when road conditions on M-22 can be treacherous, Rich may complete the journey without seeing another vehicle. His co-pilot on the trip, sitting alertly at his side in their pick-up truck, is his dog Sparks.
Sparks is a Vizsla, a russet-colored Hungarian gamebird-hunting breed. Once the shop opens for business at 8 a.m., Sparks settles onto his pillow next to the door. Unless and until one of the regular customers arrives with a goodie, which happens quite often, this is a non-hunting dog content to snooze away much of the day while shaggy strangers pass by. The shop is located at the end of a small strip mall on M-22, a block south of the flashing lights. Two or three times a day, the hair cutting comes to a brief halt while Sparks is let out to satisfy nature’s call. Rich says the dog won’t cross the highway or the side street but has been known to sneak around the corner of the building and down an alley “in pursuit of a girl friend or something.”
Four doors away is Jo Lynn’s Hair Affair, and down the highway to the north is Diane Aylsworth’s Hairstyling Studio, both of which cater to both women and men.
Rich’s barber shop cuts hair, period. Don’t call for an appointment, because there is no telephone. Don’t look for the shampoo cup, because there isn’t any. Nor are there any gels or coloring potions on the premises. He does trim beards.
The differences in clientele would appear to be:
(1) Generational — Rich estimates that 85 percent of his customers are retirees. His oldest customer is 95.
(2) Related to the abundance of a subject’s hair and how particular he is about how it looks. The movement to the styling salon commences, an unscientific study would seem to indicate, as the teen-ager first becomes interested in girls and eases off as the balding process sets in.
There is a jar of suckers on Rich’s shelf for the pre-school and early-school children who may be brought in by one of their parents.
But the bulk of his trade is elderly men for whom the barber shop is a social center. Barbers were the priests and medicine men of ancient societies. Primitive man believed that evil spirits could enter the body through the hair and could be driven out only by cutting it. The Greeks exchanged news and gossip at the barber shop. It’s still that way today. A coffee pot is kept warming in the small anteroom behind Rich’s shop. His customers like to linger, hanging out with their friends and neighbors, even when they aren’t there for any other reason.
They talk about the old days and how times have changed. They talk about hunting and fishing and fixing machines. They talk about politics, though Rich often finds it difficult to remember the barber’s cardinal rule, which is to stay out of any discussion of either religion or politics. And, just like the women at Diane’s and Jo Lynn’s, they talk about medical problems. “You can’t imagine the number of hips and knees,” Rich says. “It seems like all of a sudden everybody needs a new hip or knee.”
Being in possession of the cutting instruments, the earliest barbers were also responsible for the medical blood-letting, supposedly the significance of the color red on the barber pole. The more essential role for today’s barber is as father confessor and psychotherapist. “Better to be a good listener than a good talker,” Rich has found.
He brings an unusual claim to fame in Empire. His distant cousin, Frances Gumm, changed her name not to Gum but to Judy Garland, a.k.a. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Rich Gum was born, raised, and married in Frankfort. A graduate of the barbering school in Flint, he was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. He then worked at barber shops elsewhere in the state before returning to a factory job in his home town. The factory closed around the time Empire’s legendary barber Jack Lambkin hung up his shears. Lambkin’s shop, complete with gun collection and Ronald Reagan’s picture on the wall, was located in an old building no longer standing on Front Street. Rich’s wife, Christine, had a secure job, their three children were in the Frankfort schools, and that city already had four active barbers, all of which made the Empire commute tolerable.
The pace and variety of activity are unpredictable. If it rains, he can be sure of two things. The ceiling will leak. And farmers in this part of the country will decide to have their hair cut. One of the pleasant surprises that he had not anticipated was the considerable business emanating in the summer from the several campgrounds in and around the Sleeping Bear Dunes national lakeshore. Once in a while one of the touring bicycle riders will stop off for a trim. Some years ago, a middle-aged cross-country cyclist arrived in raw, rainy weather with no place to stay overnight. The shop has a toilet in the back and a sink with running water up-front, so Rich invited him to unroll his sleeping bag and spend the night in the shop. The next morning, before moving on (and before Rich had arrived) the biker decided to take a sponge bath. One of the barber’s friends happened by while the naked traveler was inside, a sight that the coffee group had fun interpreting the rest of the week.
Now 55 years old, Rich is no longer the ardent skeet shooter and hunter that he once was. In his spare time, he likes to take his two-year-old grandson, Jacob, with him pan fishing from his pontoon boat in Crystal Lake. Although his business drops off as much as 65 to 70 percent due to the seasonal exodus of the snowbirds, he says he has never regretted the Empire venture.
Approaching 5 p.m. closing time, Sparks begins to stir impatiently. Rich sweeps the gray hair on the floor into a garbage bag, and the twosome heads back down the highway toward home.