Barbers and Barbershops

March 5, 2026 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Barbers and Barbershops

By Leo Racicot

One of my favorite trips with Papa was when he’d drive the old Plymouth up to Cupples Square to Dick the Barber’s, to have my hair cut. Dick would give dad a quick clean-up then Papa would lift me up into the same barber’s chair for my usual crewcut (the style in those days). I liked Dick and I liked his shop which always smelled so clean and nice. I liked hearing him and Papa joke and laugh with each other and sometimes with the other customers. When I was through, Dick always handed me a lollipop “for being such a good soldier”. After Papa died, the trips to Dick’s stopped; Ma wouldn’t let me walk all the way from home to Cupples Square by myself. She found a place for me on Merrimack Street across from Pollard Library. It had two barbers, George and Jimmy. At first, she’d walk me over there but as I grew older, I’d walk there by myself, feeling very grown-up and self-directed. No offense to Jimmy but George was my favorite of the two. Whenever I reached the shop, I’d peek in the window and if George was busy with a customer and Jimmy was available, I’d take a walk around the block and come back when I saw that George was free. He was a handsome Greek man, good-natured in a way Alan Young’s Wilbur Post was good-natured on the television program, Mr. Ed, which I watched regularly at home. I liked George’s crisp, unwrinkled barber’s frock and the crisp sounds of his scissors as he clipped my too-thick hair (in those days, my hair was so bushy and full, peers used to think I was wearing a hat. “Nice hat, Leo!” “That’s my hair!”). Now, when I look in the mirror, I ask myself, “Hair?? What’s hair?!!”) I patronized George’s for a few years before he went out-of-business and, as is the case with barbers and hair stylists, there seems always to be the periodic need to find a replacement shop. I was walking one day on Broadway Street near Olympos Bakery when I spied a barbershop pole and was surprised to find Jimmy inside. He’d opened his own place after George’s closed. Happy to find a familiar face, I made him my barber from then on. But there was something “off” about Jimmy and his shop as time went on; the phone was always ringing off the hook, shady characters walking in, handing a quick envelope or notebook to Jimmy, then walking out — without having their hair cut. It became obvious to me, and to others, that Jimmy was a bookie and had turned his barbershop into his base of operations. I got a kick out of this; it seemed like something in a movie and when I thought about it, Jimmy did have the look and demeanor of a thug. It was fun having my hair cut by my own “Jimmy the Greek” whom I’d read about in the newspapers. Jimmy the Greek had made a name for himself in sports handicapping and analysis. The rumor mill had it Jimmy was up on charges of bookmaking. I used to go home and tell my mother, “I’’m having my hair cut by a gangster!”, exaggerating. Jimmy eventually closed up shop, or moved to Vegas, or wound up in the hoosegow, or something like that. Then, it was time to — “What else??” — find another barber. For a while, I made do with whatever place was advertised. I tried Supercuts (too cookie cutter), Boston’s Lord’s and Lady’s (too expensive), Blaine’s Salon in downtown Lowell (where you played guinea pig for haircutting trainees — too risky — one time I left there looking like someone who’d stuck his finger in an electric socket). Luck finally led me to Ket’s Salon on Worthen Street; Ket’s prices were reasonable and she was an absolute hoot. “You come in like “The Walking Dead”, now — I make you Brad Pitt!” followed by a laugh unlike any I’d heard — a combination of a giggling mini-fountain and Goldie Hawn. Ket always sent me out the door feeling good about life and about myself. I showed up one day for “the usual” and found Ket gone, her shop replaced by a Nail and Spa business. She’d never said she was moving on. I am so upset with that girl because — she sent me out again on my endless odyssey to find a barbershop (Ulysses himself never searched this many times). I walked the city, searched the Internet for a new shop, had my hair cut at all three of the shops on lower Bridge Street — nope! Went to a place where all I got out of that experience was a head full of lice, had to ask my doctor for Kwell Lotion! — and more than a couple of places which, when I found them, found they, too, had gone belly up. In fact, for a time, it seemed like Lowell had become a ghost town of old, defunct barbershops. I did like coming across Magic Barbershop on Broadway Street near UML’s South Campus. The shop had the old-fashioned look and feel of the barbershops I knew as a kid, or of Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show. But all the barbers spoke only Spanish. Not knowing much of what they were saying, nor they, what I was muttering about, the unavoidable language barrier became an issue. Nice fellows though… Two years ago or so, I was riding the city’s #7 Pawtucketville bus to the hospital when it passed a shop on University Avenue with a sign reading Professional Barbers. I found them online, booked an appointment and have been a customer of Tyler ever since. Tyler, an amiable, young man has followed in the footsteps of his barber dad, Jim, who opened his operation in the early 1980s. So, it’s a well-established business. Jim, who’s semi-retired, passed his shop on to Tyler who’s young and vital enough that hopefully, he’ll be keeping his doors open for years to come, more years than I’ll be needing haircuts.