“Well, you could invite me out to dinner once in a while,” quipped long-time customer George McCann from his seat in Hastings’ chair.
And that’s the way it is and has been since Ivan’s Barber Shop opened Dec. 1, 1966.
At 69, owner Hastings will cut his last head of hair in a 51-year career Friday. Following the same schedule they’ve used for decades, Instine will be in until noon Saturday.
Judging from already made appointments, said Instine, “It’s going to be a crazy week.”
Hastings owned a shop at 18 S. Center St. and had just bought the Home Road shop from Harold Shook when Instine stopped into ask Shook about a job.
Shook referred him to Hastings, and “I told him I’d give him two weeks and see how he did,” Hastings said. “He did just fine.”
Many things have changed about that section of Home Road since then: The hill across the way from which pheasants flew has disappeared, and cows and horses have given way to homes and professional offices.
But the attraction of the shop to its traditional customers has remained steady.
Bay rum bottles dominate. Straight razors and warm shaving cream are used to remove hair from the neck and around the ears. A black rotary dial telephone with a gentle mechanical ring is the source of communication with the outside world.
When young people ask to make calls, “we have to dial it for them,” Hastings said.
Said Richard Lykins, who was a customer of Shook’s before he sold the business to Hastings: “It’s an old barber shop. You go in there, you know all the guys. You don’t know them all, but when you get in there, everybody’s your friend.”
Now 58, Highway Patrolman Newt Oliver Jr. started getting his hair cut there when he went to Roosevelt Junior High, then returned on his breaks from college and while attending the Patrol’s academy in Dayton. He’s still a regular.
“It’s very comfortable there,” said Oliver. “I’ve always considered them both good friends.”
He keeps his profession’s traditional Burr cut, and has enjoyed as long a shop tradition: little bottles of aftershave lotion at Christmas.
Bob Cooper, 51, started going to the shop “let’s say eight years ago” when his traditional barber closed up shop.
“I have a flat-top haircut and they do a good job with a flat top,” Cooper said. The stylists “don’t cut a man’s hair the same.”
Hastings said he tried barbering at the suggesting of Bob Evilsizor, who cut hair on Ballentine Pike when Hastings attended Northwestern High School.
“I had no ambition to go to a major college, so I figured I’d give it a try.”
Similarly, when North Lewisburg barber Spike Tanner suggested Instine consider barbering, he found a sympathetic ear.
“I grew up on a dairy farm milking cows,” Instine said. “I just didn’t want to do that the rest of my life.”
Although the barber chairs in the shop date to the 1990s, much else is unchanged from the 1960s and ’70s.
“A lot of stuff is antique,” said Instine, to which customer Woody Ayers said: “You don’t have to talk about me while I’m here.”
That kind of repartee, along with the occasional “by golly” and “jeeminy Christmas,” seem part of the nostalgic decor, as does a story from long-time customer and recently-retired Wittenberg University choir director Donald Busarow.
After his final haircut from Hastings, Busarow asked what happened to the picture that had been on the wall.
When it came time for the Wittenberg Choir’s “home concert” on its annual tour, “I’d be here the week before for my haircut,” Busarow said.
One year, after the concert, his wife brought up a sign that said “Haircut by Ivan” to put on his back for a formal photo with the choir.
Although he’s happy they can retire — and glad that Mike Estep will be taking over at the location — Dave Nungesser has so trusted Inskeep as his barber that he gave up the traditional glance in the mirror at the end of a haircut years ago.
After more than 35 years of that trust, “I’ve really fretted” over where to go next, he said.
“The only thing I can recall” in the way of an anecdote, Nungesser added, “is that Bill double-booked me a couple of times. And if Ivan’s chair was empty, he would say, ‘Come over here and get a good haircut for a change.’ ”
By week’s end, that’ll be out, too.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
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