The Elkhorn Barbershop Again

I wrote my Master's thesis on a Bentonville business, the Elkhorn Barber Shop and the people who worked there and used the shop not only for a shave and a haircut but as the local meeting place.

The original shop was on South Main at the back of the People's Bank, but soon moved around the corner to Central, on the south side of the square, where the Chamber of Commerce is now located.

This is the way I remember it:

It was honestly exactly like this in the late 60's and early 70's...only the people and the cars changed.

The main reason I started writing about it was because my grandfather was a barber there for the last few years of a career that started in 1919. He worked in the chair by the window looking out onto the square from 1966 to 1976. 

 An article from the Springdale Daily News from May 8, 1974 said the following:

"Horton remembers driving to the local picture show in a buggy some fifty years ago (around 1925) because “that was the only transportation I had at the time.” He estimated that during that era a shave cost about fifteen cents and a haircut twenty-five cents. “Times certainly have changed,” the tobacco chewing Hiwasse resident declared, while relaxing in a vacant barber chair at the close of another business day."

He died in 2004 at the age of 99, but only after my grandmother, his wife of 73 years, preceded him in death by five weeks.

I will always remember getting my haircut there, especially in the 70's when long hair was "in." He HATED long hair on men (or boys) but he trimmed it anyway and then I left to walk up the street to Gus' News Stand for a comic book. Sure do miss him sometimes...