hi this is i'm a grego from sr perspective we have seen a lot of changes in peters township but today we are talking to one of our longtime residents who has a business here in the township i would like to introduce george made good to be on the show today can you tell us why you chose to do what i bring well aramis a long story i remember the days when i was a lad and my dad would take me to a barber shop and i would enjoy my first lollipop and he son some day you might be a barber and i said no way i want to be a fire truck driver or truck driver well through the years i went through grade school graduated high school world war two was heavy and forty two i went to the military came back worked at my and met my wife helen there got married in forty nine and she said don't you think we should have some added income and it was too late to go to college so we decided on going to barber school and that's how the choice was made it was to my wife helen and you know helen as well it was a long time friend of yours thank you where did you go to school well i went to school in pittsburgh was called the pittsburgh barber school while i was working at mcgraw edison i would leave the shop at four o'clock and ride to pittsburgh with some of the employees that live there and went to school there to eleven an evening and caught the last bus back and it was a hectic schedule but it was well worth it in the school was known as the pittsburgh barber school and i was always fearful of when i would do my first shave but the way they did it down they blew up a balloon and they lazarus the balloon and you learn to glide the razor over the balloon instead of cutting into the balloon well if you cut into the blue moon you had that ladder all over yourself so in due time after several balloons were broken you got to use the razor and the hair cutting they did strike you with a hand clipper basically and you graduated to the record clipper and the core courses were four hours each evening and i enjoyed it very  much george maybe you could tell us a little bit about your your building but your shop well thank you i'll be glad to this building that you see behind us at one time was a miniature stable or born if you might say and it was up the valley here about all five hundred feet and it was owned by larry's my father in law george baird was a small time farmer at that time had a little cottage stable which you can see no you can't see it from here but it's in the next building and then he brought this building down a fifty foot alley in a rolled down on big telephone logs and built a concrete foundation and put the building here and he used it as a believe it or not he raised some hogs and butchered and after i married his daughter helen and i was going to barber school he said george he said you know some day you might be able to use that as a barber shop and never in my mind  i think that whatever transpired so as time came went on now i want to barber school i decided well maybe that was a good idea so at that time we were to strike at my goddess and i had six months to do it and because that's how long the strike lasted and i had help from neighbors and cousins and friends and we remodeled this building here in fact down at the hall of the road with a barber supply company operated by herman bennett and i did that and on the inside the building was put together by with pins and hard lumber you couldn't drive a nail into it so my wife helen and i built artificial dubai for studying and her cousin was a plaster and he said you put the plasterboard on and i'll come plaster the place so we did that we put the plasterboard on he came over to do the job and he left he says i can't plaster this you put the plaster on the wrong side so no way what we're going to turn to pick the plaster off so he said i'll tell you what i can do i'll make you some bricks with nails and and he pondered some sticks with nails and he said now spend a couple days scratching this thing and when you've got it all scratched call me back that's what we did we scratched it down and he came back and plastered it a cousin of mine wired it and as you see i have brought all my utilities underground course gas and and water did come on the ground since that was underground i decided to put like to go underground so there's no lines coming out here and on the inside my brother in law phil fike made my work stand and he was assistant manager filippo planning  but sure it turned out to be a barber shop and my father in law's dream came true and became one of my dreams thank you that's really a wonderful story and it takes a lot of people to do something like that in order to get something started and you were very fortunate to have all the help you had now where when did you first open your shop and do you remember your first customer yes emma i was the first barber in peter's township and it was a it was a plus for me because at that time grandfather i promised him to be the first customer and he sat in that chair and it just tears just rolled down his eyes that he saw my dream come through and he's been deceased quite a few years now but i have a picture of him and  he took it home and he framed it and through the years i've had all my customers come here and some of them are still living but we'll talk about that more later i know that you've done my son's here host and he's he's in his ninety's he still comes at the barbershop and he can see good and he can hear good a very nice conversation this and he's become a lifelong friend of mine and there's john i'm like bob matthews enjoyed it all through the years and the different fellows here after that would get their haircuts and this day and age we've lost the neighborhood communications it seems like today we meet each other at a funeral home at a wedding very seldom in church more often in a barbershop so when it comes to the barbershop after their haircut you'll see mr soandso walking along i'm not leaving i'm going to get with him for a while so he stays here and they have a little bull session and i don't have the going to the home rule situation now so there's all kind of subjects being taught to talk here of course likely to o j case is he guilty or innocent we resolve a lot of problems in time but i never come you to be a fact on the outside so the conversation here is very interesting and enjoyable by me and by patrons all i'm doing now is my senior citizens and i think i'm obligated to keep cutting their hair because truthfully they tell me there's nowhere else to go in the interim i've had two broken hips and two hip replacement and that meant being away from the shop each time that he general maybe four to five months well there was so glad that when i got back on my feet they came back usually when you're up on a barber's off that like the time your customer will find someone else and stay with him well maybe i'd say five percent good but the majority of them still wanted george to cut their hair they like the white side walls that he want none of this here styling and i never did get into hair styling for the simple reason i would have to go to seminars and i quit cutting children's hair for the simple reason that they're going to long hair done eagles you name it through the years and is no way i was going to be in a part time had i been for adults and a dollar for children then as the years went by i increased it to the point where it's still not high today it's still a bargain although i give the senior citizens a dollar discount and very few customers of mine are not senior citizens so they pay the full price which is five dollars and for the senior citizens it's four dollars but you know the senior citizens feel guilty warmer at that time beauty shops were very extinct a lot of the women did their own hair home and barber shop was the thing for the gentleman well at that time i didn't have an automobile and i wasn't going to get my barber supplies well there used to be part of our supply men that would come around with their panel trucks and give you barber supplies on for years for your use and also to set up a little stand in your shop on a consignment basis so i tried that and then on top of that i would take a bus into pittsburgh on sunday and going to the host says and i thought i'd have a little extra business going on with my barber shop so i'd buy shoestrings flints little combs shoe polish something that a man would buy just off the qana reach and instead of making a special trip to a store to get it and that didn't fare so well inventory lasted too long for the profit to be good barber tonic that was a very popular thing at one time and i had quite a few customers that really liked it and i would order for and from the barber supply man now today there is no barber supply man so there is one place left and craft in pennsylvania and i just called him two weeks ago to get whatever supplies a few that i need and to my knowledge when i picked up the phone and talk to him he went out to be honest so my only salvation no to get a few supplies that i need is a barber supply house in williamsport pennsylvania or one from richmond virginia so a few supplies i get i water from them but the thing is my supplies don't come to a great amount of money i have to have a fifty dollar order so it takes quite a long for me to order supply and u p s usually delivers it wasn't there a lab or supply in washington yes the mail order house you have that telling us some of your experiences i'm sure you have a job yes or no i have quite a few experiences well let's start off with first of all i happen to get this chair that i'm sitting a barber shop going out of business in washington and then they had an auction so i took my daughter with me she was a freshman in high school and we went up to buy this charity auction and you know that everything in the barbershop with auction and the chairs were last in the three chairs and it was about three o'clock in the morning that this already transpired started about eight o'clock and it was three of us barbers are bidding on these chairs so we got together and it was no use cutting each other's throat just hold our price down we're all going to wind up with a chair so we hold our price down and i got this chair for twenty dollar bill but then like stern says in this chair here i remember vividly that one time dad brought his son in for a haircut course that dad wanted a son to have a short haircut well the son he's about twelve years old at that age no more trade haircuts for him he wanted a long long hair cut so i'm proceeding to cut his hair and he already knows the way i'm cutting that i going to be a short one and he said dad i told you i want a long one he gets out of the chair with a cloak tied around him and starts out with the street is that after him when he looks like batman or superman with the cloak wave and does that come up to him and he brought him comes in he wants this kind of haircut the parent is paying for it and you hear them arguing and the dad says well whenever you can pay for your own haircut you can get what you want but now you're going to get what i want you to have and another other experience i've had too is i never had the president of one of the big companies here in peter's cancian i don't want to mention his name because it would be embarrassing he doesn't live here anymore but when he comes back to the area he comes and visits me but anyhow he took us to pay off he said no george he says i want to haircut that doesn't look like a haircut my friend just i just have a little here i just want you to play with your here's a little bit so that when i put my to pay on it will blend because he remembered going to one barber shop in a stood in front of the mirror and he liked it very much and from there on i was his only barber so what are you getting at here now i don't know he's a he you resides in virginia and when he's back in the rather glad to well you know yesteryear the barber used a hand clipper and and then as time went on you got the automatic clipper today the barber shops have lost a lot of been this do that the reason that home hitting home here cutting equipment is come into effect then came the gillette razor and it did away with a straight razor to the men struck shaving it home w gillette razors and what have you and of course we're up to the stage now where you have electric shavers so that makes today's barbershop extinct as far as shaving is concerned i remember yesteryear the old saying used to be shaven here cut to bits well you can even open up the barbershop door for two bits now and the women the men today are going to women's a beauty shops it seems like the barber trade is being lost yesteryear it was my dad was a barber my son's going to be a barber your dad was a shoemaker the boy was going to grow up to be a shoemaker well what education and and society as it is today it doesn't seem to be like father like son anymore everybody goes their own way so since the yesteryear barbershop is as falling apart it seems like the old guard old senior citizens are having a hard time finding a conventional barber shop such as what we're sitting in today and the younger generation are going to beauty salon shops with a man well maybe he likes a woman gotta get here i don't know why they go there but they don't pay five dollars they paid eleven twelve dollars and they get a shampoo and a blow dry hair and they don't mind spending twenty to twenty five dollars but only last two weeks not even that and they're back again well i think the gentleman like my haircut in the yesteryear but i was up to the when i give a haircut i think it last a month not that i wanted to come back sooner but that that's the kind that they like they're from the old school so some here free of charge to come and i'm happy yes emma one of the reasons i thought that i didn't want to be a full time barber was that after i had a family of my own i might have three or four boys what would be a saving through life just to cut their hair in a neighbour's hair and so forth well during two years i had three girls and one boy you've got my boys here and  the girls got married i got son in laws from wisconsin colorado ohio when they come around and that's a free course time went on they got families i got grandchildren and about four boys and they are enjoying free haircuts so and another thing i do too is i feel obligated to my senior citizens whenever one of them breaks a leg or is hospitalized or becomes incapacitated at bedridden at home my little suitcase gets filled up with my tools and away i go free of charge to cut their hair they feel obligated that they don't want it free of charge so they go say well here it is for your gas money getting out is no use you come in here and cut my hair well what i do with i go out and spread a newspaper down and i clean up after i cut the hair that makes what forty one years that i've been cutting hair and i don't think i'll be cutting here for forty one more but as long a god gives me the power to be able to cut hair to hips don't bother me i have t replacements although i've accumulated emphysema through the years and saturday mornings when i open up at nine o'clock i have to get up about six thirty in fact i did that early today in order to get my rhythm back in my breathing i have to take my morning puffs on and her later so i'm not on oxygen fortunately i hope i don't have to and by nine o'clock i'm ready to go so today when your came and you came i was ready to go but i was up at six thirty had my breakfast at my pops i call him pops and as long as i'm able to cut hair not that i actually have  to i'm not a millionaire there's no use trying to stop being one now the extra money i get will make you when you go to mcdonald's and have a hamburger we go out eat somewhere you know and so i've been really b lessed with a wonderful family a wonderful wife and able to use my talent in some small way for the community well that's wonderful and i think that you have done a great job in keeping this little shop going in there and i'm sure that more people would be better off if they could continue doing some of their hobbies in that really profit by it thank you george very