To milk cows? Or not to milk cows?
There’s an inadvertent joke at the center of Rollie Mayberry’s life, and it begins with bovine.
When Mayberry was a teenager in 1956, his father approached him with a simple ultimatum. Their family farm needed to grow, but before purchasing more land and machinery, Mayberry’s father wanted a commitment from him. He wanted a promise that Mayberry would take over the farm, and oversee its growth.
Mayberry liked farming, but he couldn’t get past the idea of milking about 30 cows twice a day for the rest of his life. He declined.
The funny part is that Mayberry had a buddy who was in a similar situation at the time.
What did that friend decide? He kept the farm — but he sold the cows.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Mayberry said with a laugh.
After Mayberry, now 78, rebuffed farming, his father wanted to know what he’d do. Mayberry answered that he wanted to be a barber. And he was, for 60 years.
With Mayberry’s retirement from barbering at Cecil’s Barber Shop on July 1, he wraps up six decades of work that included thousands of haircuts, the first haircut for a former National Football League kicker, one nicked ear and countless hours of offering unofficial therapy for customers.
Mayberry, who worked at Cecil’s for about seven years of his career, was hired by friend and former Cecil’s owner Debbie Wright Packer, 67. Her father was Cecil Wright, the shop’s founder. Wright Packer retired in December after 45 years of barbering.
That means in the last seven months, Cecil’s has seen 105 years of combined barbering leave its doors on McGillivray Boulevard in Vancouver.
Mayberry and Wright Packer have watched styles change, from businessman cuts like that sported by President John F. Kennedy (that’s Wright Packer’s favorite cut to do) to flat tops (a favorite of Mayberry’s) to the flowing styles of the counterculture movement. All along, they’ve been pretty hip to the times, but more recently
Mayberry and Wright Packer have noticed they just can’t quite keep up like they once could. They move a little slower now. The new haircuts that young people ask for today can be intimidating. Standing all day is more bothersome than it once was, and their skills aren’t quite as precise.
“We don’t cut hair as good as we used to,” Mayberry said. “They’re still good haircuts, but not what they used to be. That’s another reason to get out of the business. I don’t want anyone to tell me, ‘Your haircuts are starting to get lousy.’ ”
“It’s just the way it goes,” Wright Packer added. “You’ve got to be honest with yourself.”
While the physical demands might be harder to meet now, Mayberry and Wright Packer stuck around so long because of how much they love the job.
“Our generation, we grew up picking beans and berries and doing factory work, so cutting hair seemed like an easy job,” Wright Packer said.
Love of people
Their love of barbering stems from their love of people, both said. They love listening to people. Talking to people. Joking with people. Consoling people. Wright Packer labels herself as more of a listener barber. Mayberry said he’s more balanced. He’ll be quiet or listen if that’s what the customer wants, but can be a chatterbox if needed. The range of humanity that Mayberry and Wright Packer have experienced in their careers sticks with them most.
“It’s who you meet,” Mayberry said. “You can have a millionaire come in and the next one, maybe they’re having a rough time, but they’re equal. And they both get to be friends with you.”
That doesn’t mean the gig is without rough moments. Mayberry, who once owned his own shop, said he’s experienced a couple embarrassing moments. When Mayberry was in barber school, he was asked to shave a man’s face. That wasn’t unusual, but the man was drunk. That was unusual. Mayberry lathered him up and just as he started the shave, the man jerked his head, and Mayberry cut him clear across his cheek.
“It was pretty embarrassing at the time, but I learned one thing from that,” Mayberry said. “It didn’t hurt me at all.”
Or who could forget the bloody ear? Mayberry certainly hasn’t. One time, while using scissors, a man moved his head at the wrong time, and Mayberry nicked the top of the man’s ear.
“Hey, I cut the top of your ear,” Mayberry recalled saying.
“Yeah, I felt it,” the man replied.
Mayberry cleaned and bandaged his ear, gave him a free cut, and the man kept returning to Mayberry.
Customer loyalty is one of the biggest upsides, Mayberry and Wright Packer said. They developed a family of recurring customers, people who have been getting cuts from them for about half a century. Mayberry gave former NFL kicker Rian Lindell his first haircut, and kept doing so throughout the Mountain View High School graduate’s 14-year professional career. Wright Packer said she’s been invited to customers’ weddings.
“As we age, I’m sure they could go to the next chair and maybe get a better haircut from the young person, but we have a history,” Wright Packer explained.
Mayberry has some bed-ridden friends and one with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He plans to continue cutting their hair, but he’ll be retired from the business of barbering. The same is true for Wright Packer, who might still occasionally cut hair at retirement homes. It’s time to make way for the next generation.
“They need the work more than I do,” Mayberry said. “We’ve got our clientele that we’ve been working on, and they need to build it. They need to have people that are going to be loyal to them.”
