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Generations of barbers, generations of customers
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by REID SILVERMAN
John Gatton Sr. guides the clippers across the head of one of his customers.
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Wyatt Libby winced in the barber chair.
The St. Leonard 3-year-old gets the same buzz cut every time and waits cautiously as Johnny Gatton moves the clippers around his ears to finish the job. There's candy in it for him at the end, so he sits tight.
"Thank you!" the child exclaims once he's broken free from the cape and off the booster seat.
"See ya next time," Gatton said.
Libby is a third generation customer. His father and grandfather have been coming to Gatton's Barber Shop for many years, and they all get the same cut. But they aren't the only longtime customers of Gatton, who is celebrating his 50th year as a Hollywood, Md., barber this month.
Gatton's father opened the shop on Mervell Dean Road in the 1930s. He had also celebrated his 50th year cutting hair several years ago.
"My father said he had enrolled me in barber school and said ‘you gotta go,'" Gatton said of how he got started in the business at 16.
Gatton's children, Kimberly Sullivan and John Gatton, Jr., are also barbers and the 75-year legacy is now located in a tiny, unsuspecting Hollywood Road shop. There are just enough chairs for about a dozen people and three barber chairs, turned toward the visitors so that everyone can talk openly to each other. It's a cozy reminder of old-school hospitality that has been replaced with the kind of in-and-out, impersonal service that seems commonplace today.
"I enjoy the work … plus the camaraderie and meeting with people, and catching up on all the local information," Gatton Sr. said of why he's stayed in the profession so long.
So basically, he knows all the local gossip?
"We like to call it information," he said jokingly.
While he and Sullivan snip away, they listen intently to a police scanner, a staple in the shop (the family has been active volunteers of the Hollywood Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad for many years, and in his spare time, Gatton Sr. collects service shoulder patches. He's got about 12,000 now).
The television is tuned to MSNBC, but not one of the several customers seems to be paying much attention to it. The customers and barbers exchange their own ideas about the economy, politics, about their experiences living in more urban centers far from St. Mary's County. They come here for the nice people, for the reliable product, they say. Some faithfully come from as far as Brandywine, Gatton said.
"Over the years, I've cut congressmen, senators … some while sitting," he added.
Gatton's Barber Shop knows dedication — it's kept customers for longer than many people stay married.
Kermit Zerby is one of them, having come since 1974.
"I like the way they cut hair. I just like to listen to them talk," he said.
He normally sees the same people there and enjoys the banter and camaraderie. He has an ongoing rivalry with Gatton Jr. Zerby is a Jeff Gordon fan (he brought his Gordon hat on a recent trip) and Gatton Jr. is a Dale Earnhardt fan.
"We're always hasslin' each other," he said.
For $11, customers often get a haircut and a good story. One man talks about his experience as a soldier, another as a Washington bureaucrat in the 1980s.
"They are in contact with everybody. Johnny knows a lot about a lot of things," said Jack Holcomb, a California, Md., customer, as he got a trim.
Lenny Guy, a "40-some" year customer, bantered with Gatton Sr, a childhood friend. He stopped in on a recent Wednesday afternoon because for once, there weren't cars parked on the side of the road, a sign the shop was busy.
Over the years, Gatton Sr. has seen a lot of bad haircuts that varied, depending on the decade. There was the long, hippie hair of the 1970s (the worst, because no one wanted haircuts), the Mohawk, the bowl cut.
"I just like the regular, traditional barberry," he said.
Gatton Sr. said he's happy right where he is at though he's reached a milestone in his career at which many people retire, he's not even close.
"I've reached my peak for expanding," he said. "I may slow down a little bit more but I don't ever foresee quitting. People have been good to me over the years. I'm not going to just quit on them now."
"I don't know about doing anything different. But who knows what the future will bring," Sullivan said, when asked about whether she and her brother will continue the business when her father decides to call it quits. "It's a lot of footsteps to follow in."
