______________________________________________________
It’s a typical Saturday. Ralph the Barber is open for business.
On this day, his last customer is also his longest customer.
“Hey, man!” Dick Norse booms as he walks through the door. “It’s time for another one.”
Coat comes off, clippers come out and two old friends remember.
“Of my forty-three year career,” Dick recalls, “I spent forty-two of those years have been in this chair, every two weeks.”
It’s a relationship that started in 1965, when a rookie reporter from Grand Junction, Colorado needed a haircut.
“The very next day I get a phone call,” barber Ralph Barney recalls. “He said ‘Ralph, this is Dick Nourse. I just want you to know you gave me the best haircut I have ever had me entire life.’ And he’s never been any place since.”
“He had the darkest, thickest, curliest hair you have ever seen,” Ralph describes. “And still what a handsome guy, but what a handsome guy he was then!”
“The toughest haircut he probably had to give me was the afro,” Dick laughs. “He would say, ‘Where should I start on this?”
You could say, Ralph the Barber has been there through the thick and the thin.
When Dick had cancer in 1980, it was Ralph who shaved off that dark, curly hair.
But no matter the hairstyle, Ralph always watched his work.
Every night he tuned in to Channel Five; Ralph often called Dick to give critical instruction.
“Sometimes I would have him drop by for a quick trim, if I thought one side looked uneven,” Ralph said.
The two became fast friends, and spent many weekends on the waters of the Great Salt Lake.
“We would talk a lot about sailing, a lot about the islands,” Dick said. “We used to talk about the days when we were going to sail around the world to all of the islands. We had big plans but all we every really got out of the deal was good haircut.”
A picture of that good haircut hangs on the wall of Sirs Barbershop, with the message:
“To Ralph, my best buddy and barber.”
“He’s been one of the longest customers I’ve ever had,” Ralph says. “But he’s been more of a friend, than just a customer.”
Add comment