There’s a bench at the top of Main Street in front of the Fort Mill Barbershop. It may look like those ordinary wrought-iron benches found in any town but this one is different. It is a center for news, gossip, history, and more than a few tall tales. Sit there for a few minutes and you may know more about the town than you wanted to or leave wishing you could hear more.
As Fort Mill grows exponentially with houses going up in all directions despite rising costs, I have been thinking more and more about what it means to live in a small town. What will we lose when the construction dust settles and our memories of a one high school town give in to the reality of a four high school city? How do we keep our sense of place with more growth inevitable?
For a local boy (I am stretching the definition of “boy” far beyond its tipping point) who doesn’t get out much, I have learned to expect a sea of unfamiliar faces when I do go out to eat or socialize. The Fort Mill Family Restaurant this morning was booming for Saturday breakfast but I saw only two familiar faces. David Bivins and his wife spoke to me as I came in and while it was just a simple hello, seeing people I know is like a welcome home.
Back to that bench. Sorry, I got “Off Task” for a minute there. I would attribute it to my old age but report cards from elementary through high school say otherwise.
A couple of weeks ago I had the cherished responsibility of taking my father-in-law for a haircut at the top of Main Street. As it was the middle of the week, Grady only had to wait a few minutes for Steve Caskey, popularly known as “Wormy” to finish another customer.
Wormy has been a fixture at the Fort Mill Barbershop for over forty years. He is a legacy. His father, who was also a barber, owned the Palmetto Barber Shop in a little strip of stores that sat at the turn from White Street onto Business 160. Long gone now, the strip had a small restaurant, a “Soda Shop”, a grocery and a filling station.
Wormy was not the first to occupy his post at the top of Main Street. For over one-hundred and ten years the Fort Mill Barbershop has seen the lights flicker on and off as drug stores, the dime Store, The Knife Shop, a restaurant or two, a couple of insurance agencies and even a gun shop came and went. Wormy resting his weary back on his time-machine bench has outlasted them all.
I don’t know the names of all his predecessors. Mr. Howie was the first I remember in the 1950’s and early sixties. He gave me my Gene Autry haircut at about seven and when, in 1959, like every good son of a WWII soldier, I wanted a crew cut, Mr. Howie put the ½ inch spacer on his electric razor and left me with just enough hair to brush up the front like Ricky Nelson. Between Mr. Howie and Wormy, there were several owners. Billy Osborne and Johnny Gibson among them.
Then came the “Dark Times.” Both for the barbers and for me. The year was 1964 and to the consternation of my father, I was letting my hair grow into what sneering adults called “the mop top.” I was doing my best to ride the popularity wave of the Beatles. Out of consideration for the profession, I won’t name the barber but as a high-school junior, I went into the Fort Mill Barber Shop for a light trim just to get the perfect Beatle shape. I realized what mischief was afoot, when I saw a clump of too much hair fall onto the cape in front of me. I looked up from my paperback to see that my hair was far shorter than I wanted. I was furious but did not talk back to adults. With red face and barely in control, I held out the money to pay the barber.
“Keep it,” he said. “Your Daddy has already paid me.”
Voices were raised at Hill House that fateful evening and I never set foot in that barbershop again. To my shame, I held the grudge for far too many decades, even after my antagonist had long since moved along. You can see why I was a little sheepish when I brought Grady in.
The Fort Mill Barbershop has also been a catalyst for at least one business. My father, Bob Hill, (Don’t worry, we eventually made up) owned a couple of storefronts on Main Street and despite his best efforts, they remained empty for long periods of time. As Dad sat in the barber chair one day, a man came into the shop and asked Wormy if he knew any places he could rent for a business he was developing.
The man, Ed Curry, told Wormy that he needed a place to sell and develop his product but didn’t have a lot of working capital so the price had to be very reasonable. My father piped up and said, “I believe you have come to the right place.” Pucker Butt Pepper Company, developers of the Carolina Reaper Pepper, took its place on Main Street and the rest of that story is in the Guiness Book of World Records…World’s Hottest Pepper.
As my father-in -law Grady sat in the chair for his cut, a man of about 35 brought in his son of seven or eight to share the experience of an old time barbershop. It was Mayberry again, a comparison I am sure Wormy is tired of, and Opie sat and waited while Wormy trimmed Grady’s hair just the way he has for over three decades. As the notion of this story took shape inside my chaotic mind, I questioned Wormy about the experiences he had over the years.
I must have gone on too long because Grady, quiet during his cut, gave me a stern look and said,
“If you talk to him, the haircut takes a lot longer.”
One look over at the fidgeting seven-year old and I knew he was right. The restless boy was about the age I was when Mr. Howie was moved to ask me, “Boy, Did your mother feed you jumping beans for breakfast?”
But it was worth the time. Wormy told me about the strangely shaped bit of tree in front of the window. A friend of his father had made it from the trunk of a small cedar which he stripped to the limbs, trimmed them to the right size and varnished into a shiny, slightly gnarled hat rack.
Hats, of course, are out of style although an occasional baseball cap now hangs from a limb, but the hat rack has, for some years, been re-purposed. When the Yuletide season rolls around, the hat rack becomes Fort Mill’s second official Christmas Tree. A traditional lighting of the tree has been held for years but this year will be a little different. This year the tree lighting will also be a memorial. Former mayor Charles Powers and Fort Mill native Fred Moore, the traditional tree lighters, both passed away in the past year. This Christmas Season the tree will stand in the window in their honor.
As Grady and I came out of the shop, I noticed the “Going Out of Business” sign in front of Kimbrell’s Furniture store just next door. In the late forties and early fifties, my father, fresh from three years in the Pacific with the Marine Corps, took a job delivering furniture for Kimbrell’s. The manager, Eb Kimbrell, became a family friend and his sons Gary and Tommy were among my first friends. You may remember Gary from our ill-fated walk in my story “Pineville, Bad Water and Pocket Change.”
When Eb transferred to the Statesville store, another Kimbrell took over for him. Bill Kimbrell, a distant relative of Eb, took over the store and began a long career notable to me for two reasons. Any time a young Fort Mill couple began life together, they were likely to hear “Buy some furniture from Bill Kimbrell. He will give you credit and you can build on your credit rating from there.” It was how I first built a credit record and I know many others who did the same.”
Bill was also Fort Mill’s most noted fund-raiser. He was never afraid to ask anyone to contribute money toward a good cause. He was recognized for those good works by the Boy Scouts among many other groups. When he passed away it was a great loss to his community.
In a matter of weeks Kimbrell’s will join the other stores that have come and gone leaving The Cutting Room and The Fort Mill Barbershop as the only holdouts not yet lost in the wake of progress.
Wormy is not bitter about the changes. His love of the town overrides the aggravation of too much traffic and too many new developments. He has seen Main Street come back to life with restaurants and a brewery and lots of laughing people.
“It is better,” he says, “To be growing than to be drying up.”
It might seem to some folks that Wormy sits on his bench and watches the world go by but they couldn’t be more wrong. It doesn’t go by…it stops to talk with him.
Comments