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Local Operation Features Personal Approach
by Joshua Keller
On Main Street in Mars Hill there is a business that treats each of its customers the same. No matter whether you are the president of the college, or a child in the third grade at the elementary school, the treatment will be equal. Judge Baker is known as Jim here.
Tim Metcalf is the owner and operator of the local Mars Hill Barber Shop. This business has been in the family for 44 years and has been his second home. There are not many of his kind of barber shop left. To him these are special places that are slowly fading away.
Tim Metcalf
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Metcalf graduated from Madison High School in 1979 and one month later left for barber's school in Charlotte. Not old enough to go into the military, he decided to become a barber.
To get a license it is necessary to have completed 1,528 hours of training. After finishing barber school at 10am on a Saturday, Metcalf returned to Mars Hill and was cutting hair by 12:30pm the same day. He has since worked in the same location for 24 years--22 of them with his father as co-owner.
Many secrets are shared in this workplace. "People tell you things," he says. Around 20 years ago a young man came into the store to get his hair cut because he was getting married, and Metcalf thought nothing strange about it. Well, the following day this young man's mother called and said, "He told you he was getting married before he told me!" He had eloped. The marriage has lasted over 19 years and is still going.
The shop is simple with a rotary phone hanging on the wall and old fashioned barber chairs that are still in use. It has a sense of heritage. Many local men come in the morning and discuss the deer season and the good spots to fish. Metcalf plans on keeping this tradition alive as long as God shall allow him to operate.
He has been married 19 years and has three daughters. He also has a nephew who is heading off to barber's school and who may end up working with Metcalf in the family business. There has been a shortage of barbers since the 1960s because of the popularity of longer hair and different styling. Many barbers were not ready for the change.
The Mars Hill Barber shop offers three different hairstyles: maintenance, low maintenance and no maintenance. All of these can be purchased for ten dollars. He closed with this quote, "Have an open personality." That, he said, is what creates true success in life.
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