“Working hard, Charlie?”
“Hardly working is more like it,” said Charlie Parrish, with a half-smile (his broadest grin). “It’s been a slow week, we usually have a full house on Saturdays.”
A line of people were waiting for haircuts before he opened at 7 a.m. But the crowd soon slacked off.
Parrish, co-owner of Parrish & Richards Barber Shop, has been cutting hair for 31 years.
“I started cuttin’ hair December 5, 1955. I went into barbering because I found out I didn’t have no sense. I figured it don’t take too much sense to be a barber.”
“There are two jobs in this world that don’t take too much sense – barbering and driving a school bus,” he said. “I do both.”
He drives Allen County children to school each morning, then works in the barbershop until school is out.
He took a leisurely draw on a cigarette, stalling to postpone cutting an 8-year-old’ s hair. Charlie said he “loves little kids, but he hates cutting their hair. Some kids are OK. Just the wild ones I don’t like to fool with.”
Parrish said his farm, business and the kids on the bus will keep him in Scottsville forever.
“We’re country folks here,” he said, smiling. “We know all about country.”
