Barbershops not quite history, yet

Jim Kraft has done his best to completely avoid those beauty shops and fast-food style hair-clip places.

He sees them in the malls, with their biting perm smells and stacks of magazines with pictures of stylish cuts that, for some reason, only seem to look good on Brad Pitt. Jim has never been one for stylish haircuts.

He's tried to stay clear. But, Jim has a wife and two daughters. Some things are unavoidable.

Jim is 52 years old now. Besides a few times back in the service, only one person has ever cut his hair. His dad, Jack.

"He does a pretty good job," Jim says of his 80-year-old father.

Jack and Jim own Kraft's Barber Shop, a small building tucked into Clinton Street so casually you could pass by it without even noticing.

For 70 years, Kraft's has been more than a barbershop in La Crosse. It has been a community center of sorts, where you can spend an hour or two catching up on everything from national politics to duck hunting:

A) When's the best time to fish for walleyes?

B) Why does Jack cut hair faster than Jim? C) Why do the flies bite harder in the fall?

D) Why can't Logan High School win a football game?

All the answers can be found behind these walls. That doesn't necessarily mean they are the right answers:

A) When the leaves start falling.

B) He's 80. His customers only have three hairs.

C) They know they don't have long to live.

D) No idea, but it really should.

That's really what barbershops are about. Community. Friendship. Rooting for the high school you graduated from, even when it hasn't won a game. That's what Kraft's Barber Shop is about-just getting your ears lowered and shooting the bull.

You don't get your hair dyed at Kraft's barbershop. You don't get it washed , or curled, or shampooed, and you sure as heck don't get it styled. Not that Jack and Jim haven't fixed a few mall hair cuts in their time.

Truthfully, the Krafts don't have anything against fancy salons. I don't either. I've had my hair cut at those places dozens of times, listening to someone complain about the hoochie-mama they saw someone else's boyfriend with Friday night.

In all seriousness, they usually do a fine job. Most of the people who work in salons and studios work hard, love what they do and are just trying to put food on the table like the rest of us. But it's just not the same. You don't get that same feeling, like this is your barbershop, too.

It's the atmosphere. It's this amazing painting on the wall of a tree with different animals carefully brushed into the branches and roots. It's the fact that it was painted by Janet Mattison, who works just up the street.

It's a simple painting of Jack and Jim, standing in front of their shop. It hangs near the clock. They never would have posed for it if Jim's wife, Sharon, hadn't tricked them. She had some story about how she was taking everyone on the block's picture in front of their businesses. Then she gave the photo to Mattison and had her do that painting for a Father's Day gift one year.

Sharon made sure to go to every business and tell them the story, just in case Jim or Jack started asking around.

It's the 6-year-old Packers poster. It's the stuffed squirrel in the corner drinking a beer. It's the wooden sign that says "$11 haircuts." It's the way Jim and Jack spin when they switch from the left to the right side of the head. It's the fishing lures and the map of Wisconsin and the mounted muskie on the wall that Jim's buddy gave him because, "He's never going to catch one that big."

It's Connie Burke, a little woman who walks by four times a day with her dog Babe, who she got four years ago at the Humane Society and takes to the nursing home in Onalaska as one of the therapy dogs. Babe jumps right up into Jack's lap every time she sees him.

It's little boys thinking about the box full of suckers in the corner, trying to sit still, listening to men laugh like little boys again.

"They just like coming here," says Karen Pielhop, who brought her boys, David and Joshua, in for a haircut. "My husband usually does, but I got to bring them today."

Kraft's doesn't have a computer. They write appointments on a notepad next to the phone. If you come in without an appointment, it'll probably be just fine.

These two men have each been cutting hair since they were teenagers, and they have no idea how many haircuts they need to do in a day to break even. No idea.

"I guess we never worried about it," Jim says. "We've always stayed busy, and that's been enough."

But barbershops, in general, are slowly dying. It's sad, really.

When Jack started cutting hair 60 years ago with his father-in-law, there were 72 barbers and 66 barbershops in LaCrosse. Today, there are nine or 10 shops at the most. There are only three on the North Side.

It has nothing to do with popularity, or not keeping up with the times. There just aren't many new barbers coming into the trade. It's understandable. There are no health insurance benefits, no overtime, no paid vacations, no days to surf the Internet and still get a check.

Kraft's had a third barber a long time ago. He took a job with UPS and retired already.

It's not an easy life.

"It's about the people," Jim says. "You gotta love the people."

Jack is partially retired these days. Jim can see his day coming. Jim's daughters are both in health professions.

One day, Kraft's will be a memory. It would be an absolute shame, but one day, the old barbershops may all be gone. If that ever happens, hopefully we'll remember how good we had it. Hopefully, we'll remember how much the barbershop meant to us.

I just don't know where we'll go to talk about it.

Copyright La Crosse Tribune Oct 20, 2002
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